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.”
Author Betty Adams Books
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