caution! bite risk!

Alien: Jerry those power cells are supposed to last for months, there's no way this ship has gone through five this week!

Human Jerry: idk what to tell you, man. *glances at another power cell and it immediately shuts off*

Sheep!

The dark greenish will fire brownish black, the yellow ochre will turn clay red (so. Orange. Orangey brown) and the gray will be a creamy white.

Earth keeps getting new message beetles and new people just KEEP SHOWING UP in the background???

There's an asian looking guy with a robotic arm (Iron Lung) staring intently at a tree sapling? That's not Yao??? Who HOW??

Some people in red shirts (Star Trek) playing cards behind Ryland? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE WHERE DID THEY COME FROM

There's a cyborg guy (murderbot) that's apparently "just passing through" HUH

Wait that guy with the wheelbarrow full of potatoes... is- is that Mark Watney?? THE GUY WE LOST ON MARS?WHAT

Possibilities are endless you can just mash as many together as you want

Eridians just keep picking up dying humans in their neighboring star systems and don't know what to do with them except dumping them in the HumanBiosphere Tm

Weight is a reoccuring topic for us even though we're like, rationally aware that we are a healthy weight it just doesn't match our inner appearance for most of us. We might have some dysmorphia but it balances out.

we agree on one thing at least.

Some new pendants, fresh out of their final firing 🔥

They see electricity, the same electricity of your brain. If something is not charged they can't see anything at all, and a room of non-conductive objects would be a complete sensory deprecation chamber. They can see a little bit, but they are nearly blind and only use it to notice sudden changes. If you flash a light at them they scream. Instead they just bring a device that generates a charge everywhere they go. They claim their whole planet is charged, but you have doubts

This apparently allows them to see secrets of the universe. They knew about the big bang through out their entire history, because they can apparently just see the beginning of the universe. They find it beautiful, but not all that interesting. You are jealous

Despite being in space, they have not yet discovered steel or had the industrial revolution. It's basically still alchemists and philosophers, but the alchemy and philosophy works and got them to space. You are no longer jealous

They rely on the temperature being way below 40 degrees Fahrenheit so all the fat stays solid and frozen, and die if it's warm. They consider you burning

They get all their energy from air, like eating, to the point they cannot hold their breath at all. They get other things from food, but refuse to prepare it aside from digestion. They just plop it in basically untouched

They age in dog years, dying a few months after turning 9, and only reach adulthood at age 4. That's an absurd amount of time to spend as a child. The one you met is apparently 5 and considers himself a mature adult. The tantrums say otherwise. Yes, he also has arcane knowledge naturally. You are more surprised they live this long considering everything else about them

They have 4 genders and assigned you one, maybe randomly. Kind of rude, apparently very complex, but they have no idea how to explain it. You aren't asking

The Brutes intercept bartering between their own and the Overworlders, and the Grand Brute gets an idea.

(grandma is angry that MC: Legends stopped getting updates)

he should not have.

rocky realizing grace has a baseline risk for spontaneously developing both benign and fatal illnesses, that he has this constant ambient threat hanging over him, and rocky spends all his free time trying to learn more about it. at first he can excuse the fixation as needing to understand human health so he can explain it to eridian doctors. he suspected it would be a simple bit of research he could master while grace is asleep that night.

he cannot.

pages upon pages upon endless scrolling pages of wikipedia and medical textbooks detailing every single way the human body can go wrong without outside interference, let alone the risk of injury, the risk of pathogen, the risk of exposure to gases and heavy metals that are commonplace on erid.

he used to think of the human body as a well oiled (is joke! because human plural so wet!) machine. disturbing and revolting and alien but beautiful in its complexity and harmony. how strong it can be despite how fragile it seems, how tough despite its softness, how tightly packed despite how it jiggles and wiggles and twists. a marvel of evolutionary engineering, something he finds himself studying constantly, fascinating and disgusting in equal measures.

now it looks like nothing more than the first pieces of wire stuck together by a pebble. the resilience masking how every moment is a cellular gamble, how every bit of strenuous activity risks delicate blood vessels and tendons and bone. how all that revolting moisture is the human body's first line of defense, how the drippingsloshingleaking reveals to rocky how constantly under siege grace really is.

grace is far too blasé about it all for rocky's liking. telling him to log off, that he's just freaking himself out. reminding rocky that he's a biologist, he's well aware of everything rocky's desperately screeching at him, that he understands it far better than rocky does, and that he needs to trust him when he says it's fine.

but it's not fine. it's bad bad bad bad bad. how do humans live like this? how will this human live like this? how can the doctors of erid possibly keep up this fight?

every time fear strikes him rocky scans grace's body, looking for any changes, anything amiss. any blood where it's not supposed to be, anything shaped differently from yesterday, any masses moving around in odd places. he stops ordering grace around, or, rather, he starts ordering him around in new ways. yelling at him when he lifts wrong, telling him to get things to stand on, demanding he use the pulley system he's made, insisting he expand armando's field of reach not only in case something goes wrong but so that it can do the grunt work for him. panicking like he's never panicked before when he realizes exercise damages grace's muscle tissue.

after weeks of this grace has to sit him down and try to screw his vents on straight because there's only so much over-barring nannying from a stir crazy alien he can take.