Dave The Human, a female Tsin, wandered into the Cafeteria with a tablet in he mid-hand: One of the hands that she kept tucked away so frequently that Phalanges Mittens (Human, Male, cos-playing as a female alien for reasons of Fuck the Man) was actually startled.
It felt like his long time friend had grown a third arm, which was slightly horrifying. Following up that thought was that Dave actually had another still tucked into her pocket.
Phalanges had once asked why Dave and the other Tsin so rarely took their hands out of their chest pockets, and Dave had casually pulled out a sleepy rat the size of a loaf of bread.
Dave grabbed a seat. "Sooo. I have some questions form the schooolies on Homeworld. They want to know about the exotic and terrifyingly interesting Hoo-Mons." she said cheerfully, waggling the tablet.
Phalanges checked his watch then his Little Guy, Cat Fantastic who was sleeping off lunch.
"Sure. I have time." he said and casually rolled up Cat Fantastic so he didn't get cold. "What's the first question?"
Dave set up the tablet to record.
"Question one — Do Humans spin their teeth as a greeting?"
Phalanges deduced that the questions had been asked by very young Tsin and this was going to be extremely entertaining.
"No." he said firmly, "But that sounds like it'd be really cool, and now I kind of wish I could." he said and smiled, clicking his teeth together.
"Question two — Is it true that Humans don't need space suits?"
Phalanges pondered. "Sort of. We're fine for a few seconds, but after that it's pretty much a being dead thing. But I know someone who did go out of the station to rescue a friend, and they didn't put a space suit on." he said and leaned over as EV 42 turned around and waved: He was as ever sitting with a big Atrix with vacuum scars running down the side of her face.
"Good answer. Next question - Are all Humans Big Genders?"
"Oh hmm. Sort of?" said Phalanges. "We can't naturally change our biological sex, but we got annoyed enough that we figured out how to anyway."
Dave paused the recording. "Thanks for answering that one." she said honestly, "The next few are a bit… less general so we can skip them if you need to!" she stated and pressed play.
"Question from Cool Deep Dirt - What's up with tits?"
Phalanges laughed. "OK that's not normally a question you can ask humans, unless you're not on really good terms with them. The answer is that not even we're sure, but we like seeing them around."
"… As good an answer as any. Oh-kay. Is it true Humans can't eat each other?"
"We can, but we're not supposed to because it worries people that they're going to be hunted. Also it can cause Prion damage to our nerves so we only do it on special occasions. We taste like pork!"
Dave idly smacked her lips, sharp little teeth peeking. She liked pork, though it was too salty for her to eat much. She'd also told Phalanges that if she died first she was eating him: A sign of respect from the Tsin who'd had a really tight bottleneck of both population and also protein due to a self inflicted apocalypse a while back.
"Mm. Is it true Humans can trade organs with each other?"
"Kind of, yes. You have to find someone who'd got the same blood and tissue as you, but after that, yeah. It's really convoluted and now we just use synthetic organs because it's simpler."
"Huh. I actually didn't know that." Dave said. "Last question, looks like an Ethics style question: Would you buy a friend lunch if she was hungry…? I notice there are Hotdogs on the menu…"
Dave The Human, a female Tsin, crouched down and gently put a fresh piece of tape onto the floor cleaning unit, making sure the knife taped to it wasn't going to fall off.
Phalanges Mittens, totally normal human, previously also called Dave (But on paper, a seven foot tall purple marsupial lizard, for reasons of advanced interspecies fuckery) watched with interest.
"I heard it was a human tradition." explained Dave.
Phalanghes nodded. "Oh yeah. Since Time Immemorial, or about 2010 on the calendar my culture uses, so same thing." he agreed.
The floor cleaner, now designated as Stabby, rebooted, and started cleaning the floor. Its collision avoidance made the knife mostly safe, but that's hardly relevant to tradition.
The two friends watched it bumble around, until Cat Fantastic climbed on top, and then they took pictures for "Little Guys being weird little guys".
"You guys will really pack bond with anything." said Dave and Phalanges just had to shrug at that.
"I mean yeah. It's not even a species thing. It's an Earth thing." he said, getting comfortable. "Back in the day when we first invented robotics, we even made realistic robot animals to watch wildlife."
"Oh ar?" said Dave, whose grasp of the colloquial was extensive and ever shifting.
"Yeah. And some of the animals would try to hang out with the robots. Make friends. But if they fell over or the batteries ran out, the animals would get really upset and try to take care of their new buddy..."
"Aww!" said Dave appropriately, and pulled out her tablet. She looked it up and laughed with delight at the ancient videos and images.
Cat Fantastic, looked up, and said "Graaak".
Phalanges thought about that. "Huh. It would be awesome if we had a miniature Tokyo." he said while Dave looked that up.
Cat nodded and whispered 'Skreeonk' to Stabby, who equally quietly beeped back, gratified that it's suggestion was well received, while it admired its new knife in a reflection.
It took Dave a surprisingly long time to ask, “Why are we here”.
“Philosophically you mean?” Asked Phalanges Mitten.
Dave “The Human”, an Adult female Tsin said “Not really.”
Phalanges Mitten, adult Human male — But technically a seven-foot tall dusty purple dinosaur, for tax reasons, squinted a bit at his friend and pursed his lips.
“Well in the long term, to provide an environment for replication, because evolution doesn’t really care why or how as long as you do. Medium term, to make sure the toilets don’t back up and short term, because it’s Delicious Unexplained Crunchy Food Stick day, and we wanted lunch?”
Dave examined his all-species ‘It’s not chicken, but you can eat it’ finger. She dipped it in some Aumu sauce mixed with chives. “I mean, you’re not wrong…” she said.
Leaving comments open to see where the conversation went was always a fun game.
“But no, I mean the station. We’re orbiting this planet right, because there’s something down there that everyone’s interested in, but not urgently. But I don’t think I ever asked why?” She said, and snarfed down the breaded mycoprotein with a frankly adorable muzzle wiggle.
“Oh.” Said Phalanges. “Well, uh, it’s of special scientific… uh. Actually, that’s a good point.”
And at this point, let’s introduce Cat Fantastic: Cat is an actual Atrix, but currently they’re about the size of a chonky iguana. Cat’s issue is that he doesn’t have a patch of chromophores on his forehead, which is the very important non-verbal part of Atrix communication.
Frankly, not having the patch trips some really severe ‘uncanny valley’ responses, and the Atrix just got over their tendency to stamp on hatchlings who are missing their display patch.
Due to Phalanges (Prior name: Dave the Human, which an astute reader would also notice is the name the Tsin is using) hanging out in the Atrix section, someone arranged for Cat to team up with Phalanges. Who and how is currently a mystery, but now Phalanges has his own ‘Little Guy’.
Which is to say, they’re hanging out together and Cat is learning the fascinating subject of fixing the station’s sewerage and reclamation system, and officially they’re a team.
Cat in this instance peeks over the edge of the table from where he’s sitting on one of the chairs munching his own lunch and says “Graaaaaaak”.
Phalanges and Dave look at him with surprise. “Really? Well, I’m glad someone looked it up.” Says Dave. “Go on then…”
A tale of cultural incompetence.
So the way Cat Fantastic tells it is like this:
At some point in the history of the planet, the inhabitants had developed nations and a couple of religions.
One in particular did very well due to the leaves of a specific type of tree: It had very broad smooth leaves which were naturally coated with an antifungal, anti-biotic wax. Which made them ideal for washing down and using as plates, or for wrapping food. Or, indeed, boiling off and making an effective topical medicine.
This gave the nation a bit of a boost. They didn’t get sick as much from spoiled food, their first aid was a bit more effective, and so on. And so over time, the practice of using leaves from plate trees led to two important results:
First, there were more people, so more plate trees were cultivated to produce more leaves.
Second, the people developed a whole set of traditions, and beliefs which codified into a religion, who’s main theme was that the people were so good and perfect that the gods had gifted them with paper plates.
And anyone who didn’t use them, like those icky guys over by the coast, who insisted on using wood bowls smeared with leftovers, were extremely gross and obviously not in favour with the gods due to being somehow inferior.
OK, so the obvious solution is to grow more trees, clear out all this useless vegetation and only keep plants which you can eat.
And thus agriculture was born, followed shortly by the coast people being forcibly converted into leaf plate using or mysteriously all setting fire to their own huts and vanishing, what a mystery.
You should definitely not look into what’s being used as fertiliser for the plate trees.
Anyway. This nation, very pleased with their righteousness, took their brilliant way of life and slowly nibbled away at their neighbours, most of whom were still hunter-gatherers.
All was great, hail the plate tree.
And then because they’d planted a vast monoculture, and cleared out anything that wasn’t food or plate trees, they caused a massive environmental collapse.
Due to the insistence of e.g. introducing a fast-growing, water hungry plant to a biome that couldn’t really support it they caused desertification.
They wiped out many ‘pest’ species and flora that was pretty important to the smooth running of the ecosphere, causing further collapse.
“Ah.” Said Dave. “Yes, I can see where this is going.” She added and nodded to the planet, which was not a healthy colour.
“Speaking from experience, turning your planet to dust is a real embuggerance.”
Phalanges nodded sympathetically. The Tsin had discovered space robotic space flight and, within thirty years, developed orbital bombardment. Then someone had determined that those guys over there needed to be taught a lesson.
And that’s how the Tsin spent the last half millennium living in bunkers and trying to restore a working biosphere from whatever their ancestors had managed to preserve.
It’s also the reason the Tsin are having an issue with genetic bottlenecks.
Phalanges nodded in agreement. Humans had done a number on their biosphere, but the remediation had been more or less working, albeit slowly and fitfully when the Wallandernook showed up and sold them a janky old spacefolder, and it’s hyperefficient energy conversion engine.
“So they, what, tried to outrun their environmental collapse by invading more land?”
“Graaak”
“Ha, called it…”
The People had indeed pushed further to plant more plate trees and acquire more Prisoners-With-Jobs to look after the farms, temples and so on.
By the late stages they’d even begun to realise that the leaves were the issue and that one could make replacements out of pressed fibre, or eventually, basic plastics.
Which of course were both problematic in themselves, and also deeply heretical to traditionalists.
And now, the planet was a nutrient poor world with a massive monoculture, slowly speciating from the original plate trees, with massive deserts and dessicated plantations, and a crumbled array of civilisations.
The cities and towns abandoned by the people who’d slowly gone back to hunting and gathering and slowly fading away.
And above it all, a station filled with people from other worlds who’d banded together to discover what history was left, and document it.
“Wow.” Said Phalanges, lunch long since finished. “Sounds exactly like the sort of thing Humans would do.”
“And Tsin” said Dave.
“Graak.” Said Cat.
“OK, but Atrix are different.” Said Dave. “Everyone knows you guys don’t use plates.”
Sometimes, Dave The Human got mistaken for an actual human, because someone saw the name and mistook her for Dave the Human - an actual Human, currently under the moniker of Phalanges Mitten as part of his deep cover as a female Atrix after accepting a sort-of marriage proposal from a small, actual Atrix.
And then the female Tsin would show up as per request and someone would double take and go 'Oh er'. and they'd call EVA 43, who was known for being an unkillable badass, or Phalanges, who was not known for being an unkillable badass, because he never mentioned the thing with the Thotari assassins or that one time he beat up an entire pirate ship.
This prompted Dave to broach the subject over food in the Cafeteria:
"So... what is a Space Orc?" she asked. Cat fantastic said "Gweep?" and Phalanges and EVA 43 did that thing where they leaned back and swapped significant looks and made 'Mmm, hmmm' faces.
Dave watched Cat Fantastic, Phalanges Little Guy copy the move thoughtfully, and then EVA 43 said. "It's an old joke. Like from before the Wallandernook showed up and got us interstellar."
Dave nodded instead of doing the ear sweep, a carefully learned habit. "Yeah... they got us off planet entirely - Without artificial gravity, we can't do it in person - And of course there's that whole 'oops bombed ourselves into an anti-space doctrine." she said.
Cat Fantastic said 'Graak' and Dave wondered what he meant by 'Nice exposition'.
EVA 43, who's actual name nobody could ever recall for more than a few seconds continued and once again Dave was bemused that the moment she looked away she couldn't picture 43 in any away: not their gender, skin colour... nothing: As though someone had written a character and failed to give them any description at all and for some reason kept up with the gag.
"We have this literary tradition of writing fantasy works - Fiction - With uhhh..."
"Tropes." offered Phalanges.
"Tropes - Yes, OK so one is Orcs. They're barbaric, kind of dumb compared with Humans... but they're a bit bigger, a bit stronger, a bit hardier..."
"So in any physical situation, the Orc is the one who's most likely to survive, discounting any plot necessity." said Phalanges.
"Oh I guess I get it." said Dave. "We've got something similar but it sort of loosely translates as Even Bigger People." - She herself was a Big Female, which was unrelated to size. It just meant that without modern medical intervention she was unlikely to change gender, unlike three quarters of the Tsin population who would swap to maintain gender balance naturally. The connotations were 'The most female type of female', which got adjusted for the benefit of talking to other species.
Cat Fantastic said "Graak." which was true: As a monogendered species who's reproductive roles were defined by body mass out of convenience, and who's actual reproduction was 100% external and more akin to a turtle dumping her eggs and then letting the hatchlings just deal with survival, the Atrix version of a bigger stronger more durable Atrix was literally just the biggest strongest and most durable Atrix that you knew.
And compared to Humans Atrix were fragile: A normal human could walk off injuries that would be incapacitating to an Atrix.
43 famously stepped into hard vacuum with nothing but a surgical gown, after surviving a few hours with life support disabled in a crippled EVA suit, by just being reversibly dead.
They'd done it to save their friend, an Atrix, who had to have a new eye installed, and had life-long scars from mere low pressure exposure that was too low for them to maintain consciousness... a situation that for a human would possibly, if sustained for a while, caused a hickey and dry eyes, maybe a wheeze from inhaling hard.
Phalanges nodded. "So yeah - In comparison to most species, we can survive higher gravity - or no gravity - injuries that would cripple or kill other species with shock - We've got redundant organs, and emergency chemical responses that turn off the limits of our muscles so we can trade massive damage for survival... or not feel pain."
EVA 43 frowned and thought about that, then nodded and ticked off a couple of fingers, "And we can stop breathing for a couple of minutes, consume our own body mass if there's no food, keep moving for longer than almost any other starfaring species...."
Phlanages picked up, "And then pack bond with nearly any organism or object, so instead of getting obliterated by everyone else because we met you guys and reached for a recipe book..."
EVA 43 added "... we can eat a stupid range of food including what a lot of other species consider poisonous chemicals..." to the list.
Phalanges continued cheerfully, "... so you guys were like 'Oh crap, no wait, these dumb monsters are friendly. Maybe they'll pick stuff up and carry it for us.'"
"And do human related stuff." EVA 43 added.
Daver held up both her small hands, the one on her second set of arms. "OK, and it helps you have this really weird flexible language and you're just right in the middle of the audio and visual range almost everyone uses." she added drumming her big claws on the table, which Cat Fantastic mimicked.
"Yeah."
"Squeap." said Dave, making a pity comment in her normal, near ultrasound dialect of Southern Tstktk Tsin. "I do enjoy these weird little culture discussions. But I feel like I'm letting the side down because people keep calling me for space orc stuff."
Phalanges, mouth full of purple breadroll shrugged and gave EVA 43 a look.
43 leaned back and pondered. "OK well... look, it's going to be mostly Atrix calling, right? Humans don't need another human unless it's a specific uh..."
"Phkil" mumbled Phalanges.
"Bingo. And there's just not many Tsin doing work that needs a human. They're mostly in Med or admin where the gravity is safest."
Dave nodded again getting an idea of where this was going.
"So it's Atrix. Therefore..." said 43...
"... you just need to figure out what you can do that they can't." finished Phalanges, "And do it in the most flamboyant way possible."
---
Mothers Pride, looked down at Dave, having requested them to the bowels of the station - An area that really was the bowels as it dealt with the processing and containment of the sanitation system. Which means exactly what you think.
Actually, this was part of Dave's area of expertise, as they were a certified life support specialist like Phalanges. She had the horrifying stains on her jumpsuit to prove it.
"Oh we, er thought you were going to be a human." said Mothers Pride in very formal Tsin.
Two smaller Atrix peered around her, doing complex colour patterns with their faces.
"Well... I am for tax reasons." said Dave. "Is this anything to do with the overheating steriliser?" she asked in her natural colloquial yokel manner.
"How...? Yes, yes, it's in an awkward place and we can't get in because of the heat and the close quarters." Pride said giving Dave a peachy-green look.
"Ah, oh that's no problem. Just let me take a listen... hmmm... OK the circulator pump's not running fast enough..." she said and put her claw tips on the piping, "... yeah feel that, the vibration's about half what you would expect." she said.
The three Atrix simultaneously looked at their tablets where the diagnostics were telling them something similar, at length with less detail.
Then she paused, ears swivelling, making a high clicking sound that made the Atrix twitch minutely flush orange with each ultrasonic burst, and carefully added, "Ah you might want to step back", and rapidly knocked on the pipe as she stepped into the accessway - Too tight for an Atrix. OK for one of the slim wiggly humans, fine for the short and stocky Tsin. There was a startling gurgle and a thrumming vibration: The impellor picking up started pumping the horrible gunk through the system - the increased flow taking the building heat from the pasteurisation unit with it.
Then she shuffled back out with some new trophy stains on her overalls, flicked her ears once and said "Nice working with you, Pride." and ambled back down the corridor.
Mothers Pride and her two interns watched, astounded. They stared at each other, flickering colours on their cheeks and foreheads, amazed.
Dave, who's vision was at the other end of the spectrum to Atrix vision, and who'd been able to see the infrared coming off the machinery as a grainy glow, and who's vocalisations and hearing were good enough to do a little fuzzy ultrasound, had detected the mass choking the pipe (And gotten lucky that strategic knocking had make it move) got all the way around the bend before allowing herself some excited squeaps.
Space is big. I mean... really big. Like even bigger than a really big rock.
And boring.
But sometimes you get an encounter...
Boring is the worst part.
You can go into space and there's all sorts of cool stuff like the microgravity, the amazing view... and after a while it's just dark and the computer goes 'Boop' every quarter time unit, and this amazing experience collapses into the same space as e.g., being in a nursing home until someone tells you that you've arrived, and you can go look at cool stuff again.
Hence Interstellar Cruise Liners.
Space travel is still not cheap - even a run up and down a space elevator needs paying for, so you want to take as much cargo and paying passengers as possible.
With automated shipyards, you can just pour money and resources into building a truly huge passenger module, stack it on top of some cargo modules and clamp on as many drive units and crew modules as you need.
Load everyone in, let them ooh and ahhh at the view for a day then spin up a gateway and fire the whole thing into superluminal space and drop it out around any world you have a beacon for.
The really great thing is even if you lose the beacon in transit, you are a beacon. Just drop out and wait. Anything goes wrong, the home office can send a rescue ship after you.
In the meantime, there's the ship's amenities: The lush mossy jungle deck, the galactic beach, the games rooms, the dining groves, the on-board university - Even the theatre for live and recorded entertainment.
Still passengers like to have an experience, and so the Sunward Sail out of Ggxcha with seven hundred passengers dropped out of Superluminal space, the bow wave of exotic particles heating the backstop up to a glowing red.
The Sunward Sail dropped into a lazy orbit around an ancient planet, orbited by a big station trailing glittering wreckage - Obviously something dramatic had gone down here.
The lights were on though - So not a derelict station - and the docking was smooth, so the first set of tourists stepped onto the station, onto the Market deck.
So much to see! So much to do!
Madam Shi-shi's bakery run by a happy Tsin selling classic Tsin pastries, and exotic purple rolls with various filling and other goods.
The Top n' Charmed Quarks Bar with the scarred Atrix obviously a veteran of some war or calamity, serving exotic and colourful drinks:
"Dare you try the Human Menu?" she suggests, pulling it out. "Watch out, the Temple of Shir-li is banned in twelve systems..."
They even have a chance wheel!
Then there's Honest Gar's Genuine Human Antiquities, the wares spilling out from the shop in a riot of colours and patinas, where one can buy a genuine antique reproduction Victorian Empire TV, or a genuine Human Made Brown's Kitchen Imp that can tell you how to make a thousand and five human style recipes with a little sheet glass projection hologram of a human in glasses and red horns. So quaint!
And if you get to the end of the market, or one of the traders tips you off, you can find...
The Black Market
There's someone there, a weathered old... unless they were young... spacer, in a patched and scuffed EVA undersuit with 43 on the chest, who'll spin you unbelievable tales for a couple of creds dropped into the old cracked space helmet he keeps on the table next to him and if you ask, he'll let you in -
The back rooms are dark, rowdy, and full of the coolest stuff. There are lots of humans here, and there's an Atrix little guy, with a set of goggles, riding low on the belly of this Atrix Mech.
If you're lucky you can see one of the humans with some grudge square off agianst the little guy. He's surrounded by switches and levers, with a little pair of waldos.
The mech lurches to life, an angry display on its faceplace, growling in a rattling synthetic voice:
Combat mode! Engaged! Polaron Claws. Charging.
It's claws glowing white hot as it swings into motion, and the Human pulls a little cobbled together blaster out and takes a pot shot. The Mech lurches and sparks, warning lights flashing ominously...
The stricken mecha whirls, the little guy screaming in rage and flipping clunky archaic controls... And then when everything seems to be about to go wrong, the mech begins to spray clouds of vapour from it's vents and the alerts wind down, while the scurrilous human takes the opportunity to flee.
It's very dramatic.
And after that you can buy a souvenir arm patch of Cat Fantastic's Mecha with glow in the dark Polaron claws, before it's time to head back - Don't forget to pick up a packed lunch from Madame Shi-Shi's!
--
"Ugh." said Dave, "I don't mind the tourist run but it ruins my appetite" she muttered.
"You shouldn't snack on your own stock." says Big Ma, touching up Gondy's makeup.
Phalanges, helmet off, chin up and enjoying the cool air blower form the converted life support rig that they'd modded into the mecha grunts noncommittally.
"How are we doing boss?" Raxy asks, potting up souvenir Tsin fungus with Atrix moss and human basil.
O'Patel flashes an OK hand sign. "We are... hitting the funding goals. One more shift - This time it's for the bonus pay." he says with satisfaction and Big Ma looks around, checking everyone's ready as someone helps Cat Fantastic back into his cockpit basket and Gondy makes sure there's enough grenadine left.
