thespacemonk

Zork'ak reached Wren’ quarters just before the agreed sunlight. Xe had been reguarly meeting with Wren and walking with her even though xe now knew were the room was. Xe interpreted it as a bonding experience, and xe wanted to be part of their pack, partially to learn more about the species and partially because xe was beginning to grow fond of the humans. It was an unusual emotion for Klyls to experience.

Wren was running around the room, clothes thrown everywhere, throwing more around the space when she noticed Zork'ak standing there.

“Hold on! I can’t find my other shoe.” She continued to dig through one of the piles. “Where is the damn thing!” She tripped over something on the ground falling over.

“Wren,” Zork'ak asked from where xe stood, “why does your quarters not have organized bins?”

She was under the bed now. “Don’t need ‘em.”

“I would be happy to help you label bins for this so you could find each item.”

“Nah. I can find it.” Zork'ak was about to offer xer help again when Wren popped out from under the bed. “Found it!” She held up her shoe before pulling it onto her foot. Zork'ak could not comprehend out Wren found anything in her quarters, but xe understood little of humans. They were not the most efficient species, far from it. Their decision did not match the evolutionary process in the slightest.

Zork'ak turned away to leave the quarters when xe caught a glimpse a small table in the corner. The table had a piece one leg missing and books stacked underneath the table to level it out. “Wren, if your table is broke, we can provide a replacement.”

She slipped passed Zork'ak. “Nah. I fixed it. Let’s go.”

“I do not believe you have ‘fixed it.’” Zork'ak was not sure if this was how humans improved objects.

“Well, it works doesn’t it?”

Zork'ak thought about that one. “I suppose it must.” Wren grinned wildly, and Zork'ak remembered the other part of xer confusion over Wren’s room. “Wren?” She looked back at xem, a smirk still on her face. “Why is it that you own so many covering devices?”

“You mean clothes?” Zork'ak “shrugged.” Xe had learned how to move xer upper body in the human-like gesture. “Well, I can’t wear the same ones every day.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, they get dirty.”

“Do you often partake in activities that stain and soil your coverings?”

Wren was staring up at Zork'ak now quite confused. “Well, no, but there’s sweat and dirt and oil. So we wear different clothes every day to be clean.”

“I do not see how you secrete these fluids and they cause your clothes to become unwearable.”

“I guess. Well, you know how humans secrete oils and sweat?” Zork'ak nodded. This the Klyls did know about humans. “It gets on our clothes and so we want fresh ones instead of piling the oils and sweat on top of more.”

    “And why is it you need these coverings? Would it not be more efficient to not cover your body instead of catching the secretions and trapping them on your skin?”

“Well, on Earth, it is not allowed to be naked. Humans believe we should cover certain parts. They say it is not acceptable to see the entirety of another person if you are not like, well, kind of really good friends with them.”

Zork'ak looked down at xer body. Xe were covered in protective scales and did not see a reason to cover the body. Earth customs did make little sense. “Is it because your body is easily harmed?”

“Partly. We protect our body from cold or the sun or the rain. Different things.”

“I suppose you would need coverings considering your, um,” Zork'ak looked down at Wren,“ your skin is not particularly effective at defense.”

Wren giggled at that, for some unknown reason, and stopped in the hallway, turning left. Zork'ak followed her into the “grappling room,” where Faradae was standing in the center of the room, using his hands to fight with another individual. It was an interesting and interesting movement. When they finished and invited them in, Faradae approached Zork'ak to discuss a new tactic to introduce this class. Zork'ak quickly relayed the information, focusing on Faradae’s hands.

"Are you hurt?” Zork'ak asked after finishing his report.

Faradae looked down at his hands. There was a thin, white material wrapped around several of his fingers. “Eh. I had to tape my fingers. Hurt a few of them when I was boxing.”

“And you continue to practice with your extremities damaged?”

“I mean, it’s not that bad. It’ll heal.” Zork'ak began to wonder how all of their bones seemed to heal.

After the class, the group went to third meal, sitting at a table with Zork'ak. Carrie took a bite into her mixed spices and grains, making a face that looked quite unpleasant.

“Oh, that smells terrible.”

Adam leaned over breathing it in deeply. “You’re right.” He proceeded to take a bite. “Pretty bad, too.”

Several of the other humans passed the bowl around to smell and taste the food, each announcing what the others had already claimed: that it both smelled and tasted bad.

“If the food is unpleasant, xe can find you something more suitable.”

Carrie shook her head, reclaiming her bowl, and continued to eat the substance. “It’s not that bad.”

“Did you not all agree that the food was not to your liking?”

Carrie shrugged, shoveling more in her mouth. “The more you eat, the better it gets.” Adam leaned over to steal another spoonful and agreed that it did taste better the second time.

“Why is it that you all feel the need to smell and eat the food. Do you not trust Carrie’s opinion?”

Steve laughed. “We just like to also experience it.”

“You like to experience something you know you will not enjoy.”

Steve and Adam looked at each. “Well, yeah.” Adam said.

Zork'ak was continuing to learn that the Klyl’s knew nothing about these humans.

---

Original Author - nonbinarygaymergirl

Original Post Tumblr

Journal of an Alien Diplomat

Entry One

The delegation will meet for the first time today. I'm keeping this record as ordered. though I don't see the point. The humans aren't exactly reclusive, but the hoops they made themselves jump through before they even returned our first contact message were absurd. I heard second-hand that they nearly went into a civil war over the possibility of our message being bait for some sort of trap. Are they just naturally paranoid, or have they run into some other species of non-humans that gave them trouble? I rather suspect the former, their military, for just having one star system, is pretty numerous.

Entry Two

The humans sent up some civilian diplomat instead of a military leader. I was surprised: they seem to value martial prowess fairly highly, so why do they have a civilian leader? Apparently, this guy was selected after a brief voting period. which wasn't made open to the general population, but was only open to national leaders. That's troubling: national leaders in a spacefaring species? That can only mean delays in the future.

Entry Three

A few more diplomats came up today. with huge stacks of portable computers. Our translators already added the one language they have used so far to the universal system, so we didn't have any trouble deciphering the data from the computers. Apparently they want to know as much as possible about us, and in exchange, they provided a bunch of information about themselves, their history, some more language dialects we didn't have covered yet, and some of their own starmaps. I was stunned. Why are they being so trusting? They were on the verge of a civil war when we contacted them.

No. it was because we contacted them.

Entry Four

I know it's been several weeks since I last updated this thing, but the human's data is taking up all of my time. Apparently they have been in a state of what we would consider constant civil war since their people evolved far enough to grasp fire. Over the dumbest things, too, from religion to territory. Nearly a fifth of all of their most important technology, including their relativistic drive technology, was derived from something designed to kill other humans. No wonder they're being so open, our people wouldn't engage in an internal war on the scale these humans have, ever. They've killed more of themselves in the last thousand years than my people have ever died. Total.

Entry Five

The ninth week of the contact meeting is ending now. The reactions from the humans on their worlds have been more interesting than all the data they gave us, by now: they're starting to get back to routine. They have their own planet, another planet, and about five moons in their system colonized to some degree, and each has a distinct culture and way of life. The reaction on each when we made contact was the same: they flipped out, and their peoples were seized by everything ranging from panic to joy. But now? Their reactions have stabilized to the extent that I don't think we're going to get a reaction out of them unless we create some further provocation. The most-read news articles on their electronic communication networks are more about domestic problems and entertainment and their economies than they are about us. Are humans just more comfortable in routines, or are they frustrated with our lack of diplomatic progress? I'm confused. The humans I've met seem unconcerned, but I know the Ambassador from our people is getting worried.

Entry Six

I'm relieved. The human ambassador met me personally, today, informally, here on the ship. He said that he could tell that I was getting worried about the negotiations, and he wanted to address me personally. I asked how he could tell I was worried when he had only met our species for the first time less than one hundred Solar cycles ago, and he replied that it was all part of being a diplomat. I stated outright that I was confused by the seeming lack of disruption on the part of the people below. He said that there were plenty of people who were disrupted, but that most of the humans in the system had already decided to wait and see what the outcome of the negotiations were before doing anything. ‘After all,” he said, “even if my species becomes an active member of the galactic community, most humans will stay right here, living their lives. We'll be affected by galactic politics, new technology, and colonization, even assuming that we could find new Earth-type worlds out there, but most will want to stay right where they are.” I asked him how he could say that when so many of his people had colonized the rest of the system, and he laughed. I think. “It's completely different when you can see Earth out your window."

Entry Seven

Things have picked up so much. We got our translators working to the effect that nuance of speech, not just content, can be translated appropriately. The human ambassador's speech and conversation were suddenly so much clearer. To his credit, he told us that he had been refraining from common speech, slang, and aphorism as much as possible. “I wouldn't want to use a saying or phrase that had a clear meaning to another human, but made no sense — or worse. insulted — one of your people. Now. I can speak freely.” I have to wonder if this faster-paced dialogue will negatively affect the negotiations. The Ambassador broached the toughest topic today: Faster Than Light travel.

Entry Eight

Generally, species are content to create FTL on their own, before they even contact us, or vice-versa. Humans are the exception. They colonized their entire star system, with seven inhabited bodies and over a thousand mined, explored, probed, or mapped bodies with no habitation in their system. So much of their population lives in their orbital platforms that their own homeworld barely even supports two thirds of their species. They did this without FTL. Clearly, the fact that they have reacted peacefully to our presence rather than precipitously fighting or ignoring us indicates that they are mature enough to handle Faster Than Light travel...but I am privately concerned. One of the human diplomats has already begun copying our speech and movement patterns. I found myself opening up to him without even realizing it until afterwards. He must be doing it on purpose, to set us at ease. After one hundred twenty of their days, they're copying the behavior of their first alien contact. This is one of their finest diplomatic minds, of course, but still. If they can do it with behavior, can they do it with technology? I suspect they will ask for a working FTL drive to study in their next meeting.

Entry Nine

I am vindicated, it seems. I spoke my concerns to the Ambassador today, and he agreed that there would be no gifting of FTL technology to the humans, that they would have to earn it on their own. The humans would react poorly, I guessed, but tactfully, as at least a few of them seem to genuinely care what we think. I was right, naturally. The human ambassador asked that their people be given a working FTL drive to reverse-engineer, in exchange for an unspecified piece of technology of theirs. Their technology, the Ambassador quickly replied, was inferior to ours in every way save communications, and we had no need for their communications technology. Communicating faster than light is something we can do already: communicating instantaneously anywhere in their system, as they do, is a wondrous piece of technology, but not necessary for our people. The human ambassador reacted with shock and surprise immediately, and then quickly became suspicious. I think he may have gleaned that we have discussed this amongst ourselves. How? I can not guess. We spoke of other things, and the ambassador of the humans seemed mollified by the discussions that followed. Will he broach it again? Probably.

Entry Ten

The humans surprise us. It is exactly half of one year after first contact, and life, as I before noted, continues. They are fully one third finished with another of their orbital habitation platforms, and we were given a tour of the construction site. Huge robotic construction devices smelt down chunks of ore from the many, many asteroid and lunar mining platforms the humans have throughout their system, ferried to them by relativistic drive-powered ore haulers. The slag is then fed into their forges and reduced to elemental purity, and the refined ore is then crafted, still in space, into modules, which are then attached to the frame of the space installation. The elemental slag is mostly hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and silicon, in this system. They use these things to make air and computers, apparently, which are then used in the construction of their platforms. I am astounded. They have created the most efficient industrial complex we have ever seen...by necessity. They lack FTL, so in the absence of easily-reachable resource deposits that they can mine on their colonies, they simply process asteroids into something useful. Another reason to deprive them of FTL? If they can prosper in such paucity. how will they react to plenty?

Part 2

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Thanks to u/Prohibitorum for original transcription. Original Image

Aliens are astonished that humans consider anything they like/love as their children.

• A dangerous predator? No It's Human Steve's fur baby.
• A tree? No that's Clyde. The baby of the Human who lives nearby.

Let me be clear, under no circumstances will you ever hurt the "babies" adopted by humans. If you do, I dont know who you are.

Credit to u/IUpvoteUsernames for this text.

---

I was told that if I did things right, they wouldn't remember me. They wouldn't know my name, my age, my home, nothing. Not a damn thing. I'm not exactly sure I pulled that off. I think a few know my name, I think I might even be some kind of legend. But I still think I did things right.

I was among the first ten thousand humans that volunteered for the ISPF - the Interstellar Peace Fleet. we had just been invited into the fold of a vibrant galactic community, and while no one paid us much mind or expected too much from us, we expected a lot from ourselves. Unfortunately, the human body is only so strong. By week three, seven thousand humans had washed out, and that was before any of the real physical training started.

Humans are small compared to most everyone else - in the ISPF, anyway. Hulking monsters exist within the fleets ranks, beings that could do my workload twice over. Some did. See, the range of species in the ISPF is far too diverse for any standardized training regimen. The instructors are as smart as they are mean; each and every single one of them knows the anatomy and biology of every single species in the fleet, and tailors the training towards individuals. A lot of guys in my division got the kind of training that would kill a human in twenty minutes. The instructors drove me almost to death, but even next to my shipmates, it seemed like my training was a breeze.

They resented me for it too. They were doing twice the work, if not more, than I was doing but I still got to stand at attention beside them. I still ate in the galley beside them, I still marched beside them. I could see the question in their eyes every time I met one of their gazes; why does this puny thing get to hang with us? And I'll be honest, I asked myself the same question too. I may be working at my maximum capacity, but my maximum is some other guys fifty percent. Who would want me fighting by his side when he could have the centipede dude that can climb walls or the red gorilla-lizard thing that could bite a slab of concrete to pieces?

I got the answer to that question by week seven. By now, rumor had gotten around I was the last human still in training; all the others had washed out. Anyway, a new obstacle reared its head for us. In the human training camps, there's always that wooden wall. You see it for the first time and it looks like it's fifty meters tall and you don't know how you're gonna get over it. They've got something like that in the ISPF. We called it the morphing wall. It changed shape and height and texture based on whatever species was currently using it. The centipede guy, for example, he was the first one up. Soon as be touched the wall it turned as smooth as glass with barely a bump on it and arched over him so that he'd have to climb upside down half way up. It took him twenty minutes to scrabble his way and even then, he fell off when climbing upside down. Another one of my shipmates went up, Archopex, a sort of bird-looking thing with mean-looking talons. As soon as he touched the wall it turned into smooth rock. He would dig his talons in to make footholds. Even with that advantage, the rock was too hard for him to dig in. He fell off ten meters up and the safety tether stopped his fall.

Then it was my turn. I felt everyone's eyes on me like lasers. They must've thought I was gonna get a fence or something. Maybe a little green hedge for me to hop over. I was actually kind of expecting that compared to the hell I just saw the other guys go through. I touched the wall. It didn't change, not at first. Then it just went crazy, first it was glass, then it was spiked like a sea urchin, then it changed to vines and stone. It kept changing shape, never settling on anything. I heard someone yell for something but I didn't pay it much mind.

Finally the morphing wall had found the shape for me. It was a bare rock face with crystals that crept up like veins along the surface. The crystals were hard as metal and cut my hands very easily. There weren't many handholds for me besides the crystals. But I wouldn't shy away, this was my wall now, my chance to prove myself, I jumped up and grabbed hold. Only three meters up and I had already gashed my hand. By the tenth meter, I had ripped off two fingernails. The crystals were the only real way up, the handholds in the cool rock were a welcome reprieve from the hellish pain the crystals brought, but were too far apart to reliably traverse without touching the razor-edged crystals. I looked down and saw the blood trail from my hands had hit the bottom. By the time I had reached the top my arms were noodles, my hands sliced to ribbons. The way down was just as hard as up. I was nearly in tears from the pain. I collapsed onto the ground from two meters up, barely breaking my fall with my hands and legs as the safety tether snapped taught.

I tried to get up but I couldn't. I think I had lost too much blood to really think straight. A corpsman was called over, fixed up my hands as best he could without taking me to medical and then stood me up. I heard the clacking of my instructor's boots as he approached. I didn't have the energy to even look up. I tried putting my legs together, tried to stand as straight as I could, but I couldn't look up. All I saw were his boots pointed opposite mine.

"What the fuck is wrong with you recruit?" he shouted. It took a lifetime but I finally lifted my head. I didn't dare meet his gaze, but I swear to this day I saw a bit of pride in his eyes. I was his recruit after all. At the time I didn't understand, something he must've sensed. He pointed to one of my shipmates; a blue and green 2.5 meter tall humanoid with six arms big enough to tear me in half. "That was his wall, recruit" said my instructor, "his wall. I yelled a hundred times for you to fucking stop. You hard of hearing recruit?" I lazily shook my head. "Get the fuck back in line."

The rest of the day was uneventful. Some people made it over the wall, some didn't. It wasn't until lights out that night my shipmates clued me in. The centipede guy told me the instructor only yelled once, and it was for a technician to come calibrate the wall, since no human had ever touched it before. As soon as I grabbed hold of the first piece of crystal, the instructor didn't say another word and motioned for the technician to stop. When I asked how it could've been the other guy's wall since he hadn't touched it, someone chimed in that human DNA most closely matched Jolako DNA, so that's what the wall gave me.

No one would openly pat me on the back or anything but after that, I never saw the question it their eyes anymore. I had a seat at the table, a spot in the formation, I had earned my place.

Four weeks later, I was the only human at the graduation. During the first year of my tour I learned five thousand other humans had passed through training since my graduation. Not a single one of them ever climbed a wall meant for humans.

Humans might not be better than anyone else, but we rise to the challenge like everyone else. We can fight alongside the bad-asses of the galaxy, and they would be glad to have us fight alongside them.

Reddit link https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/6irjdl/perserverance/