Another humans are weird space orcs idea because I really like thinking about it. What if aliens have no idea how to hide their emotions? Like, they suck at poker because they can never keep a straight face or anything. or, on a darker note, their ship is hijacked and they can’t keep the fear out of their faces, but all the humans look cold and emotionless to them. Other aliens hating having to bargain with humans becase we can bluff and keep our emotions in check so well, but when they get frustrated it’s all over. Pirates threaten the space ship and they send the human to do negotiations, and the pirate talking is super confused because no matter what threat he makes, the human just doesn’t seem to be fazed one bit.
Someone please, feel free to add to this, I love to see what else people come up with!
Okay, but now I’m thinking about how this ability is used in the context of animal training/hostage negotiation/teaching/customer service. Not just looking stone-faced, but completely lying with affect, body-language and vocal tone to seem calm, friendly, relaxed and in control of the situation in order to build rapport with an animal or person and to de-escalate aggression in a situation.
Proximity alarms start going off. A vessel is approaching.
Camilian: <looks at viewscreen> “Oh zark it, it’s the Parg.”
Camilian: <shudders>: “The Parg. Remember the civilisations living on those five planets Lei-ward of Helios 6?”
Human: “No? I thought that system was empty of sentient life.”
Camilian: “Exactly.”
Human: “…ah.” <looks at flashing lights on console> “They appear to be hailing us.”
<Camilian and Egrat scuttle backwards away from console.>
Human: “…thanks a bunch, guys.” <presses hail pick-up button> “This is Communications Officer Haley Makini of the Starboat Fribling, how may I help you?”
Parg ship: “This is Zek of Parg.”
Human: “Hello Zek! How are you feeling this day-cycle?”
Parg Ship: “…”
Human: “I for one have been missing my family lately, I got a vidcall from my little sister and my cousins – same-generation kin-people – and they told me that cousin Wendy is getting married to her girlfriend Mila, isn’t that nice? So I’m really hoping I can make it to the wedding – that’s romantic lifebond ceremony – because otherwise they’d all be sad, they told me so. Do you have any family – lifemates or brood or other kin-people back in your home-system Zek?”
Parg Ship: “…Zek of Parg has brood of five. All Smallings, but soon Biglings. Soon.”
Human: “Oh! You must be so proud of them!”
Parg Ship: “… Yah. Good future replacements for Parent-bodies for Glory of Parg.”
Human: “And that’s all any of us could want! Imagine how sad our kin would be if either of us were to fail to make it back home! That’s why I want to help your ship Zek, in any way we can. The Fribling is only a small ship, but we have some surplus goods and skills to offer if you need anything from us.”
<long pause>
<No one on board the Fribling speaks, but Egrat has anxiously chewed their claws to the quick>
Parg Ship: “Have Lucrum cable? Parg Ship underengine in poor condition, jury-rig not hold, need hitch-tow to Dellar System.”
Human: “Oh, that’s only 8 parsecs away. Sure, hah, we can manage that. No problem.”
<78 minutes later, after the two ships have been attached via Lucrum cable>
Parg Ship: “…What kind you?”
Human: “Huh? ….oh, I’m a human. I’m from Sol 3, Earth.”
<Human sinks to ground, hand on chest, hyperventilating slightly>
Human: “HolyfuckhowdidIpullthatoffohholyfuck!”
Camilian: “Wait, you were scared too?”
Human: <glaring> “Cam, we’ve worked together how long? I’d have thought that by now you’d trust my threat assessment abilities. Phew! That one was so close I felt the breeze going past.”
Egrat: “…how. How did you just do that?”
Human: “It’s not hard. Stay calm, just keep smiling, and build rapport by pretending to care about their problems, and meanwhile showing that you’re a real thinking being. Tends to defuse situations rather than escalate them.”
Egrat: “…I think I saw what you did, but where did you learn how to do that?”
I’m usually pretty particular about the sorts of traits that get assigned as humanity’s “special thing” in sci-fi settings, but I have to admit that I have a weakness for settings where the thing humanity is known for is something tiny and seemingly inconsequential that it wouldn’t normally occur to you to think of as a distinctive trait.
Like, maybe we have a reputation as a bunch of freaky nihilists because we’re the only species that naturally has the capacity to be amused by our own misfortune.
Alien: Why are you happy? You’ve been seriously injured!
Human: *struggling to control laughter* Yeah, but I can imagine what that must have looked like from the outside, and it’s pretty hilarious.
Alien: …
Captain XXlr’y: First Officer Jane The Human, your olifactory protuberance is severely damaged! Why is this a matter for mirthful celebration???
First Officer Jane The Human: A SPARKLY LITTLE POMERANIAN THING WITH A GODDAMN UNICORN HORN CHASED ME STRAIGHT INTO A WALL! OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT? I RAN STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL.
Captain XXlr’y: Yes I just observed this sequence of events! It was terrible!
First Officer Jane The Human: OKAY WHO GOT THAT ON CAMERA, I WANNA SEE.
Captain XXlr’y: So you more fully understand that this is a situation you should never get into again?
First Officer Jane The Human: SO I CAN SEND THE VIDEO TO MY MOM!
Captain XXlr’y: For… for the solicitation of maternal concern…?
First Officer Jane The Human: NO, BECAUSE SHE’LL THINK IT’S HILARIOUS TOO.
viewings of the ancient human art based seemingly entierly around purposefully inducing misfortune are a source of constant xeno-anthropological arguments. As near as anyone can discern, these acts are some kind of core human performance form- so meaningful to their culture that recording these acts was very nearly the first concern on the invention of moving visual media.
Somewhat more disconcerting is the fact that these aren’t just recordings of accidental happenstance, but carefully choreographed, practiced, and refined to such a degree that there are nearly species wise recognizable symbols and routines performed.
There are thesis’ on ‘large wedding cake destroyed’, and hotly argued debate on the purpose of ‘Jackass’
Reblogging this again to suggest a different view of humanity, one where it’s not that we find injuring ourselves to be hilarious is the “defining quirk”. No, this one’s got to do with why you always want a human engineer or programmer (or both) if your ship’s going to be within two parsecs of a human.
Humans break things. They don’t mean to, and it can’t just be their curiosity – other species are curious, but they don’t break things like humans do. Humans make things stop working by trying to do things that they were never meant to do in the first place. I should know, I’ve seen it firsthand – one of the stubborn little bastards decided he was going to get the holodeck to show him an outdated media format called a “Vee-Ay-Chess”, and he spent twenty chrons trying to fix it after it started belching black smoke – and then he was at it AGAIN! And don’t even get me started on how he almost wiped our nav computer to try and play something called “Wolfenstein”.
But the scary part is, for every time it fails, there’s three times it works. There was a time when our warp drive broke down. You know, it was a Caledon Industries model, they’re cheap but they like to break. The problem was that it was a Tritium Reactron Fitting, and it got wedged in the back. Like, “take the ship apart and put it back together to get the fitting out” wedged. We were convinced we were going to be stuck for a few days before our signal got noticed.
And then the human – same one who broke the holodeck twice with his Vee-Ay-Chess crap and almost wiped all our nav data with his Wolfenstein game – he goes into the engine room and begins calling over the intercom for random tools, trash, parts of other things that were working just fine. He spends maybe twelve chrons in there, and when he comes out, he tells us to fire up warp. It sails us right to the nearest star system, no problems. And then the chief engineer takes a look at what he’s done. It looks like – I kid you not – it looks like the entrails of a Galthan Wingbeast. One that got splattered by a bomb.
Says he “jury rigged” it, whatever the hell that means, and we should get it replaced before it breaks again. And that’s why I never go anywhere without a human anymore.
Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles,
tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they
don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight
them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit
space-magic countermeasures out of their arses – but they’re as likely
as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the
process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and
accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually
happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.
So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.
Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.
THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING
vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core
humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast
vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast
humans: hahaha yeah
humans: it did tho
vsa: IT EXPLODED
humans: it exploded twice as fast
I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.
Yeah, I love this.
Reminds me of the thing I wrote a while back about Humans in high fantasy realms – they’re basically Team Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This.
Impulsive, passionate to a fault, the social structures they build to try and regulate this hotheadedness ironically creates even greater levels of sheer bull-headedness. Even their “cooler” heads take action in months or weeks.
All their great heroes of the past were impossibly rash by galactic standards. Humans Just Go With It, which is their great flaw but also their greatest strength.
klingons: okay we don’t get it
vulcan science academy: get what
klingons: you vulcans are a bunch of stuffy prisses but you’re also tougher, stronger, and smarter than humans in every single way
klingons: why do you let them run your federation
vulcan science academy: look
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores they don’t do experiments on one and save the other for if the first one blows up
vulcan science academy: this is a species where if you give them two warp cores, they will ask for a third one, immediately plug all three into each other, punch a hole into an alternate universe where humans subscribe to an even more destructive ideological system, fight everyone in it because they’re offended by that, steal their warp cores, plug those together, punch their way back here, then try to turn a nearby sun into a torus because that was what their initial scientific experiment was for and they didn’t want to waste a trip.
vulcan science academy: they did that last week. we have the write-up right here. it’s getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how.
vulcan science academy: this is why we let them do whatever the hell they want.
klingons: …. can we be a part of your federation
Come to think of it, I mean. Look at the “first human warp drive” thing in the movie. That was… Not how Vulcans would have done it.
you know what the best evidence for this is? Deep Space 9 almost never broke down. minor malfunctions that irritated O’Brien to hell and back, sure, but almost none of the truly weird shit that befell Voyager and all the starships Enterprise. what was the weirdest malfunction DS9 ever had? the senior staff getting trapped as holosuite characters in Our Man Bashir, and that was because a human decided to just dump the transporter buffer into the station’s core memory and hope everything would work out somehow, which is a bit like swapping your computer’s hard drive out for a memory card from a PlayStation 2 and expecting to be able to play a game of Spyro the Dragon with your keyboard and mouse.
you know what, I’m not done with this post. let’s talk about the Pegasus. the USS Fucking Pegasus,
testbed for the first Starfleet cloaking device. here we have a handful
of humans working in secret to develop a cloaking device in violation
of a treaty with the Romulans. they’re playing catchup trying to develop
a technology other species have had for a century. and what do they do?
do they decide to duplicate a Romulan cloaking device precisely, just
see if they can match what other species have? nope. they decide, hey,
while we’re at it, while we’re building our very first one of these things, just to find out if this is possible, let’s see if we can make this thing phase us out of normal space so we can fly through planets while we’re invisible.
“but why” said the one Vulcan in the room.
“because that would fucking rule” said the humans, high-fiving each other and slamming cans of 24th-century Red Bull.
there
must be like twenty different counselling groups for non-human
engineering students at Starfleet Academy, and every week in every
single one of them someone walks in and starts up with a story like “our
assignment was to repair a phaser emitter and my one human classmate
built a chronometric-flux toaster that toasts bread after you’ve eaten
it.”
Humans get mildly offended by the way they are presented in non-human media.
Like: “Guys, we totally wouldn’t do that!” But this always fails to get much traction, because the authors can always say: “You totally did.”
“That was ONE TIME.”
There’s that movie where humans invented vaccines by just testing them on people. Or the one about those two humans who invented powered flight by crashing a bunch of prototypes. Or the one about electricity.
And human historians go, “Oh, uh, this is historically accurate, but also kind of boring.” To which the producers respond: “How is doing THIS CRAZY THING boring????????”
There are entire serieses of horror movies where the premise is “We stopped paying attention to the human and ey found the technology.”
reblog for new meta.
RE that last line: McGuyver.
“MacGuyver” is the equivalent of Vulcan vintage human horror television.
during orientation at a human college, vulcans are presented with a list of swear words.
“what is the word ‘fuck’ for,” the innocent young vulcans want to know. “surely there are more logical intensity modifiers.”
“yeah, you’d think so,” say the weary, jaded vulcan professors. “you’d really fucking think so.”
there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.
This is why the Federation is the only organisation to ever stand a chance against the Borg
The Borg can adapt to the brilliant millitary strategies of the Romulan Star Empire, the Klingons and even the cold logical intellectual prowess of the vulcans
The Borg weren’t prepared for a starship captain to lure them into his 50′s noir detective holo-novel and then machine gun them to death with a weapon made out of hard light
This thread is amazing. Even as a baby star trek nerd that only really knows the new movies.
“there is a phrase in vulcan for ‘the particular moment you understand what the word ‘fuck’ is for’.”
I just died
I lost my shit at “toasts your bread after you’ve eaten it”
Oh please please someone write this
the best thing about this post is that the way it’s written – by multiple human authors getting over-excited about ridiculous, wonderful, impossible ideas that ought by rights to be terrifying – is itself proof that we’re like this
With pack-bonding and stuff … what if humans are the only species who developed body language as an instinctual means of communication?
Humans are known for being terrifying in battles … especially if there’s more than one of them. They can coordinate their attacks without talking to each other. They only need to glance at each other and they know when and where to go. When asked about this mystical near-telepathy, most just make one of their strange movements-with-meanings called a “shrug” [note: a “shrug” suggests confusion or uncertainty] and say it has something to do with “knowing” the other person.
Sensible species explain what they’re doing when they want to work together. Yet once when when we were attacked by pirates, the two human guards barely said a few words. One whispered “Watch the green one.” – barely even a proper order! – and that was all they needed to charge forward.
They didn’t even need to shout their plans to each other when the two Z’arzz started the pincer movement they’d discussed before boarding. One human just stopped, the other hadn’t even asked her to distract them, she just did it! Charging forward and causing chaos almost immediately was a massive advantage for us. With only the cargo crew of a food shipment, it got us the extra time we needed to plan.
After we came to an agreement and took over, seeing them “team up” against the massive Grulnar (also known as “the green one”) was incredible – a reminder of the power of pack predator species. They barely even spoke and yet it was like they were wearing comms and voice-silencers. They moved like a hive-mind species, but with the tenacity and grace of humans to boot. I would have excreted in fear had I seen such powers used against me.
Okay, so we’ve talked about inanimate
objects like Stabby the space roomba. Fair enough, the aliens think,
after adjusting their mental frameworks a little. It moves around,
it’s got some intelligence,
humans just aren’t very good at distinguishing ‘animate’ and
‘inanimate’ and will pack-bond with anything that moves. Weird, but
okay.
But then:
Human Sashi: What
are you doing??!
Alien fusid:
…Eating the first meal of the day? I believe you call it
‘breakfast’?
Human Sashi: No, I
mean… you’re using my cup!
Alien fusid: Dishes
were provided by the space station.
Human Sashi: Well,
some of us brought our own – my friend doesn’t like them; too
standardized. But that’s not what I was talking about. That’s my cup!
Alien fusid: I
apologize, but it looks exactly like the other cups.
Human Sashi: No it
doesn’t.
Alien fusid: …What?
Human Sashi: It’s
got a chip in the corner, see?? I mean, it’s fine, but just… don’t
do it again, okay.
Alien fusid: I had
the strangest interaction with a human today.
Alien Wimu: The
humans are quite odd. What occurred?
Alien fusid: It had
pack bonded to a cup.
Alien Wimu: …a
cup?
Alien fusid: Yes.
It is a regulation cup, but it has a chip. Apparently, we are not to
touch it.
Alien Wimu: …
Alien fusid: …
Alien Wimu,
meditatively: The humans are certainly very, very odd.
Humans are weird idea: malicious compliance. The aliens either do as they’re told or place an objection if there’s a specific reason, and once ordered to perform a task they do it to the best of their ability because their authority is logical and fair. Then humans show up and start disobeying in a way that is technically correct and they have no idea what to do.
“Human, you were instructed to bring ration packs to the storage bay.”
“I did.”
“There are only two ration packs here.”
“You didn’t say how many you wanted.”
“Why would I request only two? The ship needs to be restocked with supplies for a five-cycle mission.”
“Hey, I’m not a mind reader. You’re going to have to be more specific.”
*sigh* “Human, please bring the entire pallet of ration packs into the storage bay.”
…
“Human, why is the station’s luggage transport vehicle still in the storage bay?”
“You wanted it taken back out?“
“The vehicle belongs to the station. It doesn’t even fit in the storage bay.”
“Hey, after Tau Alpha you told me not to do anything unless I was ordered to. Nobody told me the forklift needed to be put away again.”
*alien turns rather purplish and makes a low hissing noise*
“…If you want me to put the forklift back you’re gonna need to give me an order, sir.”
*more hissing*
you ever read or watch something and something happens that you just, like, viscerally dislike and it screws you up in a “oh my god no” kind of way
So after a talk with @ii-thiscat-ii we realized how weird music could be to a species that doesn’t have music. Think of it, what is music, it’s sound organized in specific patterns that evokes emotions in us. Our brains are wired to recognize music. Just tap on the table with our fingers and if we do it regularly enough most people can recognize it as a tune.
But imagine how it would be for a species that have no concept of music. Like they could probably wrap their heads around the idea that we find certain sounds more appealing than others, and that we have tools specifically made to create these appealing sounds.
But imagine them trying to make sense of a movie soundtrack. Like, why is there this sound? There’s no sound like that in an abandoned house? What do you mean it adds atmosphere? Is that what you hear when you go into a place like that?
What about an alien attending an event where they sing the national anthem. Suddenly every human is standing up, and they’re all acting serious, and suddenly they all start making the same sounds, all at once, in unison. They’re also saying the same words, but they’re not saying it the same way they say it when they speak. The words are recognizable, but the pitch and tone are completely different. What’s going on!?
We also have different types of music for different occasions. We have cheery music, dark music, sad music, and so many different varieties of each. The aliens have no idea how we figure this out, or how we can have “cheery” music with accompanying words that are sad.
What if because they didn’t evolve to use music, other species of aliens can’t even really hear the components of music. Like, they can tell that two pieces of music sound different, they can’t really hear things like beat, tune or melody. Or at least they don’t recognize such thing as musical. Like, a human is tapping out a tune on a tabletop and the alien at the table thinks they are trying to communicate through code or something. They know there is a pattern to the tapping but can’t figure it out. It probably blows a few minds that we have our own languages that exist specifically to record these strange sounds humans like to make.
What if species that have dances can’t understand why humans need these strange sounds in order to dance and can’t really see the connection between music and dance that humans seem to have.
What if a crew of a ship suddenly hear the strangest sounds. None of them recognize the sound, but its coming from the engine room so that can’t possibly be good. They burst into the engine room expecting the worst, only to find the human crew members having a jam session.
What if aliens can understand that we would make specific tools to make specific sounds, but a bewildered at the sheer variety of means we will use to generate it. From electronic speakers, to fine instruments, to an upturned pot and a half-empty bottle, to our own voice and bodies.
What if the only thing that blows them away is the fact that one human can start up a tune and the other humans can pick it up and add to it and still create something more or less harmonious.
Continuing with my Humans are Space Orc’s thoughts, I was thinking about how children might interact with Aliens, especially small children who have yet to learn to speak in full sentences and then this monstrosity of an idea came to me;
[putting OP’s under-cut text here because its adorable]
Rharzokk Dhudzug was a mighty warrior among his people. He had fought in countless battles across the Galaxy, won the admiration of his people and been given every medal the Galactic Alliance had. But war came to an end and he returned to civilian life, not easy for a Grungrak, but there was no other choice.
Finding work was hard. He was nearly four meters tall, with thick fur and four massive arms. His stature was stocky and heavy, and many were intimidated by more than just his build. He had retractable spikes fill with a paralyzing fluid, when startled, these spikes came out and stabbed people, and many Aliens were allergic to the fluid, causing sever pain or even death.
He had seen many potential employers in the weeks since returning to civilian life, but had not been contacted yet. Reading through the info-board on the stations promenade, he found a new listing. Multi-species vessel in need of a pilot. Primary species: Human. They were doing research on the frontier and needed a good pilot and someone good with pistols and hand-to-hand combat as they had seen some action with pirates. What was the harm in trying, Rharzokk thought to himself. He tapped the “Apply” button with his large finger.
It had been less than a day before he was contacted by the HumanSteve, commander of the SSV – CANARY, he was calling Rharzokk in for an interview. To his surprise, he got the job. Having looked over his experience through the GA Database and confirming his service record with Grungrak Operations, he was told they’d be happy to have him, and he was moved onto the ship within the next solar day.
The journey to Frontier Space took weeks, even at full FTL, and this had given Rharzokk, now going by ‘Zok’ for ease of human tongue, time to meet most of the crew and adapt to his new job.
Zok had voiced concerns about the presence of human children of the ship; they were in uncharted territory and potentially in danger, but Zok had been told several times that humans would not leave family units behind.
It wasn’t until the middle of the third week that Zok ran into the first of the human children. They were normally kept in a separate area of the ship for schooling, learning and entertainment. Zok had been told this was also due to human children being easily frightened of Aliens. But here in this corridor stood a small human child.
He stood incredibly still, trying to not make any sudden movements that would frighten the poor, tiny creature, who looked lost. Using the quietest and calming voice he could, he asked “Are you lost little one?”
The human looked up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape. The mess of blond hair wrapped around her head and she seemed to be in shock. She rubbed her eyes and continued to gawk at him.
Believe she hadn’t heard him, he repeated the question. “Are you lost little one?”
What came next nearly frightened Zol. A high-pitched screech came out of girl, but not one of fear, no, her mouth was in a wide smile and she pointed at him. “KITTY!” She yelled.
Confused, Zol pointed at himself and asked. “Do you mean me?”
She laughed and kept pointing at him. “Kitty! Big Kitty!”
“No young one, my name is Rharzokk, but you may call me Z-”
“Kitty!”
Was the translator broken, he wondered. He was getting irate though. Children weren’t supposed to be in this area, but he was too timid to pick her up, or even move for that matter. He already filled out the corridor, if he wasn’t careful she could be injured.
“My name is Rharzokk, I am a war hero of the Grungrak people. You will cease calling me by the name Kitty.” He demanded. Maybe showing his authority would make her more compliant.
“Angry kitty.” She mumbled, putting her hand down by her side. “Kitty take me home?” She asked.
She was lost, though how she ended up near the flight deck was a mystery. Zok crouched down, making himself as small as he could, and using one of his smaller arms, extended a hand to her. Humans likes contact, it was comforting. Or so he was told.
She took his hand and smiled at him. “Take me home?” She asked again.
He walked with her, at a much slower pace than he was used to, until the reached the crew area. There were many humans around, running around frantically. When they saw Zok enter the room, their eyes wandered down to the little girl holding tightly to his arm. A sigh of relief swept over the room as one of the women, HumanKatie, ran to her daughters side.
“Amelia!” She yelled, dropping to her knees in front of the child, “Where have you been?! I’ve been worried sick!”
The girls grip tightened on Zoks hand. “She was near the flight deck.” Zok said. “She was wandering the corridor when I found her. She asked me to return her here.”
“Big kitty helped!” Amelia blurted out. The room went silent and many humans covered their mouths, their shoulders shaking. Some seemed to turn around, while others knelt down towards the floor. Zok was confused, he had never seen or read about such a reaction.
Looking at the HumanKatie, he noticed she was doing the same, though water was streaming from her eyes; crying, he thoughts.
“There is no need to fear, she is unharmed.”Zok reassured.
“Thats not why I’m crying.” HumanKatie replied. “It’s just…” She was struggling to keep her composure. “She thinks you’re a cat.”
“A what?” Zok asked.
“A cat.” HumanKatie replied. She pulled a small device from her pocket and tapped a few buttons. After a moment of searching, she help up the device which displayed a small, furry creature on it. “A cat.” HumanKatie repeated.
“I do NOT look like that!” Zok grumbled. “I am a fierce warrior! I have been in many battles! I am not some tiny creature-pet!” He crossed his upper arms and looked away.
“She doesn’t know that, Zok.” HumanKatie said. “She’s still too young to know the difference. But she likes you, you should be flattered, she doesn’t really socialize with the other kids, but she was more than happy to be with you. Don’t you, Amelia?” She turned to ask her daughter.
“Big kitty. Ami want kitty rides!” She yelled with excitement.
“Kitty rides?” Zok asked. “What are kitty rides?”
“She wants to climb on your back while you walk around. Its entertainment for her.”
“There will be no kitty rides!” He now had both set of arms crossed. “I am a pilot, not a Zakruk, or a Kitty.”
“I think you will…” HumanKatie said, “She’ll pester you until you do, and you don’t want to make her sad, now, do you? Not when she’s made her first friend?”
Zok spun around and began to walk away. “There will be no kitty rides from me.” He said. When he was alone in the corridor, returning to the flight deck, he thought about the ridiculous request. “Kitty rides.” He shook his head in dismay. Like he would ever lower himself to entertainment for a child. Then again, he never had offspring of his own… and HumanKatie said she had bonded with him as a friend. Maybe.
just moving along like everyone else 