Humans are Weird-SciFi Part 1
Log: 863
Time of Catalogue: 11.2-17.8.3433
Cataloguer: Dr. Ensin Bryce
The following reports shared over the next few logs take place over the course of my younger years as I worked towards my degree in xenomology and unnatural biologies. The events themselves transpire at a much slower rate than will be recorded, as all species and manners of life communicate by way of their own language of birth or a variation of such. These recordings will be a transcription of their communications in my current tongue in order to save time. So, in the essence of understanding, note that all inter-species communiques were done through the usage of the P-1589 Intergalactic Translator, helpfully nicknamed ‘Janus’ by an associate of mine.
It should be made aware upfront that the events were very rarely altered by my own intervention and that I was merely an occasional onlooker and often an accidental victim. It is with great pride that I retell these events before my coming death so that those coming can know the true story. I will allow those who listen to these tellings to determine the worth of my words which may or may not contradict the established lore with which you hold. Just know that all for which I speak is the truth as far as I can remember and that I, Doctor Faluption Ensin Bryce am a first-hand account. Make of this as you will, even the young around me presently, choose to retell the events falsely, twisting the stories of Rhea which I have provided into that of a legendary god among men. Among all species alike, instead of those of a girl who was just as lost in this expanding universe as many others.
I will try to be most helpful to those who come after me by inserting my own critiques and explanations of the situations as they happen or afterwards, in case your technology has developed far passed what is recognizable to that of my modern time. And with this poor introduction, I shall recount my first days, which may or may not hold minor significance to the following logs, but share them I will nonetheless as they hold considerable significance to myself, and as the cataloguer of further events, I can share whatever I wish.
Returning to a time of my youth; the exact number of years I dare not say, for which I mean I do not remember, I was a charming lad. I had graduated with honours and certificates from the University Terra, the prestigious house of knowledge in the Sol-AR system. To those of you which speak my native tongue, the joke will not be lost on you, as our system can be shortened to the Solar System, a common name for our body of planets and moons circulating around our sun. Was it us who named our system as such? I do not know for sure, but the best I can guess is that only homo sapien sapiens have a comedic system through use of added words or hidden phrases. By which I mean puns.
My alma mater, while impressive for being the only school of higher learning in the system to accommodate non-humans was also famed in one other regard. It was the launching base for interstellar tourism. While most all cargo and heavy trade goes through the off-world launch pad on our moon, the interstellar launch site near University Terra accommodated those aliens and humans who wanted to tour the planet or travel to the intra-galactic launch satellite at Alpha Centauri-B. I do fear that I am slowing myself down and boring you all with my explanations of all these facts for which I am sure you are aware of, so I will try to limit myself to those matters which I feel are important to know. Or, in my old age I discuss in a tangent for which I did not mean to travel down.
Continuing on, I had just graduated with a degree best described as a middling degree. It gives me more knowledge than those who only spent a few years in school but not enough to truly become a doctor of the subject. I did however decide to spend the coming months travelling with my professor; a lovely woman by the name of Alder Biggs. She had the pleasant tendency to speak to me as if I were a toddler and refused to acknowledge my contributions to her papers or small tips to ensure her safety. This of course, would lead to her untimely death at the hands of a vicious predator known colloquially by the Ravvish people of Ravilan as a Death-Stalker. But, I am getting ahead of myself. What is most important for this log, is to know that I had signed up to follow her as a scribe for the next six months as she explored some of the uncharted planets in Z-66B-Tertiary-Sector star system, known much more nicely as the Lion-Eye Nebula.
Why was a scientist from Terra venturing to uncharted territory? Well, it was common practice and still is today to have at least one human on board any ship of the Galactic Alliance. It was considered good luck for the crew as we had the terrible habit of simply not dying. It was the condition of joining the Alliance in the first place.
The ship we were boarding, Dr. Biggs and I, was a massive star cruiser. Twice the size of any vehicle I had travelled on before and yet Dr. Biggs continuously assured me in her mocking tone that it was smaller still than the ship we would be boarding to actually reach our destination. I stepped nervously onto the conveyer belt, carrying my two over-shoulder bags with my two wheeled suitcases following along behind me. Dr. Biggs stepped on behind my luggage with her own. She chose not to acknowledge my tightly squeezed eyes as our conveyer belt ascended towards the middle-level of the ship, far higher than I wished to see. Finally, I began to hear the thrumming and continuous buzzing of powerful engines and machinery. I peered out into my new surroundings, a large white floor filled with aliens from all walks of life. I had studied at the University Terra so the many species did little to shock me, but I could only imagine those people who had lived in those areas where aliens rarely visited. Species arrayed from those that can only be equated to large space-slugs, wearing masks of pure nitrogen so they could breath to those species who had six legs and four arms, covered from heads to toe in orange pressurized suits. I had classes with Summegrians before and knew that their species favoured a pressure of 300 Kilopascals and air filled with mercury and sulfur.
“Stop admiring the aliens and come with me to the human floor”, Dr. Biggs had said to me while carrying her own luggage towards the elevator. I followed quietly behind her, just barely fitting into the elevator my with things and eight other families, of what species I cannot remember. The human floor was the most spacious with dozens, possibly hundreds of rooms for the six day trip to Alpha-Centauri. Very slow, even by today’s standards, but it was the cheapest ship available and meant as a sight-seeing cruiser more so than a destination cruise. What could be seen during the trip at speeds faster than light? Very little for most species. Humans did have the ability to see a few splashes of red during acceleration and dark blue during deceleration, but for the rest of the trip it was pitch black. My Drauvanian friend had told me that he was able to see beautiful scenery, with the births and deaths of stars as time passed before his eyes. I understood very little of his explanation, but his species was able to see an additional four trillion colours that humans could not, so suffice it to say I understood very little of what he explained in the arts department.
My room was a quaint little corner of the ship with connecting rooms to Dr. Biggs’s. It held a soft bed of about average length and a small metal drawer to hold my things. I chose to drop my bags beside my bed and open one of the suitcases. There was no reason to unpack everything for such a small and inconsequential part of my journey. With that little escapade done, it was off to floor 3, otherwise known as the Launch Floor. All arrays of life would be present, all seated in ‘seats’ designed for each species. For instance, us humans had a belt which clipped together at our chest level, and held our shoulders and abdomens firmly against the chair. The Willaxians each had a special room which locked during launch so that when they bounced around, they would not disturb other passengers.
I sat calmly in my seat and strapped myself in. To my left was another human; a tall, muscular man with a completely shaved head and a bionic eye. He turned to me, “First time launching?”
I nodded, “What made you guess?”
He nodded towards my clip, “it’s upside down. You launch in that state it’ll unclip and you’ll be flying around the cabin. Which, is not as fun as it sounds.”
I gulped and fixed my straps as best as I could, turning back to him for approval. “Thanks. I would hate to die on my first trip off-world.”
“Oh, you’re a Terra boy.” The smile he gave me was both endearing and disconcerting. It made me shift slightly in my seat. “Bit of a tip for you as you venture into the great unknown. Don’t, I repeat, do not try to win a bet with a Tommerenean. They’ll swindle you out of your skin sooner than accept they’ve lost.”
I gulped. “Good to know.”
“Other than that, it’s smooth sailing er-flying, all the way from one side of the supercluster to the next.” He placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. Fully relaxed in a seat that was about to reach speeds exceeding that of sound all before we even left the atmosphere. By the time we left the light speed barrier that surrounded the planet, some 50,000 kilometers from the surface we’d be travelling fast enough to cross the Atlantic thrice in under a minute.
I would explain to you what the Atlantic is, but keeping with my promise of not divulging more information than truly necessary, I will allow you to do this research for yourself. If you don’t wish to do any research into the planet of origin for humans, then be pleased to note that the speed we were going is fast. Incredibly incalculably fast. Well, it of course can be calculated quite easily, but I am not that sort of scientist nor did I much care, so it was incalculable for lazy old me.
But, it was the speed we’d need to kick-start the star liner’s antimatter reactors so we could break the light speed barrier. All this I had researched beforehand. I am not the type of person to get on a rocket I know nothing about. It was just one piece of useless fact which I managed to retain over my many years. The same way that I can tell you that the ship itself was built seven years before and had thirty six successful launches prior to mine own.
So, as I was getting acquainted with the head rest and continuously trying to tighten my straps even more than they already were.
It was in one moment of miniscule agony as I accidentally clipped my finger in the belt mechanism that Dr. Biggs joined me, sitting down lazily beside me, not even bothering to start strapping herself in. My head flitted around the cabin, as people began filling the seats. It was quite a lot of people, not so many that I felt uncomfortable, but too many to know the names of each and every one.
“The ship will be ascending in 15 minutes, please get to your seats if you do not wish to feel the full gravity of the situation.” A small female chuckle came over the inter-ship communication system. Honestly, that is probably not what the woman’s joke was, but it has been years since I was in this position, I deserve to make my own jokes. I think I felt even more nervous after the joke than before it. Dr. Biggs still looked bored in her seat, she turned to look at me quivering in fear, then looked back ahead, stifling a yawn.