So you know how human vision is motion activated but hacked via their eyeballs constantly vibrating so they can still see things that aren’t moving
Humans are space orcs idea where other aliens don’t do that so looking at human eyes constantly shaking is real unsettling. Theres a lot of fun to be had about the intensity of eye contact, the almost hypnotic effects of their gaze, the difficulty in ambushing them, ect.
This also mean that The Polar Express, being uncanny to most humans because the eyes aren’t animated with micro-movements, is one of the few human films that can be aired on other planets without a content warning
Humans having the incredible ability to fall asleep pretty much anywhere. So long as isn’t actively on fire or made of broken glass and wasp stingers, it’s good enough for a human to conk out on. It not exactly good sleep, but it’s sleep either way.
Which is very odd to the galactic community.
Rest comes in all sorts of forms across the galaxy, some having sleep similar to ours, some having hibernation/brumation cycles, some going into meditative states, some retreating to cocoons, some photosynthesising, some even being technologically advanced enough to simply just plug themselves in and literally recharge. But the seeming inescapability of human sleep is…a little concerning.
If a human is tired enough, they will be able to sleep just about anywhere. Bed, sofa, armchair, the floor, a table, three chairs lined up, propped up like a doll against the wall, on top of another person, on a rock that’s even vaguely flat, on a gnarled tree branch, sometimes even floating in water or suspended by a harness. Wherever. So long as we can breathe, we can and will fall asleep.
The same can’t be said of aliens, they’re a bit more picky by comparison, or they can stave off their exhaustion through emergency chemical reactions long enough to find somewhere appropriate to rest. Some are so specialised that they require their environments to be utterly perfect before their body allows them to rest. Those aliens are deeply jealous while waiting around at the Spaceport for their shuttle to start boarding and seeing humans clumped together on a bench in a very uncomfortable looking pile, snoring away.
And then, an alien species named the Khak’Cthrax, a species known for their aggressive behaviour and bodies covered in rocky scales and dangerous barbs, discovering this aspect of humans.
One Khak’CThrax soldier being deployed to assist in saving some human civilians from a war zone and ending up having to carry a teenager for a while due to there not being enough gurneys. The juvenile human ends up nodding off in the soldier’s hands and at first he thinks the teenager has perished because the Khak’CThrax are not the type of person you would consider comfortable to rest on much less feel ‘safe’ around inherently, but after the field medic explains that the child is only asleep, unsurprisingly from the day they had had, the soldier practically becomes a broody mother hen for the human. This little one trusted him??? Enough to rest while held in his arms??? They are his baby now???
Made worse by the fact that humans are half the size of the average Khak’CThrax when fully grown, so a scrawny juvenile was practically the size of a newly hatched whelp to the soldier. All tiny and soft and squishy. The soldier nearly took another Khak’CThrax’s arm off for trying to poke his new human baby.
So, I recently took a part-time job in a warehouse and apparently, THESE:
Are treated almost like... PETS??
Hear me out, NONE of them actually work like they are supposed to. One has a cracked wheel and makes horrible noises, other one will lower itself randomly, a lot of them lift only if you wiggle them in specific ways–
The point is, you rather quickly pick a favorite. And will look out for it CONSTANTLY or else it gets snatched within minutes.
That leads to me finding some interesting quotations written over these guys. Like:
Humans being the first. Not the strongest or the smartest or the weirdest or the most violent. Just the first.
We called out into the dark over and over. We sent out messages in hopes. We searched every planet we could reach, in hopes of any sign of life. Any at all.
We thought, hoped we were the last, because we couldn’t bear the idea of being the one ones this awake and alive in a world as vast as this.
And we died alone.
When the others are born, many many years later, they find us, everything we left for them.
They recover The Golden Record and look at it a million times over, they dig up our fossils and put us in museums, they study us for years and years, loving us as we love our ancestors’ painted hands on cave walls.
In a lot of their languages, the word they use for us has the same root for “mother”.
See, there’s this joke going around among the other civilized species of the galaxy about the way humans have domesticated this one animal into so many different types that it’s hard to tell which Earth animals are, and are not, dogs. So I really felt like someone must have been messing with me when I looked at the large crate of animal cargo that we were supposed to deliver.
“Captain,” I said slowly. “These aren’t dogs. Well, one is, and it’s not the one you’d think.”
Captain Sunlight looked up at me, concern on her lizardy face. I could see how reluctant she was to ask me, “Are you sure?”
“Very,” I said, pointing at the Chihuahua. “That one’s a dog, one of the smallest kinds. But that is a ferret, that is a capybara, and that is a bear cub, and none of these should be in the same cage. Please tell me they’re going somewhere with an accredited zoo?”
Captain Sunlight turned to look at the client who had brought us the crate. He flicked his antennae and flexed pincher arms, giving away nothing but annoyance. Which wasn’t unusual for a Mesmer. “I was told they were dogs,” he insisted.
“They are not,” I said, pointing at the bear cub. “When that one grows up, it will be bigger than you, and able to rip the door off this ship.”
Captain Sunlight looked up in alarm. “How fast does it grow?”
“Not that fast,” I reassured her. “But it’s a bear. One of the biggest land predators currently living on Earth. Not a dog.”
The Mesmer hissed in irritation. “Can’t you just take them anyway? My supervisor wanted this to be handled quickly, and they’re contained safely enough.”
I was a little skeptical of that, but the four unlikely bundles of fur were behaving for the moment. The ferret was zipping about in a normal ferrety way while the bear cub and Chihuahua snuggled up to the capybara like it was an adoptive parent. Which it could have been for all I knew. We hadn’t moved the crate into our cargo bay just yet, pausing on the busy spaceport between their ship and ours. I asked, “Can I talk to your supervisor real quick?”
This hiss sounded exceptionally put-out, like an aggravated teenager forced to clean his room. “We need to take off.”
I retorted, “And I need to make sure these aren’t being sold as companion animals to someone unprepared for getting their ship ripped open.”
Captain Sunlight nodded, tapping the tablet with the details of this particular delivery. “The destination is a hub world with many species cohabitating. That tells us nothing.”
“Ugh, fine. Wait here.” The Mesmer stalked off back to his own ship, where he rapped on the door with a folded pincher and had a hissing conversation with someone just inside.
We waited. The ferret’s antics caused the bear cub to tumble over onto the Chihuahua, and now the three of them were roughhousing while the capybara watched calmly. This was clearly not the first time they’d shared a cage. Now that I was looking, I noticed that all four had collar dents in their fur, though they weren’t wearing any at the moment. The bear cub even had dents at its little wrists, and I did not like the look of that.
Someone left the other ship. I relaxed a bit at the sight of another human: a no-nonsense middle-aged woman who hurried over for a quick word with me specifically. I obligingly stepped aside, curious about what she had to say.
Her whispered explanation made it all better.
“I stole them from a circus,” she said. “Terrible place. I have a contact waiting to take them back to a sanctuary on Earth.”
“Oh, good!” I said in immense relief. “I was worried someone actually thought they were all dogs.”
She shook her head once. “That’s just for the paperwork. The circus owners are still looking for them. Think you can get in the air soon?”
“Yes I do,” I told her, giving Captain Sunlight a thumbs-up. The captain saw it and moved to finalize things on the tablet with the Mesmer. I told the other human, “This is not too different from how I got my cat.”
“Glad to hear it,” the human said with a smile. “I’ll be leaving them in good hands, then.” She didn’t press for an explanation of the cat thing, because we were all in a hurry here, and the circus types could come by at any time, and who needed that? Not us. She gave me a nod and a wink, then hustled back to her own ship.
I glanced around in what I hoped was a casual way. Not that I would necessarily recognize a representative of this particular terrible circus, but I’d encountered enough in my time that I felt like I’d sense the callousness rolling off them. There were entertainment groups that incorporated animals in a respectful way, of course, but those tended to not be the kind described as “terrible,” which inspired random humans to stage a spontaneous rescue.
I could relate.
Captain Sunlight asked me, “All good?” The other human was disappearing back into her ship while the Mesmer activated a hover lift under the cage.
I nodded. “They’re dogs for today. Fido, Ursula, Cappy, and Fairy. We’ll want to leave quickly.”
“I trust I’ll get an explanation once we’re up?”
“Yeah. You remember where Telly came from.”
Her expression turned stern. “Understood. I’ll tell Eggskin to get out the medical scanner, and Kavlae to prepare to leave immediately.”
“Thank you. Maybe Telly can say hi through the bars once they’ve cleared the health check.”
Already walking towards the cargo bay, Captain Sunlight gave me an amused glance. “I thought dogs didn’t like cats.”
I shrugged. “Who can say, with these four? A sniff through the bars should be fine. They’ll probably have lots to talk about.”
Captain Sunlight just smiled and hurried ahead.
I hoped they were healthy, and as tame as they looked. I was planning to spend a significant part of this trip in the hold, keeping our animal cargo comforted and calm. It wasn’t every day I got to pet a bear cub, much less a capybara and a ferret as well.
Pardon me, several dogs with absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about them. Even if one looked exceptionally cuddly, another had little ratty feet, and a third was long and lightning-fast. Totally normal dogs heading back to Earth where they belonged.
~~~
(The cat thing is a reference to this story: Bargains at the Space Market)
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EDIT: There's a Part Two!
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These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.
Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.
The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).
I think what most HASO and other media gets wrong is depicting humans as fearless because we come from such a harsh world.
Like humans grow up on a world where *anything* can kill you. Bugs. Mold. Unclear water. A sneeze. The sun. The rain. Plants. Mushrooms. Large predators. Large herbivores. Small predators. A cat scratch. The list goes on and on.
This kind of environment doesn't make people less afraid. Okay it might if they're sufficiently desensitized, and most people will do okay in settings they're familiar with, but in a new situation? Everything is a threat.
Humans adapting to spaceships and/or alien planets would not be confident and gung-ho. They would be cautious, curious, and exploratory. They would freak the fuck out at every new alien bug. They would be very hesitant to engage with any animal. They would freak out every other alien on the crew because the humans keep staring at them, watching them to make sure that none of the aliens are going to attack them.
And when a solo human with an alien crew meets another human, also the only human on their crew?
They are not best friends. Their first thought is, "is this human going to kill me?" Because only a murderer or a crazy person would go into space without another human to back them up.
sci fi story where humans make contact with a multispecies alien civilization and sort of expect that everyone will be scared of them because most sapient species are herbivores and humans are pack hunters
some people admittedly are a little bit uneasy around humans at first, but almost everyone immediately really likes them because they’re all also social species and humans are really social. humans will bond with anything else so they integrated themselves into Alien Society very quickly and easily
