Among the many stories of the Vul’nak war, few truly stand out to me. A war of senseless violence and endless bloodshed, that ended in nobody gaining much of anything.
An escort ship, the Lightning Bolt, happened to be out on patrol when the Vul’nak mothership was chased into their sector of space.
The mothership was the most terrifying ship in the entire fleet, with enough weapons to glass an entire continent in an hour. She was fast too, fast enough to avoid the fleet pursuing her.
The orders from high command went out to every ship in the sector: locate the mothership at any cost, slow her down until reinforcements arrive.
The captain of the Bolt knew that there was no time to waste, and aims his ship directly towards the last known system the Mothership was seen in.
12 hours. It took the crew of the Bolt 12 hours to succeed where an entire fleet had failed, they had found the mothership.
The crew of the Bolt faced an important decision. Keep their distance and risk losing their foe again, or risk their lives and pray that reinforcements arrive.
To the crew there was no choice, the Mothership must not be allowed to continue any further.
The captain send a single broadcast, then orders the crew to engage with all weapons. Only one ship was allowed to leave.
For over an hour, the Bolt held its own against the Mothership. Outgunned, outmanned, outclassed, but still alive. Striking their hull whenever possible while dodging deadly laser strikes, like an interstellar game of cat and mouse.
When the Fleet finally arrived, they were greeted with a transmission from the Bolt, the same transmission that had been playing on loop since they had first engaged the Mothership.
A message that would eventually strike fear into the hearts of enemies, and rally courage in allies. A single sentence that meant so much more than simple words could convey.
So I don’t know if anyone’s written about this yet, but I was trawling through the humans-are-space-orcs tag and I was hit by the sudden realization that I’ve seen nothing about space chefs.
Space chefs must be like one of the most knowledgable professions out there, think about it:
“Alright, so this is a Crexian from Norix- that means capsicum is a deadly poison, Omega-3 will cause muscle spasms and due to the atmosphere on Norix, calcium will give them terrible diarrhea- no wait, this is a male, so Omega-3 is actually delicious–”
“–a Bio-bot, model Gamma-341, so absolutely no organic oils in anything or their systems will stop working, and for Stabby’s sake do not let anything with iron in it so much as look funny at their food–”
“–Mariddian fresh out of hibernation, shove as many protein additives into that meat as you can get away with and remember not to use salt, it fries their neural pathways–”
Like. I bet there’s an Interstellar Chef magazine in circulation full of recipes that are two pages long and then all the species that can and cannot eat it are listed for the next five. And every time a new species joins the intergalactic mess, the magazine runs a special issue as all the space chefs die a little more inside. The special issue gives a brief breakdown of the new species biology and then dives straight into what’s poison, what’s nutritional, what’s considered delicious and whats considered choke-worthy. If at all possible, the special issue also includes recipies from the species native culture while all the space chefs desperately try to figure out what dishes they can jury-rig into a new definition of edible.
They probably love humans though.
“Hey Jaxki, did you hear about the new species that the Crynsu found? They’re supposedly from a Death World, can you belie–”
“Ohfuck another speices?!?! They found three last spin and I’m stilltrying to figure out what to feed the Hrethad. Any word what they eat? You get the Chef before me.”
“Hold up let me look, I just got it today…void and dust!”
“Oh novas, what, can they not have water or something?”
“Jaxi these fuckers eat everything! They can digest chlorogenic acid! Some of them do it every day, by the void-loving gallon!!! And that’s just the nose of the Quarlag! This thing has a whole list of chemicals these guys consider delicious or edible and I swear to you it’s like someone mixed their list of the universe’s most common compounds with its spacing deadliest poisons!”
You know what kills me? Artificial flavors. The notion that somewhere, sometime, there was a rogue blue raspberry. I’ve never seen this fictitious blue raspberry. I have no idea what a blue raspberry should taste like. I know what blue raspberry candytastes like.
How about apple? Watermelon? Grape? Grape flavored cough syrup? More like fake Concord grape abomination. Yet we accept that this is what they represent. No one believes that watermelon candy actually tastes like watermelon, but if you blindfolded someone and had them eat some, they’d say it was watermelon.
H O W ? ? ?
“Hey, Menah-Tal, I got some candy in a package from home. Do you want to try some?”
Menah-Tal took the bright yellow wrapped candy from Brett. He started to put it in his mouth before Brett stopped him.
“Unwrap it first. There’s a joke on here too - eh, it wouldn’t make sense.”
Menah-Tal gingerly “unwrapped” the candy and took the sticky substance out. These humans. How do they tell what is edible and what isn’t? Menah-Tal watched wistfully as Brett put the tasty-looking wrapper in garbage receptacle. Menah-Tal put the candy in his mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully.
“What is this supposed to taste like on your world, Brett?”
“Banana.”
“Ah.” Menah-Tal continued to suck sagely. “So that’s what ‘banana’ tastes like.”
“Well, it doesn’t actually taste like banana.”
Menah-Tal blinked his three eyes slowly. Why. Why is everything so complicated.
“We had a banana crisis back in the fifties. The banana flavor you’re tasting is modeled after an extinct variety. The only kind we have now doesn’t taste much like that at all.”
Menah-Tal struggled to open his mouth now that the candy had cemented itself around his teeth.
“So your kind has a sweet substance that they eat for enjoyment that is flavored to taste like an extinct fruit?”
It’s kind of amusing to hear all this talk about humans being an apex predator species - I mean, I love it, but technically, by our own standards of rating predators, we aren’t, because we still have animals around on Earth that will munch us down if push comes to shove. We’re not like bears or wolves or any of the really big members of the big cat family - yes, we can and do hunt, but as often as not we foraged.
Heck, we still do that in many ways, even in the urban environments we have made for ourselves. We are the species that will stare you in the eye as we steal the food off your plate, then add insult to injury by checking to make sure it’s clean enough, get everywhere we’re not supposed to because we are cunning little buggers that are hard to keep out, will hoard shiny things even though we know they aren’t useful because they are shiny, okay, and then we’ll go and do something adorable so that you love us anyway, at least until you notice that we’ve just scuttled off with half your wiring because we needed it for something important.
Humans aren’t the wolves or tigers or bears of the universe.
All species who first officially fly outside their own solar system are soon met with several thousand more species not as far as they thought. Those out there past a sun’s orbit will quickly reach out to make contact with these new creatures.
When you, humanity, reach past your own star, you are met with traditional greeting. The rundown, the history, who’s in charge, the laws.
And to that you said… nah.
The entitlement. Yikes. But that wasn’t uncommon and set off no red flags for the older and clearly much wiser species. Sometimes new species think they don’t need to be governed. You were regarded like a young toddler saying no to everything.
But as time went on, you continued to grow. And you continued to not accept governance from anyone else.
You got in trouble a lot.
This resistance wasn’t later detered. You doubled down, you armed your vessels, and you continued by your own laws.
That’s not to say you were unreasonable. (Although you surely saw yourselves as so). Despite the fears - even among your own kind - you didn’t take over planets already inhabited. You didn’t create needless wars or enslave innocent alien souls.
Then what was the problem, if not your morals?
You simply had your own way of living.
They recommended new planets for you, but no, you wanted that one.
They’d ask you let their services protect you from pirates, but no your missles did just fine. They explain that owning your own weapons is illegal… No it’s not because you didn’t make it illegal.
They’d teach you how to set up currencies… mmm, maybe? No. Never mind. Your way has been has been the norm for the past thousand years, and you, humanity, don’t do well with change. Unless it was your own idea.
Let us teach you the ways of art. Sure! But the Greeks did it better, still.
Your spaceships move too fast. You considered that to be the whole point of spaceships, despite alien’s insistance that it was illegal. At least communicate your routes. Of course! You didn’t want to crash, that’d be unreasonable.
Truthfully, humanity, you weren’t always right. And some of your ways really did have to change… at least one day. The aliens wouldn’t be your pushovers. You didn’t get away with everything. Scratching the furniture and knocking over a vase was frowned upon, so to speak.
But, you were mostly harmless. And eventually the other aliens learned that some of your ways they needed to let you do your way.
What makes humans weird isn’t that they have traits that are unheard of. In fact, many of their traits are rare, but often one can name other species with similar oddities.
What makes humans weird is they have so MANY rare traits. It’s one thing to have one or two in your species. But practically all of them???
“So they’re mostly hairless.”
“So like a Grovin?”
“Yeah but they also walk and run bipedally for REALLY long distances.”
“Ok, strange combo so far.”
“And thats barely the start, they’re also capable of sweating like Drask and have natural immunity to natural poisons and irritants like caffeine and capsaicin, they actually love the stuff and eat/drink them regularly.”
I had this idea after someone reminded me of an old joke.
Two humans siblings and their crew are taking passage on a cargo ship. The human male comes across a pen filled with several pig-like creatures. Bored, he paints some 1, 2, and 4 (in galactic common language) then releases only those few onto the massive ship.
They laugh now, but they’re definitely getting kicked off the ship.
The alien opened his drawer. Inside, a little plastic blue lizard stared up at him. He picked it up, regarded it, and tossed it on top of the dresser.
Inside the bathroom, he picked up his toothbrush and brought it to his only two teeth.
Something red was sticking out behind the toothbrush holder. With his claw, he pushed the ceramic piece to the side.
Behind the toothbrush holder was a little plastic red lizard.
Odd.
Throughout the morning routine, he continued to find lizards around his unit. The pillows, the hammock, the ceiling fan, his shoe… nowhere was safe.
With every new lizard he found, he thought surely it would be the last. With every “last one” there was one more to follow.
Pretty soon, he had thirty-one lizards stacked on top of his dresser.
“Where the hell did all these come from???”
It was later at breakfast that the alien would learn the origins of the little toys. It came in the form of another little creature - a human - who cheerfully sat down beside him.
“Find anything odd this morning?” they said.
“Are you the asshole who left a bunch of lizards in my unit?”
“Haha, April Fools’! You like them?”
“April what?”
Humans were known for their playfulness and pranks, so the explanation that came after was of no surprise to the alien. It would make sense that these little orcs made a holiday around it.
Later, the alien led the smaller creature back to his unit and was greeted by a torn apart bedroom and a colorful pile of lizards.
The human - unprompted - went to work sorting the little toys so they lined up in their respective color.
Cargo space ship that is too long for the wormhole is pushed perpendicular, causing intergalactic trade to stop. Aliens are fairly stressed out about it as supplies to planets will be a lot slower until they can get it unstuck.
The goddamn humans are making memes about it.
It’s too late at night to post on Instagram, but thankfully Tumblr shouldn’t mind
A year since I made this post has passed!
A small handful of you were very concerned about the missing excavator. This year, to make up for it, I give you our hero:
A crew of astronauts spend their entire lives to embark on an interstellar journey that will take 100’s of years to arrive. En route, however, technology advances. When they arrive, they find others have already arrived decades ago thanks to new tech…
Those others had arrived to find others who already arrived. And those others had found others who already arrived.
As a weird side effect, the further you draw a line to trace the new planet’s history, the younger / newer the astronaut is in respective to Earth generations.
And so, while the Earth’s first sent had their glory taken from remaining the first, it was the Earth’s first sent who were the final pioneers to complete their new home.
“You know how they have to cover themselves up at all times?”
“Yes?”
“Why do they have to do that? It’s not like they are walking on inhospitable places all the time. They could just wear a karket to cover some of their parts up”.
“… Uh…”.
“What?”
“Have you ever seen a human before?”
“Ofcourse!”
“That would answer the question”.
“It doesn’t? They have fur. They are just covering their fur”.
“They don’t have fur- where did you get that idea from?!”
“I saw a picture of them! They havefur! I heard they complain about the weather being too hot all the time. If only they wore a karketlike we do…”.
“You mean, the fur on their heads? That’s hair”.
“They have a special name for that? But the fur on their bodies is the same…”.
“For the last time, they don’t have fur! Not thick fur, at least. They like to shave”.
“That’s… Not true. I can’t think of any intelligent species without fur or scales. It would be like… Seeing exposed flesh. They don’t have exposed flesh”.
“They don’t- you know what? Look”.
“I am looking”.
“Look at this. Thisis a human! Does thislook like fur to you?!”
“W…”.
“Hm?!”
“What the fuck is that?! The fuck- the fuck?! That’s exposed flesh, but not really exposed! What are the other Earth intelligent creatures?!”
“There aren’t any other. Only humans and the robots, but they are basically the same thing”.
“You must be fucking kidding me…”.
“Show me what you saw, then!”
“Fine! Fine! Just let me find it- there! Right there!”
“You know how they have to cover themselves up at all times?”
“Yes?”
“Why do they have to do that? It’s not like they are walking on inhospitable places all the time. They could just wear a karket to cover some of their parts up”.
“… Uh…”.
“What?”
“Have you ever seen a human before?”
“Ofcourse!”
“That would answer the question”.
“It doesn’t? They have fur. They are just covering their fur”.
“They don’t have fur- where did you get that idea from?!”
“I saw a picture of them! They havefur! I heard they complain about the weather being too hot all the time. If only they wore a karketlike we do…”.
“You mean, the fur on their heads? That’s hair”.
“They have a special name for that? But the fur on their bodies is the same…”.
“For the last time, they don’t have fur! Not thick fur, at least. They like to shave”.
“That’s… Not true. I can’t think of any intelligent species without fur or scales. It would be like… Seeing exposed flesh. They don’t have exposed flesh”.
“They don’t- you know what? Look”.
“I am looking”.
“Look at this. Thisis a human! Does thislook like fur to you?!”
“W…”.
“Hm?!”
“What the fuck is that?! The fuck- the fuck?! That’s exposed flesh, but not really exposed! What are the other Earth intelligent creatures?!”
“There aren’t any other. Only humans and the robots, but they are basically the same thing”.
“You must be fucking kidding me…”.
“Show me what you saw, then!”
“Fine! Fine! Just let me find it- there! Right there!”
I put barely any effort into this because it was just going to stay in my notes app, but I remembered that people on Tumblr like the aliens interacting with humans stuff so here it is.
[Aboard a Radden ship in the inner Oort Cloud, a commander is rehearsing their first-contact speech with the translator]
“Hello, uh… what do I call them? Humans?”
“They generally feel othered and objectified if you call them that.”
“Oh… okay… what do they want then? Earthlings?”
“No no, that’s even worse. Very old fashioned.”
“Right. Terrans? Gaians?”
“Painfully Eurocentric, not to mention it makes them feel subjugated under one nation.”
“Fine. Do I say People of The Earth? Use some person-first language?”
“Well… that’s better… but it has typically been used be groups to promote their viewpoints as global when they’re not, and that’s not really the kind of thing you want to-”
“Fine. How do I address them?”
“Just say everyone. You’re alien to them; they’ll understand you’re not addressing everyone in the universe.”
I’m REALLY tired of the dark “aliens are evil” stories.
“Aliens think we are food” this. “Aliens think we’re a plague” that. And the “aliens are so much smarter and think us as puny ants” this and that.
I especially hate the “aliens are ugly monsters” part. Like, propaganda much?
At least some of us -I mean them! Some of THEM aren’t evil. In fact! Very (and I mean VERY) few of them are truly bad creatures.
Where’s our “aliens are good” this? And our “aliens are actually really impressed by human understanding of space despite early stages of galactic travel” that? And maybe a little “haha, once you get used to it, aliens are kinda cute” this and that?
I heard of a project called “humanity lost” by some guy named Callum Diggle and became interested in the whole “humans invade other planets trope”.
I would really like to see other people’s take on that subject because us just invading other planets and showing our worst and most prevalent side to a species who has never even known about us is scary.
It would probably be worst for the aliens if they’re barely a tribal species and had no men’s of defence against technologically advanced species.
(please reblog I want this to spread)
“Take us to your leader.”
The cartoonish words left the mouth of a true freak of nature. A creature missing a set of arms and missing way too many eyes. Teeth were overly abundant, though. Those additions were as clear as day as it gleefully sounded out that phrase.
“Our what?”
There was a roar among the creatures. If our alien was familiar he would have identified the roar as laughter. Unfortunately, he was not familiar, and unfortunately, it was a terrifying sound.
The noise was enough to make the smaller creature pull back his own lips and bare his teeth. If the other aliens - humans - were familiar they’d know the smaller alien was not smiling.
They were familiar. At this point, they had the small species’ fear expressions well-documented.
Moments before, the hero had been out in the field, stargazing. Eyes on a star that had been especially bright tonight.
And brighter, and brighter.
A ship - the vague shape of a pitcher - landed only several yards ahead of him. And out came three monsters - aliens! Just like in the theaters.
And now said aliens had him tied with his four arms behind his back.
“…the president, you mean? I don’t think I can do that…” the alien said.
The creature only smiled, this time without baring teeth.
“It wasn’t a… nevermind it.” The human looked him up and down. There was a moment of pity - it was like dodo birds, how easy these aliens were to pick off - but the pity went unregistered to the confused little creature. “He’ll do. Bring him to the ship.”
The other two, on command, hoisted the alien into the air.
“Wait… now hold on!” The alien squirmed and kicked, but to no avail. “I can’t get the president, but I can get my dad! He’s basically, like… myleader.”
He was shoved inside the ship and slammed down to his knees.
“Does that not count? I can get my teachers?”
His eyes traced up the walls of the room. Miniscule but undoubtedly sharp objects lined the shelving units. In the far back, rows and rows of tiny vials were behind a glass case. Inside was blue liquid that looked a lot like blood.
Speaking as a human, I think aliens are the weird ones because they don’t randomly have the urge to get out of bed in the middle of the night and clean their room
Aliens are the weird ones because they don’t have “waiting mode.”
When they have plans later - in three hours, for example- they can still be productive. Maybe do some basic cleaning. Draw a simple picture, even. Or watch a movie! :D
Haha, aliens are so weird.
Aliens. Are. SO WEIRD. That when they read for classes. They can actually read the source material. And. Not. Zone. Out. :)
An alien cannot properly see red. It’s not that she is color blind, it is simply normal for her species. Humans take a notice to this quickly, noting the irony that an alien species who can’t see red somehow lives on a red planet.
Her two human friends won’t stop telling her she’s “missing out on color theory” and talking about how she can’t paint for “children’s hospitals.” She doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about.
we are never going to let that post die are we
What’s a Tumblr? They just know of the meme through screenshots from the Galaxy famous Toklr
“This should do it.” It looked down at itself, pleased.
The two - rather long - legs jut out under it’s torso. It used it’s new - ew - five fingers to feel along it’s skin, feeling the bumps of a ribcage underneath. A heartbeat too.
In front of it was a mirror, and staring back at itself was a human. Well, an illusion of one.
Time and time again, the newly star bound aliens, humans, had infiltrated it’s species ranks through elaborate disguises. They got better at it every time.
Not only were humans great with what they call “make up” but they had a way of mimicking their behaviors. It’s species tried to replicate this. Failed to. In the end, they had something better.
A team of highly immoral scientists who were given boundless permission to try whatever the hell they wanted. And they went with genetic mutation.
It was a painful change, and slow. Agonizingly slow. But now, it was a super solider with one superpower. A shape-shifter.
And it was time to test it out.
It strolled out of the bathroom and into the eating area where various alien species were seated. Only one human - the unwitting test subject - was present.
If this could pass for normal conversation, this could pass for war.
It strolled right up to the other creature - a man who had not yet seen him - and sat down.
“I’m glad to see one other human on this station,” it said.
The human non-committedly looked up. Only to jump with a start after taking it in.
“What are you?” he said.
“A human?” it said. If it’s species could sweat, it would do so by now.
The man stared at it a moment. He turned to the alien on his right and pointed to his left.
“Forgive me if this question is batshit insane, but what do you see?”
“Two humans?” The alien had three eyes.
Her species’ third eye was famous for detecting the most miniscule details and then committing it to subconscious memory. The rise and fall of a chest. The careful rythem of a human heart. How often - or little - a human blinks. Even human’s make-up tricks couldn’t bypass her species’ extra form of security.
“So it is,” said the man. She turned away and it found itself blinking quickly in relief. It cut that out when the human turned to it. “Sorry, I guess you’re just real ugly.”
“Ugh, rude.” All humans are ugly.
He scooted in closer on the bench and leaned in towards it. It found itself leaning away, but couldn’t help but notice the bead of sweat on the human’s forehead and how the pupils were shrunken as far as they could.
“Wanna hear an old Earth tale?”
“I’m sure I know it.” Was this a test?
“I doubt you know this one. My grandfather experienced it himself.” He leaned away. It had stop itself from blinking too rapidly again. “This is about an Earth cryptid.”
“Bigfoot?” it said, but nodded as if it already knew.
“Everyone knows Bigfoot,” he laughed. “No, he was driving down a dark country road unlit by street lights. He didn’t have his brights on - that’s important to the story, you see - but heaven knows why.”
Brights??? What are brights???
“Down the road an animal was crossing. A simple male deer with antlers. He couldn’t see its body yet, but he was familiar with the eyes. They glowed as his car sped closer.”
“He slowed as the deer became more apparent, and eventually came to a stop when the creature wouldn’t move. By now, he could see the antlers, the four legs, the neck. Not in detail, mind you, but he could see it ”
Other aliens in the room- not hearing this conversation - were trickling out of the room. There was no dramatic reason for this, they simply finished their lunch. The human, not paying any attention to his own lunch, continued the story.
“It’s not uncommon for deer to freeze, especially when lights flood their eyes. So my grandfather gave it a moment to realize it should run. When seconds ticked by, he honked at it.”
“There was something… off… about the deer. It looked every way like a deer, but the longer he stared, the longer that just didn’t seem right.”
“Was it a deer?” it said.
“It was not.”
“What was it?”
“Not a deer.”
The alien found itself frown at this in a perfectly human way.
“Time went on, and my grandfather decided to turn on the brights to try and see the creature better. And it was still… a deer… but not…”
It found its frown deepening.
“What’s worse was it began to move. Similar to a deer, but all wrong. Like maybe its legs bent the wrong way. Or perhaps the legs were too long. It was every way like a deer, but it just was not.”
“He drove home as soon as that not deer was out of his path. And yes, he found himself alive the next morning. But that encounter disturbed him, so he recounted it to everyone. And many people - especially in that town - could tell him their own stories.”
“…okay?”
“Well, that story is funny. Probably a figment of his imagination, but it does reflect a very real human instinct.”
This was another test. “Would this be something I know of?”
“It’s called uncanny valley. It occurs to us when something looks human… but is not.”
“Why?”
“Well, rumor has it that it was a instinct formed from a predator. Something that looked human but was not. A not human.”
“A not human? Is this true?”
“No,” he said. He laughed. “No, we most likely developed it for something a lot more practical. Corpses, you see. They carry a lot of bacteria, so we have a fear of them.”
“…interesting.”
“I have that very same feeling of you,” he said. The room was empty besides the two. He reached for his bottle above his lunch tray.
“But I’m not a corpse?”
“You’re about to be.”
The human tossed down the bottle, effectively cracking off the bottom half and forming his weapon.
It shape-shifted as it scurried away to retreat from the very much human.
@timeandspacelord I know exactly what you’re talking about and you know what? You’re so right. Thank you for reminding me, I hate it. /j
So ya’ll know about how stealth is a big thing on our planet, right? Predators use it to catch prey, prey use it to avoid predators, etc. etc. What if that’s exclusively an earth thing?
Like, if death worlds were rare and the need for stealth was less needed or even non-existant it’d be pretty surprising to aliens to find out just how important stealth is and how good humans (and Earth animals in general) are at it.
Smaller humans can curl up into tight spaces to hide. Camouflage is something we’re very good at with things like ghillie suits and camo facepaint to make ourselves near invisible.
We’re pretty good at staying still and will even cover our mouths to make our breathing quieter. Sometimes we even sneak up on people without meaning to. We’ve gotten so good at hiding we can even hide in plain sight.
Hell, even a portion of our entertainment contains stealth, we have childrens games like hide and seek that make us better at it and there’s even an entire genre of video game dedicated to it. Suffice to say stealth is something we’re pretty ok at.
Now imagine a human is put onto an alien ship as a crewmate and as the aliens learn more about humanity they decide to play hide and seek to learn more about us.
They go around and find the other races pretty easily, but they can’t find the human.
After 30 minutes they get s bit annoyed
After 1 hour they’re a bit worried
After 3 hours they’re panicking that they just lost their human friend and begin running around the ship screaming that they give up and begging the human to come out.
The human stands up from behind a pipe or something and ask why the crew couldn’t find them. What proceeds is Aliens becoming utterly horrified at our ability to remain concealed so well for so long.
Long story short, they never play hide and seek again.
Alien: “Human Steve, I understand you hate bathroom duty, but this week it’s your turn to- Oh goddammit! Where is he!? Dammit Steve, you can’t do this every time-”
“This should do it.” It looked down at itself, pleased.
The two - rather long - legs jut out under it’s torso. It used it’s new - ew - five fingers to feel along it’s skin, feeling the bumps of a ribcage underneath. A heartbeat too.
In front of it was a mirror, and staring back at itself was a human. Well, an illusion of one.
Time and time again, the newly star bound aliens, humans, had infiltrated it’s species ranks through elaborate disguises. They got better at it every time.
Not only were humans great with what they call “make up” but they had a way of mimicking their behaviors. It’s species tried to replicate this. Failed to. In the end, they had something better.
A team of highly immoral scientists who were given boundless permission to try whatever the hell they wanted. And they went with genetic mutation.
It was a painful change, and slow. Agonizingly slow. But now, it was a super solider with one superpower. A shape-shifter.
And it was time to test it out.
It strolled out of the bathroom and into the eating area where various alien species were seated. Only one human - the unwitting test subject - was present.
If this could pass for normal conversation, this could pass for war.
It strolled right up to the other creature - a man who had not yet seen him - and sat down.
“I’m glad to see one other human on this station,” it said.
The human non-committedly looked up. Only to jump with a start after taking it in.
“What are you?” he said.
“A human?” it said. If it’s species could sweat, it would do so by now.
The man stared at it a moment. He turned to the alien on his right and pointed to his left.
“Forgive me if this question is batshit insane, but what do you see?”
“Two humans?” The alien had three eyes.
Her species’ third eye was famous for detecting the most miniscule details and then committing it to subconscious memory. The rise and fall of a chest. The careful rythem of a human heart. How often - or little - a human blinks. Even human’s make-up tricks couldn’t bypass her species’ extra form of security.
“So it is,” said the man. She turned away and it found itself blinking quickly in relief. It cut that out when the human turned to it. “Sorry, I guess you’re just real ugly.”
“Ugh, rude.” All humans are ugly.
He scooted in closer on the bench and leaned in towards it. It found itself leaning away, but couldn’t help but notice the bead of sweat on the human’s forehead and how the pupils were shrunken as far as they could.
“Wanna hear an old Earth tale?”
“I’m sure I know it.” Was this a test?
“I doubt you know this one. My grandfather experienced it himself.” He leaned away. It had stop itself from blinking too rapidly again. “This is about an Earth cryptid.”
“Bigfoot?” it said, but nodded as if it already knew.
“Everyone knows Bigfoot,” he laughed. “No, he was driving down a dark country road unlit by street lights. He didn’t have his brights on - that’s important to the story, you see - but heaven knows why.”
Brights??? What are brights???
“Down the road an animal was crossing. A simple male deer with antlers. He couldn’t see its body yet, but he was familiar with the eyes. They glowed as his car sped closer.”
“He slowed as the deer became more apparent, and eventually came to a stop when the creature wouldn’t move. By now, he could see the antlers, the four legs, the neck. Not in detail, mind you, but he could see it ”
Other aliens in the room- not hearing this conversation - were trickling out of the room. There was no dramatic reason for this, they simply finished their lunch. The human, not paying any attention to his own lunch, continued the story.
“It’s not uncommon for deer to freeze, especially when lights flood their eyes. So my grandfather gave it a moment to realize it should run. When seconds ticked by, he honked at it.”
“There was something… off… about the deer. It looked every way like a deer, but the longer he stared, the longer that just didn’t seem right.”
“Was it a deer?” it said.
“It was not.”
“What was it?”
“Not a deer.”
The alien found itself frown at this in a perfectly human way.
“Time went on, and my grandfather decided to turn on the brights to try and see the creature better. And it was still… a deer… but not…”
It found its frown deepening.
“What’s worse was it began to move. Similar to a deer, but all wrong. Like maybe its legs bent the wrong way. Or perhaps the legs were too long. It was every way like a deer, but it just was not.”
“He drove home as soon as that not deer was out of his path. And yes, he found himself alive the next morning. But that encounter disturbed him, so he recounted it to everyone. And many people - especially in that town - could tell him their own stories.”
“…okay?”
“Well, that story is funny. Probably a figment of his imagination, but it does reflect a very real human instinct.”
This was another test. “Would this be something I know of?”
“It’s called uncanny valley. It occurs to us when something looks human… but is not.”
“Why?”
“Well, rumor has it that it was a instinct formed from a predator. Something that looked human but was not. A not human.”
“A not human? Is this true?”
“No,” he said. He laughed. “No, we most likely developed it for something a lot more practical. Corpses, you see. They carry a lot of bacteria, so we have a fear of them.”
“…interesting.”
“I have that very same feeling of you,” he said. The room was empty besides the two. He reached for his bottle above his lunch tray.
“But I’m not a corpse?”
“You’re about to be.”
The human tossed down the bottle, effectively cracking off the bottom half and forming his weapon.
It shape-shifted as it scurried away to retreat from the very much human.
On the topic of humans being everyone’s favorite Intergalactic versions of Gonzo the Great: Come on you guys, I’ve seen all the hilarious additions to my “humans are the friendly ones” post. We’re basically Steve Irwin meets Gonzo from the Muppets at this point. I love it.
But what if certain species of aliens have Rules for dealing with humans?
Don’t eat their food. If human food passes your lips/beak/membrane/other way of ingesting nutrients, you will never be satisfied with your ration bars again.
Don’t tell them your name. Humans can find you again once they know your name and this can be either life-saving or the absolute worst thing that could happen to you, depending on whether or not they favor you. Better to be on the safe side.
Winning a human’s favor will ensure that a great deal of luck is on your side, but if you anger them, they are wholly capable of wiping out everything you ever cared about. Do not anger them.
If you mustanger them, carry a cage of X’arvizian bloodflies with you, for they resemble Earth mo-skee-toes and the human will avoid them.
This does not always work. Have a last will and testament ready.
Do not let them take you anywhere on your planet that you cannot fly a ship from. Beings who are spirited away to the human kingdom of Aria Fiv-Ti Won rarely return, and those that do are never quite the same.
Basically, humans are like the Fair Folk to some aliens and half of them are scared to death and the others are like alien teenagers who are like “I dare you to ask a human to take you to Earth”.
We knew about the planet called Earth for centuries before we made contact with its indigenous species, of course. We spent decades studying them from afar.
The first researchers had to fight for years to even get a grant, of course. They kept getting laughed out of the halls. A T-Class Death World that had not only produced sapient life,but a Stage Two civilization? It was a joke, obviously. It had to be a joke.
And then it wasn’t. And we all stopped laughing.Instead, we got very, very nervous.
We watched as the human civilizations not only survived, but grew, and thrived, and invented things that we had never even conceived of. Terrible things, weapons of war, implements of destruction as brutal and powerful as one would imagine a death world’s children to be. In the space of less than two thousand years, they had already produced implements of mass death that would have horrified the most callous dictators in the long, dark history of the galaxy.
Already, the children of Earth were the most terrifying creatures in the galaxy. They became the stuff of horror stories, nightly warnings told to children; huge, hulking, brutish things, that hacked and slashed and stabbed and shot and burned and survived, that built monstrous metal things that rumbled across the landscape and blasted buildings to ruin.
All that preserved us was their lack of space flight. In their obsession with murdering one another, the humans had locked themselves into a rigid framework of physics that thankfully omitted the equations necessary to achieve interstellar travel.
They became our bogeymen. Locked away in their prison planet, surrounded by a cordon of non-interference, prevented from ravaging the galaxy only by their own insatiable need to kill one another. Gruesome and terrible, yes - but at least we were safe.
Or so we thought.
The cities were called Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the moment of their destruction, the humans unlocked a destructive force greater than any of us could ever have believed possible. It was at that moment that those of us who studied their technology knew their escape to be inevitable, and that no force in the universe could have hoped to stand against them.
The first human spacecraft were… exactly what we should have expected them to be. There were no elegant solar wings, no sleek, silvered hulls plying the ocean of stars. They did not soar on the stellar currents. They did not even register their existence. Humanity flew in the only way it could: on all-consuming pillars of fire, pounding space itself into submission with explosion after explosion. Their ships were crude, ugly, bulky things, huge slabs of metal welded together, built to withstand the inconceivable forces necessary to propel themselves into space through violence alone.
It was almost comical. The huge, dumb brutes simply strapped an explosive to their backs and let it throw them off of the planet.
We would have laughed, if it hadn’t terrified us.
Humanity, at long last, was awake.
It was a slow process. It took them nearly a hundred years to reach their nearest planetary neighbor; a hundred more to conquer the rest of their solar system. The process of refining their explosive propulsion systems - now powered by the same force that had melted their cities into glass less than a thousand years before - was slow and haphazard. But it worked. Year by year, they inched outward, conquering and subduing world after world that we had deemed unfit for habitation. They burrowed into moons, built orbital colonies around gas giants, even crafted habitats that drifted in the hearts of blazing nebulas. They never stopped. Never slowed.
The no-contact cordon was generous, and was extended by the day. As human colonies pushed farther and farther outward, we retreated, gave them the space that they wanted in a desperate attempt at… stalling for time, perhaps. Or some sort of appeasement. Or sheer, abject terror. Debates were held daily, arguing about whether or not first contact should be initiated, and how, and by whom, and with what failsafes. No agreement was ever reached.
We were comically unprepared for the humans to initiate contact themselves.
It was almost an accident. The humans had achieved another breakthrough in propulsion physics, and took an unexpected leap of several hundred light years, coming into orbit around an inhabited world.
What ensued was the diplomatic equivalent of everyone staring awkwardly at one another for a few moments, and then turning around and walking slowly out of the room.
The human ship leapt away after some thirty minutes without initiating any sort of formal communications, but we knew that we had been discovered, and the message of our existence was being carried back to Terra.
The situation in the senate could only be described as “absolute, incoherent panic”. They had discovered us before our preparations were complete. What would they want? What demands would they make? What hope did we have against them if they chose to wage war against us and claim the galaxy for themselves? The most meager of human ships was beyond our capacity to engage militarily; even unarmed transport vessels were so thickly armored as to be functionally indestructible to our weapons.
We waited, every day, certain that we were on the brink of war. We hunkered in our homes, and stared.
Across the darkness of space, humanity stared back.
There were other instances of contact. Human ships - armed, now - entering colonized space for a few scant moments, and then leaving upon finding our meager defensive batteries pointed in their direction. They never initiated communications. We were too frightened to.
A few weeks later, the humans discovered Alphari-296.
It was a border world. A new colony, on an ocean planet that was proving to be less hospitable than initially thought. Its military garrison was pitifully small to begin with. We had been trying desperately to shore it up, afraid that the humans might sense weakness and attack, but things were made complicated by the disease - the medical staff of the colonies were unable to devise a cure, or even a treatment, and what pitifully small population remained on the planet were slowly vomiting themselves to death.
When the human fleet arrived in orbit, the rest of the galaxy wrote Alphari-296 off as lost.
I was there, on the surface, when the great gray ships came screaming down from the sky. Crude, inelegant things, all jagged metal and sharp edges, barely holding together. I sat there, on the balcony of the clinic full of patients that I did not have the resources or the expertise to help, and looked up with the blank, empty, numb stare of one who is certain that they are about to die.
I remember the symbols emblazoned on the sides of each ship, glaring in the sun as the ships landed inelegantly on the spaceport landing pads that had never been designed for anything so large. It was the same symbol that was painted on the helmets of every human that strode out of the ships, carrying huge black cases, their faces obscured by dark visors. It was the first flag that humans ever carried into our worlds.
It was a crude image of a human figure, rendered in simple, straight lines, with a dot for the head. It was painted in white, over a red cross.
The first human to approach me was a female, though I did not learn this until much later - it was impossible to ascertain gender through the bulky suit and the mask. But she strode up the stairs onto the balcony, carrying that black case that was nearly the size of my entire body, and paused as I stared blankly up at her. I was vaguely aware that I was witnessing history, and quite certain that I would not live to tell of it.
Then, to my amazement, she said, in halting, uncertain words, “You are the head doctor?”
I nodded.
The visor cleared. The human bared its teeth at me. I learned later that this was a “grin”, an expression of friendship and happiness among their species.
“We are The Doctors Without Borders,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “We are here to help.”
You can’t get this extremely good kind of content scrolling anywhere else.
Hey, I work fireworks now and I actually have some context for this! This particular show is pretty infamous and was brought up during my safety course, and what happened wasn’t technically a computer glitch: it was moreso human error on several levels.
So when you make a fireworks show, you can design it to be set to music and you can tell that to your show computer. There’s a setting called catch-up, which ordinarily would be activated if your show somehow became offset with the music so you don’t ruin the timing for the entire show. Additionally, as another commenter notes there are multiple barges involved in the show - each one of those ships has a computer attached that have to be enabled before the show can shoot. Normally it’s advised you don’t enable the computers until just before show time, but in this instance all the computers had been turned on early (keep in mind this big of a mistake hadn’t really happened before, so people being a bit lax isn’t terribly surprising).
Now, before you put the computers live, you can run the show program to check all your connections and make sure the timing is correct without actually firing the show. The lead supervisor on this show decided to test the last 8 seconds of the show to make sure everything would be smooth for the big finale. Remember that catch-up function? So all of the show computers were live, and they did what they had been instructed to do. They caught up to the last eight seconds. All at once.
Apologies if I got any details wrong, it has been 2 years since I did that course and this was essentially a funny anecdote for why you don’t set the show computer live early, but yeah. This was not a computer error, just a people error
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.”
I remember reading A Short History of Nearly Everything a few years ago and in his introduction the author (Bill Bryson) spoke at length about how odd it was that life developed in a flammable atmosphere. And that we are Dependent on that dangerous gas to live! How weird. He postulated that aliens coming to visit would look askance at us.
