Chapter 15: Chapter Fifteen

I would relay to you all the events of the first day of this water park, the way in which humans screamed and shrieked and the running of small children, their slapping feet striking hard ground, the noise of splashes as they jumped into the various pools…

It was quite chaotic and I found myself feeling a little anxious, my tail stiffened, and I felt the need to step closer to my host family, the noise of rushing and crashing water, the shouting of vendors and smell of cooked and cooking meat, and the wild array of colors… It is fair to say I was overstimulated. Dlamisas seek familiarity when overstimulated or distressed, and the only familiar thing I had was my host family.

I told myself again and again, ‘Settle down, this is for science… This is supposed to be how humans have fun. You went through transit, you drank in a human bar, this should be nothing.’

But the noise, the noise noise noise noise noise. It was getting to me. And the crowd. At least at the bar on the ship I had the familiarity of my fellow students, my professor, and maybe the alcohol helped a lot.

And I wondered if anyone else was going to growl at me. I didn’t like being growled at. As dlamisa go, I won’t pretend I’m the strongest sort. I am and always have been only interested in what I could learn. The more adventurous ones might have been fine where I was, but amidst the confusion, and wild back and forth, all I wanted was to leave, my hearts began to pound and it all began to get to me.

To leave and be somewhere more calming.

“Bailey, are you OK?” Rebecca asked me, she noticed first, though I recognized the concern on William's face, he didn’t ask, or at least he didn’t get the chance to. Here again we come to a unique facet of human culture, at least ‘this’ human culture. The male often is more concerned with his appearance and reputation than his well being, and because of this priority, he puts forth the same thing for his friends. Strange as it may seem, a male in my observation, will seldom ask in a public setting if his male companion is coping well with something going on. If he asks, it will be in private where there is no risk of public shaming.

The care expression from the human male is more often ‘distract first’ and then deal with it where others cannot see.

By contrast, Rebecca immediately asked if I was alright, while the sexes are equally gifted in recognizing signs of distress in others, each approached it in a different fashion with different priorities in mind. Her concern was for my immediate mental wellbeing, and so she asked about it. A stark contrast to William’s more quiet thoughts about my public appearance.

“I-I think I need to be elsewhere.” I told them and tried to keep from looking left and right, from watching all the wild noise making people, but the longer I stood there, the worse I felt, I just had to leave.

“I think I forgot something back at the house. Rebecca, why don’t you stay and let Michael play in the kiddie area, and then I’ll pick you up later.” William suggested and then turning his attention to me… he had notably tried not to look at me directly when my stress was elevated, he added, “Bailey, why don’t you come with me and give me a hand. We can come back tomorrow, it’s a Sunday and it’ll be a lot less busy in the early part of the day before it warms up.”

Rebecca quickly agreed and suggested, “Why not stop by the store, pick up some snacks or something that we could have and we’ll watch something together. The next Night Stays Fateful series premieres today. Sure it’s the thirtieth spin off or reboot… but I still want to see it.”

“Sure, sure, come on, Bailey, let’s head to the car.” William tapped me on the shoulder with his hand and we all parted ways.

It is worth mentioning here that William didn’t ‘run’ to the car. Nor did he jog. The human is not the fastest creature in nature, one of the most enduring, but far from the fastest. William’s stride was swift, long, and steady. He was engaged in what they call ‘speed walking’.

He was moving with haste at my side to get me out of there, but without drawing attention to us. I kept up with him easily and I wasn’t about to complain about leaving early. Even if earlier did mean leaving only five minutes after arrival.

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William didn’t demand an apology for the wasted trip, or the time spent getting ready. I admit I expected at least some anger directed at me since they took the trouble to take me where I expressly asked to go. But no. He stopped the car at the grocery store, did as his wife suggested, and before I knew it we were home. Never once did he address my panic. He quietly accepted my distress and brought me back home.

A zorpaniki, on detecting weakness in one of its own, would be expected to exploit that weakness, to degrade that vulnerability and draw the broken one into its web of subordinates that will serve it for life. A fangi would extort silence for secrecy. Even my own species, we are less likely to respond favorably to one of our own who displays weakness of any kind, though admittedly our response ‘tends’ toward a positive intent of toughening up the weak spot.

Somehow the mere fact that my distress was accepted, responded to, and treated as if it were not the weakness that I felt it to be, made me feel less weak than I felt only minutes before.

When we returned to the house, we entered the door, William went in ahead, his stride had slowed considerably from when he walked me out of the waterpark, and my tail had ceased to curl. I won’t deny being relieved I was gone from there, but I still felt uneasy. All the video footage of human entertainment, human reality television, human interviews and histories, none of it prepared me for the real reality of a quiet human after an act of urgently needed generosity of spirit.

When we went into the house, he walked through the library, into the dining area and looked up the stairs, from there he shouted, “Fauve, Bailey and I are back early, do you want anything?!”

“Hey dad!” Her voice came down from well out of view, “No, I’m OK, I ate already! How come you guys are back early?!” She shouted to us without descending the stairs. I braced myself for the truth.

“Nothing big, your mother and Michael stayed, I’ll grab them later, I had some things to pick up is all!” William shouted his lie up to his daughter, and I answered with a quiet…

“Thank you.” I then went down to my room to write about these events in my notes. It’s telling that William chose to lie about why we left, lies are very rare among intelligent species. It is telling that we see it so rarely, and that when we do, it is always among the more social species. The more social a species is, the more frequently they are dishonest.

Some species have used this to denigrate human kind, and I will admit I at one point shared this shameful belief that ‘you can never trust a human’. However in studying other species, and finding this trend of antisocial honesty and prosocial dishonesty, I came to several key conclusions, conclusions that crystalized to certainty among my host family.

The less social species communicate rarely, there is little to be gained by deception and truth tends to have a greater survival value for both, so the need to deceive never evolved. These species found it a struggle to deal with races in the wider galaxy, and even explaining ‘fiction’ to them was a chore that took several decades.

But as species grew more social, lies were not just a way to gain an edge, they were a conflict lubricant. William’s lie for me buried my shame and made me more comfortable, not only with him, but with my own anxiety in general. A lie, if benign, can serve a social good, and actually help to heal an individual’s pain and keep their sense of place within the group, enhancing their overall happiness and making them far more effective group participants. I realize my detractors will say that ‘Humans deceive each other for malice and cruelty, for power and lust, to steal and destroy…’ and I will acknowledge that this is true.

Even humans will acknowledge the truth of this statement, but such lies are comparatively uncommon, far more common are those of the sort William told, leaving me to have control over when I acknowledge openly that today's attempt had been too much.

Over my time with the Walkers, I observed countless little lies that spared feelings from hurt and each other from shame or embarrassment, as the most social intelligent species in the galaxy, humans have far more occasions where conflict might arise, where they could speak a hurtful truth that offers nothing but pain and will make things worse… or where they could offer comfort and security through a small and harmless deception. A child’s drawing is awful? Don’t say it is awful, focus on the positive so that they are encouraged to refine it further. A hard day is spent on a difficult meal and the execution is off, they might focus on favorable words of encouragement or disguise that they haven’t eaten as much, or if it is inedible, beg off of it by pretending illness.

The human drive to lie is inexorably bound to its desire to protect those they care for. In a strange way, William’s willingness to make up an excuse for me rather than risk shaming me to his daughter, made me feel more at home than any of the things they’d done so far. I still had a lot to learn, but with only two days into a fifty year stay, I felt I was making excellent progress.

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