Chapter 10: Chapter Ten

Interstellar travel is exhausting. Thoroughly exhausting. And with so many new smells and sights and people, I was carrying the burden of my long journey and the weight of everything I experienced in just a few short hours. But because the hour was still relatively early when I went to sleep, I woke up extremely early the following day. There was a small clock with green glowing numbers secured to the wall on my left, and they read 0416.

Human days are twenty-four hours in length, and that being military time, which counts the hours directly rather than cycling them, it meant it was four hours and sixteen minutes after the midnight hour. I knew enough to be aware that nobody would be up, and so I lay in bed and watched the minutes tick past one by one.

It was barely five minutes past the moment after I awoke that it hit me. I was alone here. I’d seen other aliens at the transport hub, but that was all. For those too young to recall, if this text has the privilege of being republished in editions many years past my lifetime, in those days, travel to Earth for aliens was a very rare thing, their reputation was so bizarre that except for people traveling there for government business, few yet dared to go that way. The ‘murder fuel for their blood’ stories spread by Zenti survivors probably did nothing to add to Earth’s tourism numbers. So when away from the transit point I saw no other familiar species. Least of all my own.

I had a small pack back home, and had familiarity enough with other students, and an easy return trip if I felt the need, but it was now that it hit me? Fifty years really was a long time. A long time to be on an alien world with literally no way off of it. If this didn’t work out? What if they decided they didn’t want me? Could I find another host family? Everyone seemed friendly enough, but I knew from my previous sources that this wasn’t always true.

Maybe it was the nights on Earth itself that made me anxious, I had always considered myself a rational, pragmatic student, and such anxieties and fears were absurd. I shifted in my bed to rub my fur against the airy mattress, and stopped staring at the clock to stare at the ceiling instead. I tried to think of nothing, to blank my mind and force myself to sleep again.

But as luck would have it, my sharp ears detected a noise. “Footfalls, at this hour?” I’d seen crime dramas and knew that robbery was always a possibility.

The rational thing to do was to hunker down, but at such an absurdly early hour, everybody else was surely still asleep. I also knew that they had no chance of hearing such soft steps as I did, they were helpless. Of course you might wonder, ‘who cares’ and for a few seconds, or maybe minutes, time passes slower when all three hearts are pounding at once, I lay still.

I thought of that friendly touch from Lisa on the ship, the feeling of warmth from Michael’s hand on my head, and his little head felt when I put mine in the same place on him. And I got out of bed. Now if you don’t know, my race, aside from not requiring clothing, is not known for our noisy nature. The pads on my feet were thick and soft, perfect for sneaking up on prey.

‘I should check it out, that’s the rational thing to do, if I stay down there, I’ll be trapped if it comes looking for me.’ I thought, and step by step I went toward, then up the stairs, around the corner, and saw that a light was on.

It was dim, not really much, but my night vision was fairly good and so I needed even less than was already present. I put my hands on the frame of the entrance and eased my head around it, leaning as far over as I could without taking another step.

And the source of the noise started humming, it wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t like a machine. It was a person, a young female, but not one I knew. Humans are the only species known in the galaxy to do this. There are a lot of species who dance, mostly for mating purposes, and that includes humans. There are even many species who have a mating call that could be described as ‘singing’.

But humans are the only ones who ‘hum’ simply for the pleasure of doing it. The human was hidden by a few kitchen shelves that made something of a barrier, but I could see long brown hair bound close to the head and dangling free, along with a kind of bouncing motion back and forth like they were dancing.

Then I smelled meat. ‘A sandwich.’ I realized. They were making a sandwich. I exhaled from all three lungs at once, even a human thief would probably not break into a house just to make a sandwich. And this human was on the short side.

“Are you, ‘Fauve’?” I asked, and she spun on the balls of her feet like she was startled, her mouth opened like she was going to scream and her slightly larger than usual brown eyes bulged when she saw me.

She stopped at once, “Wait… Bailey?” She asked me, and I nodded to her as I came into view.

“Yes, and you’re Fauve, I guess.” I said and she stepped into view, I moved slowly, taking short steps that carried me all the way to where she could see me without being obscured by the shelves.

She tilted her head back to look up at me, and oddly enough, she cocked her head the same way I did, at the exact same moment.

If that were not odd enough…

“You’re bigger than I thought you’d be.” We said at the same time and looked each other up and down. I was only a little shorter than her father, and that was in part because I am never ‘perfectly straight’ the way fully erect humans are. But even though I was still much taller than this one, I was expecting someone much younger.

I rubbed the back of my head just behind my ears, the silence passed between us, and then as another oddity atop the ones we already experienced, we asked at the same moment…

“How old are you?”

She laughed a little and put her back to me, returning to her sandwich and ending our awkward verbal dance.

“I’m fourteen.” She said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t go with my parents today, but I’m quarantining because I’m still a little sick.” She brought up her hand and pointed to her throat, “I don’t want to get anyone else sick just because I want to go somewhere.”

There it was again, that human compassion, it was interesting to me that even at such a young age, the human can have the capacity for profound emotional rationalism and care for even strangers. So different from species who resorted to killing the sick precisely because that empathetic understanding was sorely deficient in their evolution.

They had to learn it or invent it as a kind of pragmatism and self interest in order to rise to civilization’s heights. But here that was in a young human child? Remarkable. It speaks to the sheer complexity of their brains and the high degree of socialization that marked their evolution.

I filed that away to record it in my notes later, and focused instead on answering her question. “In your years I would be about twenty-four, but your years are shorter than ours. Though I’m not sure by how much.”

I reflexively sniffed the meat she was working with, without getting too close, there was an absurdly foul odor coming from a yellow bottle in her left hand, it burned my nose, to be frank. Human taste buds are… extreme. The plantlife on their world evolved to be spicy to discourage other life from eating it. But humans made it one of their favorite foods. It’s even been rumored that they can eat fire. But that turned out to be an interesting misunderstanding. See figure eight-one for what it actually looks like.

I leaned to the left and looked down at her handiwork while doing my best to avoid the smell from the yellow bottle.

“Hmpf, well that’s not surprising, you’re in college, right?” Fauve asked and turned around to look me over again, when I nodded she asked, “Uh, can I touch you, I just want to see something?”

“Um, I guess?” I answered and held out my hands with the knuckles facing up.

“So those look kind of like ours.” She said, and she wasn’t entirely wrong, her hand came down over mine, hers were much, much smaller, and while she munched on the sandwich she’d finished making, she began to get closer. I stood still, and she leaned to one side so that she could see behind me. “Huh, a tail. Like a retriever.” I said nothing, she wasn’t really talking to me, I knew that tone of voice, it was the same one I used when studying something new.

Here again I break from the narrative of events to explain something else about humans.

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They are dangerously curious. They’re a naturally scientific race despite all their superstitions in the past, and are quick to want to study new things, this process begins in childhood, and if nurtured, remains life long. It is fair to say that my host family was exceptional even among humans, you have to be, to decide to host an alien from another predatory race that you’ve never met before.

But still, it was strange to see scientific curiosity in a child. “It feels like I thought it would.” She said and took another bite of her sandwich, “Can I touch your head?” She asked through her mouthful of food, and I thought that since I’d come that far, I might as well go a little farther. So I bent forward, she reached up, and began to scratch my head, my tail reflexively started wagging back and forth.

It felt amazing, the way her nails barely went over the skin beneath my fur, and the way the soft pink pads of her fingers smoothly ran over my ears… I wanted more of it, and so did she.

Or she must have, since she kept it up until she licked the yellow sauce from off her other hand’s finger tips.

“Wow, you really do have fur like a dog or a wolf… wait, that wasn’t mean of me to say, was it?” She asked and pursed her lips into a pout. Humans respond strangely when they’re embarrassed, and children even more so.

The filters of adults are less developed in children, and they will often speak without thinking.

“No, not if it’s true, I guess. Is dog fur a good thing?” I asked. I had gathered that humans liked dogs at least.

“A very good thing, Bailey.” Fauve nodded emphatically. “So what are you doing, getting up at this hour?”

“I went to sleep early, so I woke up early.” I explained, and she seemed to understand. “What about you? Are you nocturnal?”

“Kinda.” She said and laughed a little, laughter is a very diverse expression, probably stemming from its roots in the fear response, when a perceived danger turned out not to be, laughter let everyone know that everything is fine. Of course it has come a long way since then, but it still serves as social filler and a welcome expression.

“I don’t like to sleep, dad and I agree that the best superpower to have, would be to never need to rest.” She said as she recounted the conversation, I gleaned from this that she was close to her father, given that he was her immediate go to for a conversation topic, and I was intrigued.

As you know, communication between most species is practical. ‘I need food. We need that catalytic converter fixed.’ It’s purely purpose driven. But humans converse for pleasure, you’ve seen this already with Mark, and the way the older humans caught up with my professor. They delight in communication, and I was intrigued. My species is at least somewhat social, and out of curiosity, I pushed the question.

“Wouldn’t super strength be a better super power?” I asked… “Or super speed?”

“Not really. Super strength, everybody is going to want your help moving, it’s like being the only guy with a truck. Super speed, kind of better, but you probably die if you run into something. Most superpowers are kind of useless unless you have a bunch of others to get rid of the weaknesses.” She explained, she’d clearly thought it through.

But I wasn’t done. “Invisibility?” I proposed.

“My dad said only perverts want that one. And from what I’ve seen of anime, he’s right.” She said with a snort. “Besides, you’d forget you’re using it and step into traffic or something. No thanks.”

“OK, uh…” I scratched the back of my head, “What about flight?”

“No. Some asshole will shoot you. Plus even if they didn’t, flying stuff involves a lot of regulations, I don’t want to crash into a plane or get arrested for not filing a flight plan. There once was a guy who got arrested for flying a lawn chair he’d tied some big balloons to, they didn’t even know what to charge him with at first… flight would be fun at first, but it’d get you into a mess of trouble real fast.” Fauve said and shook her head.

“That can’t be true.” I said, “I’ve seen lawn chairs in your television shows…”

“Yeah, it happened. ‘Lawn Chair Larry.’ A few hundred years ago or something.” She said and brought up her datapad from her pocket, she quickly expanded the screen and repeated the search term for the lawn chair man…

I pause here to tell you, yes, it is true. There really was such a man, and it seems that humans have a miraculously bad sense of self preservation. Their males in particular are a reckless lot, often in pursuit of a female to mate with, they will engage in dangerous activities simply for attention, either fighting each other, or in contests of courage. I observed many of these over the course of my media consumption, and here is something very interesting about mating patterns for humans.

I have noticed that in most species, a mating pattern is designed with success in mind, even if it fails from one male for whatever reason, in other members of the same species, that exact thing will be successful. However, among humans, their wild individuality is such that there is no one thing that will succeed with every woman, or with every man. So their mating patterns are all over the place, and most are abject failures.

Males often strive to impress each other even more than their females, and the same is true of their female population. Sadly in the case of the former, many of these displays are self destructive, and offer no improved chance of finding a mate. Even now, I find their mating patterns too confusing to properly catalog, and will require another fifty years at least before I think I begin to have a grasp on it.

I threw out several more superpower possibilities to Fauve, and each one she pointed out a severe problem with, sometimes several.

I barely noticed that while we conversed she was making another sandwich, this one without the yellow stuff, and that she was busy working the coffee pot… at least until I heard it and smelled the brew beginning. “So, I should head back to bed for another day. But there’s a sandwich for you so you don’t have to figure out breakfast, and the coffee is on. Mom told me you like the stuff.” Fauve said and looking up at me again, she gave me that same sort of smile I was starting to get used to.

“I hope you like it here, it was nice talking to you, Bailey. Welcome to Earth.” She said, and walking past me, she ascended the steps, vanishing out of sight and leaving me so lost in thought that I barely noticed I had absentmindedly eaten the sandwich and poured coffee for myself.

It was clearly going to take a lot for me to get used to this place.

But I was already very sure, I was going to like this place.

 

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