Betty Adams's Blog

Humans are Weird - On Again Off Again  Taps-a-lot hummed happily to himself as he set the large flat rock carefully back in its place and gently released the little amphibian that tasted of confidence and irritation back to squirm under it. Above him the sound of Human Friend Ryan singing an accompaniment drifted down through the water of the straight. Tabps-a-lot took a final image of the amphibian’s micro-habitat, with the dense algae poking out of every nook and cranny, then pushed off the rock he was resting on and swam out over the deep crevice that formed the center of the narrow strip of water between the hard granite walls.
“...would you rather swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar?”
“And be better off than you are?” Taps-a-lot called back.
Ryan tried to keep a straight face but after several long moments of the colors on his face flashing with his internal struggle he burst out laughing and the stripes on his face glowed with delight.
“You are doing great Taps!” Human Friend Ryan assured him. “Your rhythm is perfect!”
“And my articulation and emotional tone?” Taps-a-lot pressed as he swam up and came to rest on the transport that floated conveniently a third of an und below the surface of the water.
Human Friend Ryan paused with his lips peeled back to reveal his only protruding bone structure for a long moment before laughing.
“Your rhythm is perfect!” Human Friend Ryan said again. “Now it is break time and it turns out that these so called waterproof boots weren’t after all.”
“That is odd,” Taps-a-lot said, nudging the flexible shields the human wore to protect the soft flesh of his feet. “They are very much praised by other humans for prolonged times of work in the narrows. All said their tootsies were toasties.”
“You probably don’t want to use that phrase in casual conversation with adults,” Human Friend Ryan pointed out as he shifted his mass to guide the transport down the narrows towards where they had left the excess of their tools. “Tootsies were toasties. That is considered baby-talk.”
“It was in official documentation,” Taps-a-lot pointed out.
“Product reviews have very different grammar standards than academic sources,” Human Friend Ryan replied as they glided up to their pile of tools. “There is even an incentive to be funny so folks are entertained by your reviews. Because outright lying would be counterproductive, using humorously inappropriate language is a frequent occurrence.”
Human Friend Ryan guided the transport right up against the edge of the narrows, then let it sink down just far enough that he could sit comfortably on the bank. Taps-a-lot checked that their samples from the day were secure in their isolation cages and then scrambled up the humans legs and back out into the grip of gravity, unalloyed by the welcoming embrace of the water. Human Friend Ryan then rotated the rest of his body up and out of the water and walked over to the rock he used as a sitting surface. Taps-a-lot saw that the shielding, the ‘boots’ were releasing water with every step.
“I hope your tootsies were not abraded due to water exposure,” Taps-a-lot said, feeling a wriggle of delight when Human Friend Ryan gave him the ‘side-eye’ humans were so famous for.
“My tootsies are not,” Human Friend Ryan confirmed as he peeled off the boots and gave them each a vigorous shake to get the water off of them. “I was wearing socks, just in case.”
“I sound that perhaps you aligned the straps incorrectly,” Taps-a-lot pointed out helpfully. “The instructions said that the thinner straps must wrap-”
“Over tab B and into slot A, yes, yes,” Human Friend Ryan muttered as he peeled off his socks, a soft, protective layer to prevent abrasion and retain warmth, and wrung the water out of them. “Now, snacks for me and rest for you.”
Taps-a-lot felt no need to argue the point and happily scrambled up beside Human Friend Ryan to rest in the sunlight and maybe absorb a few dropped crumbs. Of course if he asked Human Friend Ryan would give him a whole snack of his own, but the dry travel snacks the humans seemed to prefer were best absorbed in small quantities when on the land. Once Human Friend Ryan was thoroughly rested and snacked he stood up and gave a long stretch. Taps-a-lot mimicked the gesture. Human Friend Ryan’s face lit with a smile, and then darkened with genuine distress as the human looked at his socks on the rock beside him.
“What wrong?” Taps-a-lot asked in concern, shuffling over to examine the socks.
“I forgot to bring a spare pair of socks,” Human Friend Ryan said, a deep groaning sound in his voice and colors of stress washing over his stripes.
“Why that a concern?” Taps-a-lot asked, nudging the socks with his gripping appendage. “These dry.”
“Remember your helping verbs Taps,” Human Friend Ryan said with a sigh as he bent to pick up the socks. “They might be dry, but they’re crusty now.”
“Crusty is?” Taps-a-lot asked.
“If you don’t mind touching my crusty socks feel for yourself,” Human Friend Ryan said, holding out a sock.
“I feel,” Taps-a-lot agreed as he turned the sock over in his appendages. “It does have a different feel than in the before time when I felt it.”
Human Friend Ryan took the sock and as he slid it over his bare foot his skin flushed with disgust.
“This is more unpleasant than when you were standing in water for several hours?” Taps-a-lot asked.
“No?” Human Friend Ryan said as he put both socked feet into his boots, this time being careful to attach the straps carefully.
“You are not confident, that was a state of being verb, not a helping verb,” Taps-a-lot pointed out.
Human Friend Ryan snorted with laughter and his colors started to even out.
“It’s not worse than before,” Human Friend Ryan said, “but before I was used to it. Once you aren’t used to crusty socks, or wet socks, it’s way worse putting them on than keeping them on.”
Taps-a-lot sounded those thoughts out as they moved back towards the water.


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Humans are Weird - Sneaky   “This is a vine you can grab,” First Father was saying to the human female beside him while gently patting her hand.
Gathers in the Gloaming rustled a nearby communication heap to let the pair of sapients know another awareness was active in this area and blearily tried to figure out what had called attention here. It was unusual for the local First Father to come this far from his hive, but there had been a deep friendship maturing between the human settlement and the Shatar hive for several generations. The two spaces were connected by a network of tall vineyards that gave Gathers in the Gloaming a rich source of sugars as well as deep shade where sensory appendages could lift out of the soil without fear of solar radiation damage. The vineyard corridors also allowed the small male Shatar to visit with confidence of safety, so First Father’s general presence was hardly surprising enough to draw attention.
Gathers in the Gloaming tasted the air and the tang of human stress pheromones manifested. Now rather interested Gathers in the Gloaming turned attention to visual information, debating a moment between exposing photosensitive fibers or simply using the local leaves. Deciding that precision was important Gathers in the Gloaming extended enough photosensitive fibers to bring the mobile sapients into focus.
The human, a younger but breeding age female was standing with her muscles tense staring with grim determination towards the arrival area for the settlement. The Shatar male, who barely came up past the human’s knees was continuing to speak and touching the human with soft, reassuring gestures. Gathers in the Gloaming noted that most of the phrases were reassurances that the human had high status associated with successful reproduction, and that she had a duty to protect her offspring. Gathers in the Gloaming was about to ask to join the conversation with a transport pulled up to the arrival area and the human female flexed her limbs and pulled away from the Shatar.
“You got this! As you mammals say,” the Shatar male said with a final pat of the human’s hand.
She grimaced down at the bright green Shatar and strode towards the transport, which was releasing several elderly humans, with determination.
“Did you wish to speak to me Gathers in the Gloaming?” First Father asked, angling his triangular head at the communication heap.
Gathers in the Gloaming hummed in confirmation as the tendrils of thought coiled around the question building.
“Who is Human Liea going to confront?” Gathers in the Gloaming asked.
First Father gave a wordless click and reached up to stroke an antenna in a thoughtful preening gesture before replying.
“Can’t you identify the arrivals on your own?” the Shatar asked, his pheromones tasting of mild amusement and perplexity.
“The arrivals are Human Liea’s First Father and Second Mother as well as several of her more distant relatives,” Gathers in the Gloaming confirmed. “I wished to know which of them Human Leia has a conflict with.”
First Father gave a click of amusement and turned to begin trotting towards the vineyard corridor where a small cluster of his mate’s sisters were waiting for him. As he moved he spoke.
“Before I tell you you must promise not to interfere. This is not something one can understand without the benefit of having both hatchlings of your own and present Grandmothers and Grandfathers.”
“I assume I can be trusted not to interfere having been given such a warning,” Gathers in the Gloaming assured him.
“Very well then,” First Father said. “Human First Mother Leia is preparing to restrict the amount of treats Human First Grandfather can give First Sister.”
First Father seemed to think this an ample explanation and continued towards his mate’s Sisters. Gathers in the Gloaming framed another question.
“Human Leia was releasing many stress pheromones, does she expect her...Human First Grandfather to defy her wishes and continue supplying Human First Sister with these treats?”
“I suppose,” First Father said, pausing to angle an eye back towards where the humans were greeting each other, “that depends on how well this confrontation goes, and how ‘sneaky’ was the word she used, Human First Godfather turns out to be.”
“I understand that you are suggesting that Human First Grandfather is going to attempt to subvert Human First Mother Leia’s attempts to maintain her child’s diet. However I do not understand the stress she is experiencing,” Gathers in the Gloaming admitted as First Father resumed his walk. “Is it likely that a Grandfather would do something that would cause harm to his own genetic branching?”
First Father gave a click of amusement.
“It is not about harm,” he said with a dismissive flick of his antenna. “It is, what is the word Second Aunt used? Social authority! When a Grandfather or Grandmother isn’t pulling the same vine as the Father, or I suppose the Mother in this case, it can make the hive unnecessarily tangled, but don’t worry about Human First Mother Leia, she might be small for a human but she has a stance to her hind legs that would surprise you for all that. This is just a natural grove in the garden of life.”
First Father reached the Sisters and they began chattering with him about his visit.
Gathers in the Gloaming followed their conversation with mild interest. If understanding was growing correctly First Father was suggesting that not only was there some sort of social competition between human generation for social control of developing offspring, but the concept was similar enough for the Shatar to not only sympathize but to offer useful advice and support.
That still left the question, what possible underlying harm could there be in a Grandfather, covertly or not, gifting too many treats?  
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Humans are Weird - Flats ​Sift gently held the ‘tart’, a tangy thing with lots of citrus, between her teeth and nudged it with her tongue. On the floor in front of her the small human was ‘chasing’ the family pet around the human dwelling. Most human snacks were distressingly soft, lasing only moments if you gave them any kind of bite at all and this one was no exception. So Sift divided her attention between not crushing the pastry and grunting out encouragements to the small human who had only just managed to get all four limbs to work together enough to crawl.
Mary, the human’s mother was busy rearranging the seasonal decorations that represented the current state of the majority of the domestic plants in the colony. The general trend Sift had seen so far was a change from bright yellows and greens to a more subdued soil and orange color pattern. At the moment Mary was crooning a song all about the ‘harvest moon’ while arranging some flowers in a vase.
The human had prepared a confined space for her child that was essentially a hyper clean scoop. The floor was flat and smooth and Mary was constantly examining it for any small thing the child might put in its mouth. Just now the little one ‘caught’ the animal began squeezing its face. The animal wrinkled in annoyance. Sift was about to warn Mary of the behavior but the animal took the situation into its own paws and leapt over the short fence Mary used to isolate the space. The little human sat up and watched the animal retreat with a wide, toothless grin. Mary laughed softly letting Sift know she had been watching.
The last of the tart dissolved and Sift smacked her teeth appreciatively.
“Would you like another lemon tart Sift?” Mary asked, already stepping towards the refrigeration unit.
“If you insist,” Sift demure. The human expression really was exactly right for accepting more treats.
“I do!” Mary replied opening the refrigeration unit.
However before she could isolate one of the tarts a horrific shriek of pain came from the isolation area. Sift snapped her head around but knew that she could never make it over the fence in time to offer aid. Mary however, had already set the container of tarts down beside her with a thump, and had stepped over the fence as if it wasn’t there. Those long legs did come in useful now and then. Sift mused and the human snatched up her child.
Oddly Sift could see nothing wrong. The child was in exactly the same position he had been the moment before. On it’s knees staring after the retreated pet. Even Mary seemed perplexed by her offspring's sudden distress. She was turning the baby this way and that,thitched mammalian cries were difficult to interpret. Finally the little one gave a sad little coo, and dropped his round, round head against Mary’s shoulder. Mary gave the flat, open surface of the floor a perplexed look and set the child back down. Seeing that the human was now mentally out of the fermentation vat Sift waved her tail for attention.
“Any theories on what caused your little soft-scale’s distress?” Sift asked.
“I was hoping you saw something,” Mary admitted, pushing her hair back from her face with a rueful smile.
“I did not,” Sift admitted. “I am sorry. I am being a bad hatchling guest.”
“No. no.” Mary said with a laugh. “Kiddo was on a soft, flat, clean surface. It should have been fine to look away a moment.”
“And yet you feel guilty,” Sift pointed out, more of an educated guess than an observation. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Mary’s skin flushed red and she laughed before letting her body suddenly fold down into a chair with a gusty sigh.
“How do fresh humans manage to hurt themselves on, on nothing?” Mary demanded.
“I have no answer,” Sift replied, as the last pit of tart dissolved on her tongue. “My littlest brother would never have hurt himself on such a surface, however give him a nice smooth gravel scoop?”
She clacked her teeth in exasperation at recalling how the supposedly ‘safe’ scoop she had prepared had failed the soft little hatchling.
“He still has that mysterious scar.”
Mary gave her a grateful smile and Sift watched the now happy infant scrambling across the floor.
“A universal mystery,” Sift declared, “may I have another tart?”

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Humans are Weird - Tops ​Twenty-Trills cinched her carry pack a little tighter to her ribcage as her foot-claws dug around in her bag and her wingmates jostled and bumped around her in their excitement to get started. One, two, three, four, five regulation sized packs of saline solution; each containing enough individual doses to clean out the eyes of every deployed member of her wing. This was in addition to the ones stored in the massive transport the humans were allowing them to travel in, but those were under the wings of the quartermaster and she wouldn’t be able to get access to them until they reached the site of their destroyed camp. The weight they added to her carry pack was substantial, but she would be able to rest in the transport much of the way.
Her final survey done, she spread her wings and darted up, and up, past the highest scouts, until she could see past the first barrier of mountains that had shielded the main Survey Ranger Corps base from what she had learned was a volcanic eruption. The massive clouds of ash, smoke, and just straight down rocks had cleared, all the material falling back to the ground where it belonged, but a thin wisp of steam, no doubt super heated by the pulsing, almost living rock of the planet, still drifted up into the blue sky. Twenty-Trills hissed at it as her flight bulged up under her, about half of the flight starting to follow her up, before getting distracted and drifting back down. Eventually only the wing-commander made it to her elevation in the cold, morning air.
“Anything to report medic?” He asked briskly, his thinning fur puffed against the temperature.
“Nothing new,” she replied, “just that.”
He stared grimly at the evidence of the planet misbehaving and then shook himself.
“The geologists say the dangerous portion of the eruption is over,” he commented.
What he might have said further was interrupted by a resounding metallic gong. Below them the three humans who would be escorting them back to their camp were tossing their massive carry packs into the now empty cargo compartment of the transport. The gong had been the male setting his personal water container, which not only could have held all of Twenty-Trills’s saline solution but herself as well, on top of the transport.
The wing-commander trilled out the order to board and the flight rushed down and poured through the door the human male had just opened, causing him to jump away from the cab of the transport with a deep, booming yelp. The two human females who had already loaded in joined in the amused chittering at his reaction as they all secured the restraints necessary for a transport with an internal combustion engine, no real momentum absorption technology, and velocity capacity that made the base safety officer loose his fur at an accelerated rate. The human male was the last to load after doing a final check of the outer latch points for the small amount of cargo they were carrying out, mostly water and digging tools. He slung himself into an outer seat and the elder female started the engine and set the vehicle moving . Twenty-Trills heard the metal water container shift on the roof above them through the insulation on the inside of the transport.
“Is it a magnetic lock?” She asked.
However, the human didn’t notice the question and she gave an irritated chitter at her mistake. She dug a roll of white tape out of her bag and attached it to one wing hook and began waving it vigorously. The younger human female noticed first, tracked her line of sight, and nudged the male with her elbow. The male turned and smiled at Twenty-Trills.
“’Sup Doc?” he asked.
“Oh, I have nothing associated with my professional position to ask,” she assured him. “It’s purely a matter of curiosity. Was it magnetic attachments? Because the weight of the water doesn’t seem enough to warp the roof but-”
“Is what magnetic?” he asked.
“The attachment point for your personal water container-”
At that point the human male’s hand reached for the round slot in the door and finding nothing there his face flushed with horror.
“Carrie,” he said, turning an urgent look on the elder female, “slow-”
The transport reached a corner and the cab resounded with a massive gong sound as the water container tumbled onto its cylindrical side and the shot past the window, impacting on the ground and breaking into three parts, releasing its water into the soil of the road. The human male yelped and the transport surged to a stop. He leapt out and gathered up the pieces while the flight chattered around Twenty-Trills, waiting to see if this was harmless enough to be counted amusement. From the wide grins on the females faces it was and though the male did not look happy when he resumed his seat, his pheromone profile was not scenting of stress.
“No,” he said addressing Twenty-Trills as the transport resumed moving. “It wasn’t attached magnetically.”
“Then why did you leave it up there?” demanded a voice from behind Twenty-Trills.
“For your entertainment!” Called out the clearly amused elder female. The flight chittered in amusement at the clear joke as the male strained to reassemble the container and Twenty-Trills settled down to ponder. Why had the human left his water container on top of the transport.




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 Humans are Weird – Kraut  “And what exactly do you expect to pull out of this exercise?” Base Director Tapsself asked, his appendages slumping with fatigue and irritation.
“A league deep overview of the situation,” Probesalong said quickly, hoping he wasn’t presenting his idea too quickly, that it wasn’t too obvious that this was a desperate last clutch. “It is an idea I got from human friend Zhang Wei-”
“Of course this drifted down from a human,” Tapsself said in subdued gestures.
Probesalong chose to ignore the inturption.
“The idea is that you arrange all of the data in a visual format by creating a visual map,” Probesalong stated.
“And you want to use the primary base entertainment pool for this,” Tapsself said, shifting his appendages into a more professional shape. “You want to take up half a day while the pool could be being used by pods wanting to educate their young, entertain hard working rangers with limited recreation time, or even, perhaps, bring in resources for the base as it was originally intended to do?”
His speech done,Tapsself arranged his appendages in the loose arches that indicated that the questions were far more rhetorical than anything else. Probesalong considered his answer options. He had already laid out the importance of solving the mystery. A base wide infection of particularly virulent bacteria that seemed to spawn and re-spawn out of some mysterious deeps no matter how many times the eradicated it was more than justification for taking up an entertainment pool for however long was needed, but Probesalong had already made that case. So he kept his response to one simple gesture.
“Yes?”
Tapsself let a ripple of exasperation flow down his body and reached into a storage compartment beside his working pool. Probesalong could not contain a wriggle of delighted relief as Tapsself pulled out the pool-stone key and tossed it down in-between them.
“I hope to see results from this unorthodox methodology,” he said with a stern set to his appendages.
Then he slumped down against the floor of his working pool.
“The documentation for this is going to take days to format either way,” he said, presumably to himself as Probesalong snatched up the pool-stone key and scrambled out of the room.
He met Dragsafter in the waiting pool outside and waved the pool-stone key triumphantly. His assistant didn’t respond with words but his appendages danced over the bed of the stream with delight. Using the large entertainment pool to create a visible map of the mysterious pathogen’s spread had been mostly the assistant’s idea.
It was a fairly long swim to the entertainment pool and when they reached it a small pod of families was bouncing out with their little ones. The small ones were gesturing wildly about some apparently terrifying animal they had been learning about. Some creature with a ‘mouth’ like humans, but a mouth big enough that it carried its own small ones in it. Probesalong and Dragsafter swam up and clung to an overhead arch while the happy, chaotic little mob passed below them. Giving friendly gestures to the small ones who noted them there. It took several minutes to convince the clerk in charge of the entertainment pool’s schedule that they did in fact have official orders to use the pool for what they needed but soon they were passing through the membrane into the carefully controlled density of the inner fluid. The familiar taste of the salts and sugars used to maintain the density necessary to allow an Undulate’s mass to float in the center of the space, with the screens playing out all around them touched their appendages and the wriggled through the mix to the optimum viewing spot.
“Human Friend Zhang Wei say that human entertainment spaces are much larger,” Dragsafter commented as he touched his data-stone to the pool-stone key. “Their eyes are most comfortable with the story images at a significant distance from them.”
“They also prefer far less fluid in their environments,” Probesalong agreed in the spirit of friendly conversation as the surfaces around them rippled, and changed to a dim coral color representation a highly stylized interior map of the base with transparent walls just barely visible.
Dragsafter set the playback of their collected data to begin from several weeks ago and a brilliant splash of contrasting color spawned in a stream on the north end of the base.
“That was the first recorded contamination,” Dragsafter observed.
The initial color faded, representing the healthy micorfauna of their base fighting off the intruding bacteria. Slowly at first, and then more quickly, the colors began appearing in different places, growing denser and more frequent as they had actually started actively looking for contamination. Quickly, there was only a few weeks of data after all the playback reached the current time and ended. They both knew that there was little chance of noting anything of importance on the first attempt but Probesalong couldn’t help but notice the disappointed set to Dragsafter’s appendages as he set it to replay.
“We have half a day,” Probesalong pointed out. “We didn’t expect this to go quickly.”
They watched the patterns play out several times when the pool membrane shivered and the pool clerk swam in carrying his meal, a nice, thready green algae, with him. He swam up to a polite distance that neither invited, nor discouraged conversation and spread the appendages he wasn’t using to eat to curiously observe the display. Dragsafter angled his appendages facing away from the clerk to ask if he should send the clerk away but Probesalong responded with a negative. There was no reason to keep this secret and if the clerk was entertained why not let him watch? They were on the fourth replay the clerk had seen, and the algae he had eaten was clearly drained of any taste when the clerk gave himself a shake and commented with amusement in his appendages.
“The human did it,” with that cryptic reply the clerk began to swim back towards the exit membrane.
“I am sorry, what?” Probesalong demanded, after his surprise had passed.
“The human did it,” the clerk repeated. “Whatever this game is-”
“It’s not a game!” Dragsafter snapped out. “This is serious forensic-”
Probesalong gestures for him to hold his appendages still.
“How do you conclude that from this data?”
“Well,” the clerk said, swimming back to the center of the pool. “I watch a lot of visual representations, so I have gotten good at spotting visual patterns. I think you will see it better if...do you think you could only show the contaminate marks on solid, above water surfaces?”
Dragsafter seemed a little affronted but Prodsalong gestured for him to do it.
“Now show, the part where, well, any part in the middle of the timelapse would work,” the clerk said.
Dragsafter set the display to such a time and they absorbed the lights around them.
“Do you see?” the clerk asked.
Prodsalong gave a slow gesture of conditional understanding. The majority of the contamination marks above water were in the distinctive shape of human appendage ends, with the wide, flat center and five sub-appendages. Both the longer ‘feet’ and the rounder ‘hands’ were distinctly discernible.
“But that doesn’t mean anything!” Dragsafter protested. “Or, it only just means that Human Friend Zhang Wei touched the contaminate at some point!”
“Yes,” agreed the clerk, “but look at the intensity patterns. Not only are his handprints the greatest concentration of growth, the most intense concentrations are closest to his personal pool. Or am I reading the color gradients and their meanings wrong?”
Dragsafter hesitated, but gestured agreement. Prodsalong could also see the truth in the statement. With the water-born contaminants removed the source of the contamination was clear.
“Now you can swim off and consult Human Friend Zhang Wie and leave my entertainment pool to the next pod who originally had it reserved!” the clerk said cheerfully, before swimming out through the membrane.
Dragsafter grumbled a bit but removed his data-stone from the control-stone and the surfaces rippled back to the standby state. It was a fairly long swim up to the human level where Human Friend Zhang Wei rested, but fortunately the human was in. They ‘knocked’ on his door, an auditory way of asking to enter a human’s personal pool that was particularly suited to Undulate appendage strengths and were greeted with delight by their friend.
“Welcome! Welcome!” the human called out, bending down to scoop them both up in his arms. “I just finished lunch but-”
“Things in the Deeps!” Dragsafter yelped out, stiffening every appendage so fast that he nearly dropped the sensor he had prepared.
“Language Friend Dragon,” Human Friend Zhang Wei said with mild amusement in his appendages as he wrestled with the stiff Undulate to prevent dropping them both. “What distresses you so much?”
“You are covered in bacteria!” Dragsafter declared waving the sensor.
“Uh-huh…” Human Friend Zhang Wei angled his eyes at Prodsalong and the older Undulate couldn’t help a small wriggle of amusement.
“Perhaps you should indicated to our friend how this situation differs from his usual ambient microbial microfauna situation,” he pointed out as Human Friend Zhang Wei set them down on a large piece of furniture.
“It’s bad bacteria!” Dragsafter exclaimed, grabbing onto the human’s hand and repeatedly prodding it with the sensor. “From this planet! Not your pet Earth microbes. This is localized contamination to your hands, and … and sweet starlight! It’s in your mouth!”
“Slow down Friend Dragon,” Human Friend Zhang Wei said in gentle tones, “are you talking about that pathogen you’ve been chasing for weeks. We already knew the humans on base were contaminated. It’s not been anything our T-cells couldn’t take. So what’s-”
“I think the concentration is the issue,” Prodsalong explained before Dragsafter could interject again.
Dragsafter held up his data-stone which displayed the readings he was getting and Human Friend Zhang Wei gave a long ‘whistle’, a high-pitched wordless sound humans seemed to use for emotional emphasis.
“Would you look at that!” he said. “I am contaminated. How’d that happen I wonder?”
Dragsafter was waving the sensor around and suddenly scrambled towards what appeared to be an ornamental stone jar just about large enough to hold an Undulate in a compressed mood. Dragsafter waved the sensor over it and recoiled in horror.
“It is in your food supply!” Dragsafter exclaimed! “We’ll have to incinerate the lot!”
“Yu! Yu!” Human Friend Zhang Wie exclaimed, snatching Dragsafter up and pulling him away from the jar. “Is your sensor working? I have been eating out of that for weeks and I am fine!”
“For how long have you been eating the contents of that container?” Prodsalong asked.
“Since…” Human Friend Zhang Wei frowned and gave an uneasy glance at the jar even as he wrested with Dragsafter. “Since right around the time you started reporting finding the contaminant.” He admitted.
“Where did you get this food?” Prodsalong asked, scrambling up to the stone container.
“I didn’t get it,” Human Friend Zhang Wei said. “I made it. It is an old recipe, suan cai, or I think the more common term is sauerkraut? My ancestors have made this for hundreds of generations. It was never a problem….”
“And how is it made?” Prodsalong asked as Dragsafter escaped Human Friend Zhang Wei’s grip and began coating the container in a sealing foam.
“It’s fermented mustard greens,” Human Friend Zhang Wei said looking sadly at his stone container. “I had the hardest time getting it to start fermenting too. The cultures just wouldn’t seem to take on the base.”
“How did you finally get the fermentation process to start?” Prodsalong asked as he begin entering the hazardous materials data.
Human Friend Zhang Wei did not respond with human words but writhed in a way that communicated regret, guilt, and deep embarrassment.
“How did you get the fermentation process to start? Prodsalong asked with growing exasperation.
“I took the jar outside during the inoculation phase,” Human Friend Zhang Wei said quietly.
There was a moment of quiet in the room as the two Undulates absorbed that.
“So you deliberately took a food item out of the base’s known safe micro-ecosystem and courted an unknown alien bacteria, so you could have a food source,” Prodsalong said slowly.
Human Friend Zhang Wei reached a hand up to rub the back of his neck.
“It sounds kind of mad when you put it like that,” he admitted.
“Are your nutrient needs not being met?” Dragsafter demanded, concerned for his friend now that the source of the contaminant was contained. “Do we need to talk to the synthesizer for more nutrients?”
“No, no!” Human Friend Zhang Wei insisted, raising his hands defensively. “I wasn’t craving suan cai or anything like that. I don’t even like it that much.”
“Then why did you even start the fermenting process?” Dragsafter demanded. “Let alone risk your life to continue it?”
Human Friend Zhang Wei shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that indicated a personal lack of understanding.
“It was fun,” he said. “I like growing things.”
“I too like growing things,” Dragsafter said as he attached a flotation pod to the stone container, now thoroughly covered in containment foam. “And if eating the result is not the end goal I can gift you a cutting of my golden colony?”
“You would do that?” Human Friend Zhang Wei asked, his face wrinkling with delight.
“I would be delighted to,” Dragsafter replied. “You can even grow it in this same jar if you like after it is decontaminated. Help me get it to the nearest transport stream on your way to the medical pool?”
“Sure I’ll help you,” Human Friend Zhang Wei said, lifting the jar easily in one hand, “but I’m not going to the-”
“Yes you are,” interject Prodsalong grimly. “You may go now, or you may wait for the base director to order it, but you and your gut full of alien bacteria are going to the medical pool.”
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Humans are Weird - Circulation ​ The strange human music pulsed through the dense air as Survey Corps Ranger Cest’kk carefully arranged the one-thousand seven-hundredth forty-fifth aquatic invertebrate specimen on the display slide with his claw tips and set the slide cover over the still wriggling creature with a satisfying click. The electromagnetic stasis field activated perfectly this time, freezing the creature in place, and Cest’kk felt every limb relax a little and even begin tapping in time to the human music. Really, the slides had worked very well today over all, but when one was processing hundreds of specimens, even a less than one percent failure rate grew agitating.
Cest’kk took a moment to flex one paw at a time, working stuffiness out of his joints. Behind him Survey Core Ranger Robberrtss was whistling a tune while resetting the traps. Due to the local sun shining down with no clouds for the first time this trip, the human had shed most of his uniform, trusting to his own robust immune system to protect him from the microscopic inhabitants of the stream they were surveying. Cest’kk certainly had opinions about that, but Robberrtss was well past mental maturity for his species and his actions were not directly against regulations.
“Some human or the other is going to be the first to catch whatever this ecosystem can throw at us,” Robberrtss had said when Cest’kk had brought up unknown parasites in the water that was still being surveyed. “Might as well be me as anyone else!”
The courage of the sentiment was unquestionable, the sense of it...Cest’kk shrugged a few legs and resumed his work. He finished the slides well before the local sun dipped below the horizon and called Robberrtss over to help load the air-cart. In addition to the rack of slides preserving the live invertebrates Robberrts had several ‘cool rocks’ to send back to the geologists at the main base and a ‘goop thing’ that didn’t seem to have any cells but didn’t quite seem abiotic either. A quick calculation showed that there was not nearly enough weight capacity for all the specimens and Robberrtss spent no little time culling the ‘cool rock’ collection before they could send the air-cart back to base and return to their own camp. However eventually he did finish, shoving the remaining ‘cook rocks’ into the pockets of the small clothing item he had chosen to wear. He held out his hands to Cest’kk who had just finished repacking his satchel with his tools.
“Ally’oop lil’ buddy!” Robberrtss called out.
Cest’kk gratefully leapt up into the offered hand, and clicked his mandibles so hard he felt a spark of pain in their joints.
“What’s wrong Cesty?” Robberrtss asked as Cest’kk scrambled off of the human’s hand and up his arm.
Normally Cest’kk was very, very mindful of the damage his claws could do to the human’s outer membrane, and he was glad to note that no blood dripped from the places he secured his grip on the mammal on the way up.
“What is wrong with your hands?” Cest’kk demanded once he reached the marginally more comfortable shoulder, however the effect was noticeable there as well, only the skin around the head and neck seemed unaffected.
“What?” Robberrtss asked, raising his hands into his narrow field of vision. “My hands are fine.”
“They have dropped, ten maybe twenty percent in temperature!” Cest’kk exclaimed shifting his satchel to a better position to be able to gesture at the human. “I know how mammals work! That is not good!”
Robberrtss gave a huff of laughter and set his eyes roiling around in their sockets, a thing he must know disturbed Cest’kk to no end.
“I am fine Cesty,” the human said firmly, beginning to walk back towards the bank and their camp. “When a human in in the water the body just draws all the heat into the core. My body as a whole has plenty of heat, it’s just that my hands aren’t a priority at the moment.”
Cest’kk dug through his satchel and pulled out a bioreader. Robberrtss heaved a sigh of exasperation but held out the relevant body part, the joint where his hand met his arm, for Cest’kk to get the reading.
“See Cesty?” Robberrtss said in a tone humans used to patronize others. “The temp is just…”
Robberrtss voice trailed off as he looked at the display.
“Okay,” the human said slowly, “yeah, no, yeah, that is maybe,not the best number to see there.”
“How are you even vertical?” Cest’kk demanded. “According to this you should be non-responsive!”
“Eh,” the human said shrugging his shoulders before scrambling up the bank. “Different strokes for different humans.”
“Stroke?” Cest’kk exclaimed, frantically reaching for his tablet and its list of human medical terms. “I need to observe you for a...that was a bad medical word wasn’t it? Let me pull up-”
“Common word, two meanings!” Robberrtss said laughing. “I just meant I am a little tougher when it comes to changes in body temp than the, let’s call it a ‘textbook’ human. Look, I am clearly vertical and responsive as you said. Now let’s get back to camp and I promise I’ll seal myself up in my sleeping bag.”
“Is that the suggested medical intervention?” Cest’kk demanded.
He wasn’t a mammal expert but he was pretty sure he remembered from his first aid training that once their temperature dipped too low they needed intervention to bring it up again.
“No medical intervention is necessary,” Robberrtss insisted, “I’ll just eat some quick digesting food and let my metabolism and the sleeping bag do its thing, but hey, if it makes you happy I’ll hook up the water pump feature and put the bag in hot-soak mode. Yeah, that’ll feel real good and get me toasty quick.”
“That sounds acceptable,” Cest’kk agreed.
It did sound like what they had gone over in the first aid training.
“And you know what they say,” Robberrtss said, twisting his face into the shape that usually indicated an attempt at a joke was coming. “Cold hands warm heart!”
“If you collapse before we can return to our camp I do not see what temporarily preserving your internal organ temperature will do for your survival chances,” Cest’kk snapped.
Robberrtss rolled his eyes again and gave a low chuckle, as if to make up for Cest’kk’s lack of amusement as the returned to their camp. Author Betty Adams Books
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​Humans are Weird - Bittersweet  Human First Mother Maria breathed a soft sigh and dipped her lips, those strangely flexible mandible covers, down to press them into the very, very round cheek’s of her First Brother. The way both humans’ outer membranes flexed and indented at the pressure still made First Father’s antenna curl with lingering shock, but at least their pheromones were natural and easy to interpret even if their more solid parts weren’t. First Father gave an approving click and reached up to carefully run his wooden tending brush down the egg pod in front of him. The precious little one within gave a responsive wriggle and Human First Mother Maria lifted her head as her face contorted into a smile that expressed delight.
“Do you know if it is a boy or girl yet?” she asked.
First Father hesitated at the odd question, and then reminded himself that human young entered their hives in nearly identical ratios, in fact he mused, he thought he’d heard from a visiting statistician they actually had a very small sway towards male offspring at birth.
“It is almost certainly a Daughter,” he said, “for whatever reason, it was explained to me when I was small, it is almost unheard of for a Brother to be the first to hatch from a line. Something about how pheromones flow during the first seasons of mating.”
The human bobbed her head up and down in that oddly jointed way humans did to show understanding.
“I bet you can’t wait to get her out of that pod so you can properly cuddle her,” the human First Mother said, her bifocal eyes directed at her own little one. “I was so very ready for Dickky by the time he made his entrance!”
First Father clicked in amusement. “It is, not quite the same,” he explained, reached up to caress the pod with his fingers. “See how the outer membrane of the pod is translucent now, nearly transparent. If I can’t quite see my Daughter yet, I can taste her pheromones, hear her clicking. This stage is probably more akin to the newborn stage you were telling me of. Recall that when she leaves the pod this little one will be able to walk.”
“Oh!” the human said, clearly pondering that even as her arms wrestled with the very, very round little male she held.
“As to how I will feel,” First Father mused, working his mandibles together thoughtfully, “I truly don’t think I will be disappointed. There is so much more to do with a walking Daughter than one who is still on the vine. That will be wonderful, but then I will have to share her with my mate’s Sisters, and her Mother and Father. There is an intimacy, perhaps a selfish one to this stage that I think I will miss.”
The human nodded more slowly this time.
“I understand,” she said in deeper, slower tones. “I was bathing with little Dickky the other day, and it occurred to me that, well, that time would steal this from me, that I wouldn’t be able to be so close to him as a child as I was as a baby. That made me sad.”
Here pheromones dipped into something bittersweet, before abruptly washing out with hot joy even as her face contorted to show her teeth, gleaming like some white metal.
“Then I remember that when he is bigger I get to give him incendiary devices! And we can make small rockets together!”
The human infant made a happy noise in response to his mother’s energy and First Father took the time she was distracted to make a note on a nearby tablet. Apparently restricting the introduction of incendiary devices as play things was something his hive would have to consider in dealing with their new neighbors. He supposed that must be one of the many strange results of leaving the care of infants to the female of the species.  
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​ Humans are Weird – Fixedness  Chief Engineer Awes adjusted the satchel on his back and took a deep steadying breath before he thumped the door in front of him. His heart was thumping with nervous energy as he geared himself up for the confrontation he knew was coming. The idle thought that humans slightly different heart structure, more compartmentalized, more efficient still gave them this same sensation when nervous made him gurgle with amusement for some reason. With a final shake of his hips to clear his mind he swung his tail against the door.
“Come in,” called the muffled voice of Director Polepost.
Awes stomped through the door and immediately started talking.
“We must polarize the ends of the physical drive shafts. I know that this goes against centuries, no, millennia of design theory. I know it will limit general usefulness, but remember that all of those millennia were developing without-”
“Awes!” Director Polepost barked out, glaring at him from over the physical display screen in front of his face.
Awes snapped his jaws shut and slumped, clutching his tablet in front of him.
“May I point out that you have sent me the full argument for this change in text and audio form no less than seven times?” Director Polepost said, running his tongue over his teeth in a clear sign of irritation.
Awes grunted in acknowledgment and scuffed his hind-paws on the floor.
Director Polepost sighed and pressed the talons of his fore-paws together, peering at Awes with a thoughtful set to his long jaws.
“On of the main principles of our design work here,” Polepost said with slow deliberateness, “is based on the fact that our equipment goes out to colonial worlds. This equipment needs to be as flexible as possible. There is no knowing how it may need to be used, to be refitted. It was my own great-great-grand-sire who set out the formal decree that it was criminal, nay reprehensible to deliberately limit the usefulness of any given tool manufactured for the colonies.”
Awes gritted his teeth and let Polepost speak, once he brought his family history into the equation there was no stopping him.
“It is our purpose to provide for those brave explorers the tools that they lack the complex infrastructure to craft for themselves.”
Awes let his attention wander to counting the grains in the mural behind Polepost’s head. When the director had finally wound down from the wind-gust of family pride driving the sails of his mental mill, Awes held up his tablet and showed the video he had qued up on it before he had entered the room. A human male, about a quarter of the way through his life-cycle, had – with his bare hands – bent a drive shaft double and attached it from one outlet to another on the same mill. He could be heard chuckling in amusement as he filmed turning the mill on. The sounds that filled the office from the outputs on the tablet were truly horrific. First the grinding of the mills as the counter force tore it apart, and then the frantic cursing of the humans as his ‘brilliant idea’ sent fragments of shrapnel flying out to strike the camera. Awes stopped the replay there and glared over at Director Polepost who was staring at him with slack-jawed shock. Awes let the silence fill the room.
“Why...why did you not send me that recording with your original arguments?” Polepost gurgled out.
“Because I only received it from colony Beta-five this morning with the daily data stream,” Awes snapped out. “My arguments were previously based only on theoretical possibilities.”
Polepost gulped and shook his head.
“Was the human, as they say, chemically inhibited?” he asked uneasily.
“He was sober as a judge, as they say,” Awes growled.
“They why…” Director Polepost asked, waving his tail in confusion.
“Who knows?” Awes barked out. “Maybe sleep deprivation, maybe the human didn’t have enough threats in his environment, maybe the human somehow knew just enough to know how to do this without knowing how bad an idea this was-”
“Did anyone die as a result of this?” Director Polepost asked in horrified tones.
“No, thank the grist,” Awes muttered. “The human at least had sense enough to try this in the off hours.”
“I think…” Director Polepost hesitated
“That we should at least consider polarizing the physical design of the drive shafts?” Awes demanded.
“How would you even-” Director Polepost muttered. “They are drive shafts?”
“I propose a chiral system of end linkages,” Awes stated, cheerful now that he sensed an opening. Despite the chaos humans seemed to be causing in the mixed colonies their over-spill of destruction frequently made for very effective illustrations.


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 Humans are Weird – Fer Sure Fer Sure  Direct solar radiation had been beating down on this part of the planet for weeks. The ground-cover plants had let their surface biomass largely desiccate except in the places where the ground water was close to the surface. Below the surface their roots greedily hoarded the precious liquid. The lager trees keep their stoma tightly closed during the day, limiting Notes the Passing Changes sense of smell. Many of the motile creatures had altered their habbits, moving only in the cool dawn or dusk, spending the hours of most direct radiation exposure sprawled out in shade panting and gasping. Polinating insects hid in their underground burrows, vibrating in an effort to keep them cool. Human and Shatar gardeners alike were stalking their cultivated lands, altering watering schedules as seemed best. The Shatar were shedding patches of desiccated outer membrane flavoring the duff with their waxy taste. The humans had taken to flinging themselves into whatever body of water was available without hesitation.
Notes the Passing Changes had noted with renewed curiosity that all of this led to increased conflict; conflict between species, conflict across species, and perhaps most oddly, internal conflict within each individual. Curiosity about this last was why Notes the Passing Changes had sent a reminder through the fibers to focus on situations where lone humans began displaying aggression. The results had been fascinating, but far more data was needed before any conclusions could be drawn.
Just as the temperature was beginning to lessen as the local star dipped towards the horizon fibers near the kennels detected soft cursing and the presence of one human. Notes the Passing Changes eagerly let awareness flow to the site, but was disappointed when more detailed examination revealed that the issue was a genuine danger rather than heat induced internal frustration. Still, it would be both impolite and immoral to ignore a human in danger.
“Farmer Kaya?” Notes the Passing Changes vocalized. “Do you require assistance?”
The woman let out a short profanity before saying, “Yes! Thank you. Call Atsidi and tell me a wasp nest found me. Four, five, eight? Somewhere between five and seven stings. In fact call my mom, she has the first-aid kit.”
Notes the Passing Changes focused awareness at the necessary nodes to pass on the communications. The human was jerking her limbs in odd patterns, snatching at the small flying insects that appeared to have followed her several dozen meters from their underground nest. The human twisted her head around, hesitated in her movement, gave another profanity and began stripping off her cloth radiation shielding.
“Notes,” she said through gritted teeth, “If you can, please don’t let anyone close enough to see me naked.”
“Does that apply to your mother and mate?” Notes the Passing Changes asked.
“Of course not!” Kaya snarled. “They’ve seen me naked plenty of times.”
Notes the Passing Changes added this observation to a thought composter and watched with interest as Kaya, now free from her cloth began splashing cold water over rapidly growing welts on her skin.
“My boob!” she exclaimed with frustration in her voice. “They got my boobs! One of them.”
“You are currently providing your sporeling with nutrition with your boobs are you not?” Notes the Passing Changes asked. “Will the injection of venom interfere with your ability to continue that?”
Kaya paused her frantic movement and frowned.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, with unease tinting her voice.
Just then her mother, summoned from an afternoon nap, rounded a corner with a bag of medical supplies and began treating the welts. Her husband Atsidi arrived shortly after with their sporeling and assisted them. Notes the Passing Changes watched with interest. The sporeling began to make wordless noises and Kaya glanced over at him uneasily.
“Mom,” she said. “Is it okay to nurse Pip after getting stung like this.”
“It’ll be fine,” her mother assured her. “Your body has already broken down the venom.”
However Kaya still moved as if mental unease was mixed with her physical pain. Her mother noticed this and suggested that if she was concerned she look up the information in the medical database. Kaya smiled and glanced over at a nearby speaking tree.
“Notes? Will you?” she asked.
Notes the Passing Changes rustled the vines in the central library into action and searched the relevant information.
“The sequestered information agrees with your progenitor,” Notes the Passing Changes said. “No negative result has ever been observed from human infants nursing from breasts stung by this insect species.”
“What species was it?” Kaya asked.
“The paper wasps imported from Earth,” Notes the Passing Changes said.
Kaya gave a frustrated growl and described them in what Notes the Passing Changes assumed were profane terms. Though how she expected insect mating pairs to engage in legal agreements about child rearing when the male died after mating Notes the Passing Changes wasn’t certain.
The four human finished the application of first aid and moved off towards their dwelling together. Notes the Passing Changes followed Kaya with awareness observing her with curiosity. Her mate had to resume his work with the domestic mammal species on the farm and her mother took the infant so Kaya could rest while the anti-inflammatory medications did their work. However instead of laying down to sleep Kaya went to her com-unit and contacted the human midwife who had attended the sporling’s birth. The com-unit informed Kaya that the midwife couldn’t answer her and Kaya grimaced but left a message asking if it was safe to nurse her sporling. That done she dropped down onto a rest surface and directed her bifocal eyes at the blank ceiling. Notes the Passing Changes observed her for a moment and then rustled the interior communication bush for her attention.
Kaya started and then twisted her head around to look at the bush with a tired grin.
“Do you have a question Notes?” she asked.
“Were you not satisfied that I had translated the information from the library sufficiently?” Notes the Passing Changes asked.
“What?” Kaya replied, blinking slowly.
“The communication you just made to the midwife,” Notes the Passing Changes indicated the com-unit with a gesture of the leaves.
Kaya blinked and nodded with a yawn.
“No,” she said. “I’ve double checked your research before. If you say that is what the records show, that’s what they show.”
“Then did you doubt your mother’s experience?” Notes the Passing Changes asked.
“No, no,” Kaya said, “I just wanted to be sure. You know, for sure.”
“And the midwives hold the highest authority in your opinion,” Notes the Passing Changes suggested.
“No,” Kaya said slowly, “I think if the midwives had answered me first I still would have asked Mom and you. I just wanted all the data points, just to be sure.”
“My answer, your mother’s answer, and the midwives are all based on the information in the archives,” Notes the Passing Changes observed. “You are still relying on one source.”
Kaya smiled and shrugged. “Well asking three different people made me calm down,” she said. “Go figure.”
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Humans are Weird - Consequences “It is a fundamental maxim of any civilization that survived long enough to invent spaceflight,” Council Leader Fourth Flap was saying, calmly and slowly – so calmly, so very calmly, you had to be so calm when pointing out things like this. “Laws should be as few as possible, as general as the situation allows. Making a new law for each iteration of-”
“I know Seventh Click’s maxims of good government as well as you do!” Fourteenth Trill snapped, waving his wings in fluttering frustration. “Of course I agree with them! But Seventh Click never had to deal with humans! I know this is the fourth-fifth -”
“Fifty-seventh,” Council Leader Fourth Flap (calmly) interjected.
“Fifty-seventh regulation suggested this year -”
“Suggested by your wing alone,” Council Leader Fourth Flap pointed out, deliberately shifting a pile of regulations suggested by other wings with a claw painted blue.
Commander Fourteenth Trill actually stopped talking and followed the bright blue wingtip with his eyes, his ribcage expanding and contraction with his frustrated breaths, even as his nostril frills danced in the tiny wind thus generated.
“I know,” Commander Fourteenth Trill growled out in tones low enough even a human could hear them. “I know, just please listen to my explanation of why this particular regulation is needed before you decide to lump it in with the general safety mindfulness regulation set.”
“Actually I was going to ‘lump it in’ as you say, such a colorful human phrase that, with the non-sapient sentient organism cruelty regulation set,” Council Leader Fourth Flap murmured, shifting the papers around. “But do present the thermal as it rises.”
“That’s – fine, very well,” Commander Fourteenth Trill said, rubbing his winghooks over his sensory horns. “We were doing a survey of Planet 754-x3. We had already cataloged many of the local non-vertebrate species and had identified one nest building arthropod species of particular concern.”
“The Too-many-legs-why-does-it-need-that-many-legs-nothing-with-wings-needs-that-many-legs species,” Council Leader Fourth Flap confirmed looking over his notes. “You might want to suggest the human with naming rights shorten that.”
“Yes, yes,” Commander Fourteenth Trill responded with an agitated little side hop, “as the breeze takes the flight. We had been fling from sun up to sun down for days and we all needed a rest, but you know how robust humans are.”
“The report says that the lead human Ranger, ‘took a few hours of napping and then got up to amuse himself’,” Council Leader Fourth Flap read.
“Yes,” Commander Fourteenth Trill agreed. “He was alone for hours-”
“And why was that allowed?” Council Leader Fourth Flap demanded.
“Humans need alone time!” Commander Fourteenth Trill snarled, his fur bristling defensively. “They aren’t like us! If you don’t give them time without the stimulation of friendly presence they go all wobbly mentally!”
“Very well,” Council Leader Fourth Flap said soothingly. “I accept your explanation. Now go on.”
Commander Fourteenth Trill looked like he wanted to give a few more flaps to defend his choice of leaving the human alone but he merely shook out his joints.
“We were all, the rest of the camp, Winged and human, were either napping or grooming ourselves when he came running back towards the camp bellowing out a pain warning. There was a flight – a swarm really – of the leggy things flying after him. He made it through the containment field into the decontamination area, but not before they had severely bitten the exposed areas on his hands and neck.”
Commander Fourteenth Trill gave a fully body shiver at the memory.
“I have been told that humans bleed quite freely from head lacerations,” Council Leader Fourth Flap observed.
“They do,” Commander Fourteenth Trill said in a hollow tone. “The medical flight went out to tend him. It took them hours to clean the blood out of their fur after, but they got the bleeding stopped. All while the leggy things were throwing themselves against the containment field again and again.”
Commander Fourteenth Trill paused and seemed to be debating if he should add something.
“It turns out the leggy things have some sort of collective memory,” he said. “While they responded to none of the other humans, the lead Ranger was never able to go outside of the containment field again without being attacked by whatever hive of leggy things was in the area, and they are everywhere in that region.”
“Very interesting, but not relevant,” Council Leader Fourth Flap agreed. “Now, what was the human’s justification of his actions?”
“He said he just happened to have the perfect throwing rock in his pocket,” Commander Fourteenth Trill said, “and the leggy thing nest was at the perfect target height, just ‘a humming and a buzzing like the wasps nests back home’.”
“And that was incentive enough for him to, ‘chuck a rock’ at it,” Council Leader Fourth Flap observed, examining the report.
“Yes!” Commander Fourteenth Trill exploded. “And that is why I feel it would be a perfectly ordinate response to make a regulation specifically forbidding ‘chucking rocks’ and inoffensive arthropod nests!”
Council Leader Fourth Flap gave a thoughtful hum and sifted through the papers in front of him.
“I will consider your argument,” he agreed. “Please leave my office.”
Commander Fourteenth Trill looked like he was ready to continue his presentation for the rest of the day but visibly bit back his next round of arguments and flew off with a huff. Council Leader Fourth Flap stared down at the image of the bandaged human. Surely, this had been just the impulse of the moment on an under-stimulated Ranger, he mused. How reasonable would it be to assume, how offensive would it be to propose, a new regulation that implied that the average human didn’t know not to ‘chuck rocks’ at the hives of known dangerous insects?
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