Chapter 2: Chapter Two

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Of course I should tell you my species. I'm Dlamisa. We're a furry species with four upright ears on either side of our head that are slightly triangular, with tails that grow about as long as a human arm, legs that can curve at the knee and though we have two arms, we're capable of locking the elbow joints so that we can run on all fours as well as on two legs. Our mouths are elongated and have a row of sharp teeth, and though our fur color varies... mine is a mix of russet red and black, if that paints a good enough picture for you, fine, if not, well I must hope they cast my actor well when this is made into video program for entertainment.

To be blunt, as I would be very embarrassed to learn, I look somewhat similar to their dogs. What a day that was. At least it turned out to be helpful.

Now back to... that day. A few of our number chose not to make the trip, a thing I think they would regret for the rest of their lives as the human sector was very far away, taking months of travel by even the fastest ship... at least until the humans invented the new 'pulpultion' method of redoubling speed by electron recombination... but that's for the astrochemophysics department.

Me, I was only concerned with learning as much as I could, and the professor proved he earned his status by providing us with a wealth of information in the days that led up to our trip. Human entertainment, mythology, music, religion, and social conventions for the place we would be staying, all were provided to us.

That was the first time I realized just why homo sapiens sapiens can be so... terrifying.

It wasn't their love of fear, there were whole genres of entertainment that kept their psychology on edge, but that in and of itself was enough to drive two more students to drop out. Fear is something all other known species avoid, but humans? Humans embraced the void. I found it fascinating... The part that scared me was what it took for humans to picture a threat.
Gods? Demons? Natural disasters that wipe out planets? Aliens whose technology defied reality? Humans needed the impossible to feel threatened, anything else was just an ordinary day in the galactic minicycle. And in all their terrifying films and 'televised' series... The story was a journey to human triumph. Some thought it was self aggrandizing, but our teacher put it this way...

"Humans made that leap into the void in a tenth of the time it took my species to find the courage to do so. Humans define themselves by their will to overcome anything, to drive themselves to the limit and push beyond to make new limits for the next generation to overcome. Dying for a friend? Dying for an ideal? A human will throw away their life for an infant where most would consider their offspring expendable and just make another. And they will die happy if they believe their death made a better tomorrow. Their films tell us that they see themselves as having boundless potential... and when I was a small one... listening to the telecom where the humans came in with canons blazing just because they said they would help us... I came to believe in it too. It took me ages to find a translation for 'Yippy ki yay motherfucker'. But the telecom was still broadcasting after that, up to the moment their ship collided with our attackers... and I heard something I'd never heard before when intelligent races died. Music. They died to the sound of music and singing death songs... they are something to fear... but also something to hope for... as you will see."

I immersed myself in more of their media on the long journey, pirate movies where pirates, the lowest of the low, still found it in themselves to die with courage, war films... so many of those, with people giving up their lives for causes even when they knew they couldn’t bring to reality. Romances where that curious passionate bonding was on full display... I admit I found it strange how they bonded to predator pets, but it was impossible to deny that this was what I was seeing when their dog creatures were cradled and cared for like infants.

Nobody really thinks about how powerful 'bonding' truly is, and yet... now my snout was rubbed right in it.

It was two months later when we encountered the first human patrols, their vessels were much bigger than they used to be, and that was when I learned something more interesting. Humans brought their miniature communities into space. Their 'families'. Bonded mates, children, even in some cases, their old who we would normally leave behind. It seemed strange, but when I first saw a human face, that was even stranger.

They were flat, with very small noses in the middle of their face. The human who spoke to my professor on screen had a thick black fur around his mouth and deep set eyes that seemed small compared to mine, but after a few pleasantries and an I.D. exchange, we were allowed to dock.

Our professor then selected three of us to join him on board the human vessel, a chance to explore a little of the miniature society that humans formed before we reached the whole hive of them on their homeworld where our host families waited for us.

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The vessel we docked at was military, with giant canons the size of whole buildings back home, a hallmark of the human design philosophy of 'big explosions are the best kind' but because these vessels were so large, when we crossed the boarding tubes we found a small hover vehicle waiting for us.

The hover vehicle was interesting, most races instinctively put the driver at the front, but humans regularly rethought their designs, challenging the ideas that were normal at whatever time they lived. This hover vehicle was one such example of being ‘rethought’. It did have the aerodynamic design and was clearly made to traverse these halls. That much was clear, most notably because the hall in which we stood had a glowing green line along the floor on which the hovercar was centered.

However the driver was not at the front, rather they were at the center, and while we were seated upright with adjustable chairs, the driver sat in a forward crouch with legs bent and arms forward holding onto a bar, her body secured by a double bar cage that framed her body after wrapping around from one side. A series of monitors surrounded her face providing long range feedback and data about any obstacles in the view and providing me with a reflection of her face. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but now I realize she was ‘eager’ to begin.

This highlighted my second experience with human design philosophy. 'There is no such thing as too fast, only how fast you can make it go.' It was no wonder they invented the method of transport that finally broke the subspace speed limit that baffled scientists for ages.

"Strap in and hold tight." A small human female, or so I assumed it to be because of what we'd been told about chests voice pitch, told us. The strap was a four point harness and there was a crossbar in front that we were meant to hold on to if things got 'too intense'.

And then my tongue was yanked out of my mouth and the ship became a blur... never in my life had I been both so thrilled and so damn scared, the air battered my face and carried my fur back behind me, my tail wiggled with joy underneath my seat and I could see what I recognized as a smile on the woman's face.

She used her whole body to control the vehicle, leaning left and right, and it was after this that I learned about another unique human innovation that catered to human obsessions. They love the feel of wind in their hair, and our hovercar had no roof. The force of the air should have been far more unpleasant, but it had a curious sort of shielding, invisible to the naked eye, it permitted ingress and egress of air particles, but in substantially reduced quantities, in short… it was hypoxic, giving humans a feeling of high altitude ‘intoxication’ and letting them experience great speeds while they got it.

Our companions made noises of alarm, chitin scales shed and my Oolian roommate's stink sack activated... briefly causing the hovercraft to swerve while following the green line which went from floor to wall to ceiling. My instincts told me what was coming, and I held on for deer life while the human made a noise I later learned was laughter when she kept swerving until we followed the green paint track and we were upside down.

You would not believe how hard it was to find a proper translation for the word 'Wheeeeeeeee' that she kept screaming as we looped around the empty corridor.

We finally lurched to a stop that rattled my bones, and my professor finally said something, something I knew was 'key' to introducing oneself to new humans. "Shall we grab a beer?" I knew from the videos that the human woman's grin made the rest of our trip promising, but as my companions were voiding their orifices onto the floor while trying to unhitch themselves, they unfortunately missed it.

As to what happened next... well you'd hardly believe it if you haven’t lived it, but I swear every word is true.

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