A lot of āhumans are weirdā posts play with the idea that humans are one of the few species that actually evolved as a predator and, as such, we are unusually strong and fastā but what if weāre not.
What if, to the majority of species in the galaxy, ten feet tall is unusually shortā it basically only happens due to rare genetic conditionsā and the average human is basically cat sized or smaller?
Instead of being terrified by our strength, the aliensā most pressing concern is how exactly theyāre going to communicate with us when weāre all the way down on the ground.
There are experiments, with aliens crouching low or humans standing on high platformsā but it usually ends up being either uncomfortable for the alien or dangerous for the human, or both, and just generally impractical for everyone.
But, while the diplomats and politicians are trying to figure out a dignified and simple solution, the ordinary people who actually have to work with the aliens have found one. Humans are, generally, pretty good climbers, and most species have conveniently places scales, feathers, fur or clothing that can act as a hand or foothold. Sure, some humans have a fear of heights, but those arenāt typically the ones going into space. Besides, climbing on a living alien often feels safer than climbing up a rock or somethingā at least you know youāve got somebody to catch you.
Soon it becomes accepted that thatās the way humans travel with aliensā up high, easy to see and hard to tread on (there were quite a fewā¦ near misses, in the first few meetings between humans and aliens), balanced on somebodyās shoulder like the overgrown monkeys that we are.
Many humans see this as kind of an insult and absolutely refuse to go along with it, but they arenāt the ones who end up spending a lot of time with aliensā itās just too inconvenient to talk to somebody all the way down on the ground. The ones that do best are the ones who just treat it like itās normal, allowing themselves to be carried (at least, itās ācarryingā when the aliens are within earshot. Among themselves, most humans jokingly refer to it as āridingā), and passing on tips to their friends about the best ways to ride on different species without damaging feathers, or stepping on sensitive spots (or, in at least one case, ending up with a foot full of poisonous spinesā¦).
The reason they donāt feel patronised by this is that they know, and they know that nearly everyone else in the galaxy knows, that humans are not just pets.
After all, youād be surprised when a small size comes in handy.
Need somebody to look at the wiring in a small and fairly inaccessible area of the ship? Ask a human.
Need somebody to fix this fairly small and very detailed piece of machinery? Ask a human, theyāre so small that their eyes naturally pick up smaller details.
Trapped under rubble and need somebody to crawl through a small gap and get help? Ask a humanā most can wriggle through any gap that they can fit their head and shoulders through.
If youāre a friend, humans can be very useful. If, on the other hand, youāre an enemyā¦
Rumours spread all around the galaxy, of ships that threatened humans or human allies and started experiencing technical problems. Lights going off, wires being cutā in some cases, the cases where the threats were more than just words and humans or friends of humans were killed, life support lines have been severed, or airlocks have mysteriously malfunctioned and whole crews have been sucked out into space.
If the subject comes up, most humans will blame it on āgremlinsā and exchange grim smiles when theyāre other species friends arenāt looking.
By this point, most ships have a crew of humans, whether they like it or not. Lots of humans, young ones generally, the ones who want to see a bit of the universe but donāt have the money or connections to make it happen any other way, like to stowaway on ships. Theyāll hang around the space ports, wait for a shipās door to open and dart on in. The average human can have quite a nice time scurrying around in the walls of an alien ship, so long as theyāre careful not to dislodge anything important.
Normally nobody notices them, and the ones that do tend not Ā to say anythingā itās generally recognised that having humans on your ship is good luck.
If there are humans on your ship, they say, then anything you lose will be found within a matter of days, sometimes even in your quarters; any minor task you leave outā some dishes that need to be cleaned, a report that needs to be spellchecked, some calculations that need to be doneā will be quickly and quietly completed during the night; any small children on the ship, who are still young enough to start to cry in the night, will be soothed almost before their parents even wake, sometimes even by words in their own tongue, spoken clumsily through human vocal chords. If any of the human are engineers (and a lot of them are, and still more of them arenāt, but have picked up quite a few tricks on their travels from humans who are) then minor malfunctions will be fixed before you even notice them, and your ship is significantly less likely to experience any major problems.
The humans are eager to earn their keep, especially when the more grateful aliens start leaving out dishes of human-safe foods for them.
This, again, is considered good luckā especially since the aliens who arenāt kind to the humans often end up losing things, or waking up to find that their fur has been cut, or the report they spent hours on yesterday has mysteriously been deleted.
To human crew members, who work on alien ships out in the open, and have their names on the crew manifest and everything, these small groups of humans are colloquially referred to as āshipās ratsā. Thereās a sort of uneasy relationship between the two groups. On the one hand, the crew members regard the shipās rats as spongers and potential nuisancesā on the other hand, most human crew members started out as shipās rats themselves, and now benefit from the respect (and more than a little awe) that the shipās rats have made most aliens feel for humans. The general arrangement is that shipās rats try to avoid ships with human crew members and, when they canāt, then they make sure to stay out of the crew membersā way, and the crew members who do see one make sure not to mention them to any alien crew members.
The aliens who know, on the other hand, have gotten into the habit of not calling them by nameā mainly because theyāre shaky as the legality of this arrangement, and donāt want to admit that anythingās going on. Instead they talk about āthe little peopleā or āthe ones in the wallsā or, more vaguely, āThemā.
Their human friendsā balancing on their shoulders, occasionally scurrying down and arm so as to get to a table, or jumping from one personās shoulder to another, in order to better follow the conversationā laugh quietly to themselves when they hear this.
Back before the first first contact, lot of people on Earth thought that humans would become space orcs. Little did they know, theyād actually end up as space fae.
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