DogWatch05

“No, I figured I’d feed him a young Komdo.” Montressa glanced behind her and saw a horrified look on his face. “I’m joking you moron. First order of business is getting a collar on him. Once that’s done we’ll have more control over him. Today I want to see how he deals with having people around him, in a controlled environment of course. I’ll select a few calm and controlled crew from some of the species we’ve got on board and take them to the rec room. That’s where I’ll introduce Frantal to them.”

F’rangel turned back to his desk. “I knew you were joking…obviously. I expect you to have some armed crew in there. I know he’s been calm so far, but he’s a wild animal and you never know what he’ll do.”

“There will be. I may have high hopes for Frantal but I’m not going to throw safety out the window. Come on, let’s go eat.” Montressa led the way out of their room and met Torell in the corridor. F’rangel ruffled his head feathers and Montressa draped her arm over his shoulder as he followed them into the mess hall.

While they were eating, Montressa scanned the room for candidates for her experiment. She wanted crew members that were calm and confident in their abilities and who wouldn’t spook Frantal. Her first choice was the Horntals, a small reptilian race that was from a dry rocky homeworld with many deserts. They were a naturally relaxed species who were very hard to provoke and so would be perfect for this project. Next on her list would have to be her assistant Jalor, a Polton. Polton’s were a curious race but could be quite skittish at times. The most unsettling thing they could do was walk up walls and hang from ceilings, but she’d just tell Jalor not to do that. Montressa had been working with Jalor for over five years now and knew she could count on her not to do anything that would spook Frantal.

Figuring that four species was enough to start with, Montressa gathered a few Horntals, Jalor, some Komdos, and Torell to take to the rec room after breakfast. Now that she’d figured out who to use, they just had to do the hard part: getting a collar on Frantal.

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Dear Diary,

I swear these people are trying to kill me.

I mean seriously trying to give me a heart attack.

This morning I woke up to the lights coming on and a buzzer alarm as normal. My food was brought in by the two Naga caretakers and placed in my bowl before they backed out of the room. Today’s breakfast was actually pretty decent with some lettuce and meat. After that not much happened for a time. I stretched, ran around the room, climbed my tree, and exercised a bit before draping myself over a tree branch and dangling my arms and legs freely over the edge, the simulated wood digging into my ribs no longer padded with fat. I must have laid there for at least two hours before my door opened again and Momma and Sounder entered.

I’ll admit, I was curious about what they had in store for today. Usually them coming to visit me meant we were going somewhere so I dropped down from my branch to approach them. I landed with a thud as my leg slipped from under me and I had to roll so as to not land on my hip. “You didn’t see that,” I growled as I sat up. 

Sounder looked like he was holding back a laugh and Momma swatted him following it up with a chirp. It was a cute interaction and it reminded me of my family back home. I had done my best to avoid doing this because I knew it would make me sad. My kids would probably have already had their birthday and Dad wasn’t there to celebrate it with them. How was I going to explain why I wasn’t there for them? That Dad was taken by aliens and couldn’t figure out how to get home? The hardest part of all this was knowing I’d likely never get back home and if I did, they’d never believe me…they’d think I had abandoned them. 

A tear rolled down my face before I could stop it, I was never one to cry in front of others. I tried to pull myself together, but out of nowhere Sounder appeared before me and clipped something around my neck. Smart boy I’ll give him that. Taking advantage of my absent mindedness to get that collar on. “At least you learned from last time,” I chuckled before running my fingers under the collar, testing for a latch I could use to disengage it. I couldn’t find one, I have no clue how he got it on without a latch, so I tried to slip it over my head. The collar flexed and moved without chafing, but wouldn’t go over my jaw or ears. As far as I could tell, there was no way to get this thing off unless Sounder or Momma wanted it off.

Speaking of Sounder and Momma, both of them looked startled at how easy it was to get the collar on and watched patiently as I fiddled with it. Momma approached with a lead in her hand, but there was no way I was allowing that to happen. She tried to attach it to the collar and I jumped to the left, just out of reach. She said something to Sounder and he moved behind me to block my path, or at least that’s what I think he was doing. If it was, he wasn’t doing a very good job because when Momma tried again, I leapt to the right and dashed up my tree as fast as I could climb. It was harder than it had been, and I panted as I reached the top. I stared at them from the top branch platform and didn’t move even when they tried to coax me down with food that Sounder ran off to get when Momma realized I wasn’t coming down. Eventually, she sighed and shook her head before walking over to the wall screen. She pressed a few buttons and spoke to it, what she said repeated over the intercoms outside of my room.

When she was done, she walked back over to Sounder and I and raised the lead to me. Then, she tossed it to the far corner of the room. I observed them for a moment before starting to climb down the tree, constantly watching for one of them to retrieve the lead. Once I was satisfied that they weren’t going to try and leash me, I dropped fully from the tree and approached them. Momma glanced at Sounder, then moved to the door, opening it for Sounder and I to exit.

As usual, Momma walked in front of me while Sounder brought up the rear, but this time we didn’t go to the small testing room. We followed the teal wall line to a room that was a full 10 minute walk from my room to the end. As we passed one room, I could smell bread baking and my mouth watered. I made note of what line to follow to get there as we continued to our destination.

Momma stopped in front of a large glass door. Inside I could see a group of creatures and seating areas with tables. She opened the door and stepped aside so I could enter. I cautiously stepped over the threshold and glanced around, looking for anyone I hadn’t seen yet, before walking all the way into the room. The people inside were a mix of familiar species and those I hadn’t seen yet. One was another reptilian species, but this was more lizard-like than snake-like. It looked a lot like a leopard gecko, pattern wise, and walked on all fours instead of being bipedal. I couldn’t think of a name for them so I looked around and saw something thin and black behind the group.

I strained my neck and stood as tall as I could to see around the group. They separated a little bit seeing my attempt to look behind them, but it was just enough for me to see the creature. It moved forward a bit and the motion confirmed what I feared. The eight giant, human sized legs bent and extended as it moved toward the center of the group, and what was worse, towards me. I watched in horror, frozen in place as it walked. Finally, something in my brain clicked and I spun and ran right into the glass door. Dazed, I got up off the floor and put my back to the door. That thing was a creature from my nightmares and I was not about to let it get to me without a fight.

The aliens looked at me with a mix of concern and confusion before connecting the dots, and the spider backed up behind the group. I relaxed a small amount and leaned off the door. Looking at Momma, she was studying me, watching my every move. She made an obvious note on her tablet before calling out to the group in a low whistle. They slowly dispersed to tables around the room and the spider exited out a back door. While this did put me slightly more at ease, I was still weary of all the new people around me.

Momma made an encouraging sound next to me, so after shooting a glare at her, I pushed off the door and took a few hesitant steps forward. When no one moved, I walked further into the room and started to cautiously explore. The aliens seemed to naturally sit according to their species, or maybe they had been told to do this, and each group was occupied with different activities. The leopard geckos, who I will now be calling Gepards, were relaxing under a hot light on cushions surrounded by bowls of small insects covered in a white powder. In much smaller bowls at the center of the table was a small pile of thinly cut yellowish discs. To my left were the Naga. They were crowded tightly around a circular table, their focus solely on a tablet in the middle of the group. I doubted I could get their attention even if I tried. In the far right corner of the room, the Fosh were sitting at a square table watching two of them play a game.

They seemed like the friendliest option so I slowly wandered up to them to see what they were doing. The two in the middle were highly focused on the game in front of them, but the rest of the group noticed me and made a space for me to see. The game looked like a multi-layered game board that had five levels. After watching them play, I could tell that pieces could move between levels at the edges of each board, but they had to cross to the otherside of the level before they could move up or down again and to take a piece, it had to be surrounded on the four tiles directly next to it. I wasn’t quite sure what the goal of the game was, but they seemed to be focused on moving down the tiers. If I could just move the pieces, I might be able to show that I understood part of the game. And maybe I could show them that I wasn’t just a dumb beast. I walked closer to the board as one of the Fosh leaned back with his head in his hands and the other grinned at me while resetting the game. I reached for a piece still on the second tier from the top and…lost my balance as my hand slipped through the item. I caught myself on the board and the Fosh around me began to laugh. I don’t know why I couldn’t interact with the pieces, but my failure seemed highly entertaining to the Fosh around me and also caught the attention of the nearby Gepards.

“I’m glad my struggles are so very entertaining for you,” I grumbled as I pushed myself off the table to a more upright position. Head held high, I stalked over to the Gepards who were smiling sympathetically at me, or at least I think they were, reptilian facial expressions were never my strong suit. I’d never be able to demonstrate I was intelligent with that game now. All they’d see was an animal playing with something it didn’t understand. The Gepards shuffled their cushions to make a space for me so I could sit down with them, and I have to say, the warm lights felt amazing compared to my room. The lamp heated the cushions like a blanket fresh out of the dryer and I burrowed as deep into the fabric as I could. My body relaxed into the warmth and familiar comfort and I drifted off to sleep without realizing.

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Montressa had to admit, it was quite cute watching Frantal burrow into the seat cushions and today had revealed more about him and his personality just like she had hoped it would. He was curious and willing to explore. This she already knew from his adventures into hydroponics, but he was not only willing to explore, he was also willing to investigate other creatures. With one notable exception… She hadn’t expected him to react so violently to Jalor. The poor thing had nearly left his skin behind trying to escape, but on the bright side, she now knew that Frantal was from a social species or at least one that craves interactions. She would just have to make sure he never saw Jalor again. She guessed that on his home planet there must be some terrifying creature that resembled her assistant and that’s why Frantal reacted the way he did. She would also have to check him for injuries. The crack of his head hitting the glass was honestly quite impressive.

The rest of the experiment was both telling and not at the same time. His first instinct was, understandably, to interact with the species most familiar to him, but even then he spent most of his time simply watching them and what they were doing. He got curious about them playing a game of Crusade and tried to mess with the pieces but was he just curious and wanting to feel them or did he actually have purpose in trying to grab one? How could he have known that the pieces could only be moved via a ring worn on the player’s finger to avoid the pieces getting thrown around in unstable flight. When he failed to move a piece and was laughed at, poor Frantal simply raised his head and stalked off toward the Horntals like a prideful pet who didn’t want to admit they were embarrassed or had made a mistake. Interestingly though he avoided a species he knew in favor of one he didn’t. Montressa knew that Frantal had had bad experiences in the past with Komdos, but she didn’t think that he would completely ignore them other than a calculating gaze before selecting the new species. Without knowing what his homeworld was like, she couldn’t know if there was a similar species like the Horntals he was familiar with, but he really seemed to like the heating lamps they had. She made a note to include one in his room along with some other things she thought might give him some more enrichment. 

Montressa left Torell in charge of the sleeping Frantal and made her way back to her office to log all of her observations. She was only 5 paragraphs in when she got a notification on her tablet. An incoming call from D’ral. “Strange,” she thought to herself. Pressing the answer button, she smiled, “D’ral, how are you?”

As Rjoll navigated the labyrinth of a ship they were living on, he thought of how best to introduce himself. And what if the Human didn't like him? What if he made a fool of himself. What if the Human was a fool themselves and could barely do Pre-Calculus?

What was happening to him? He'd never had these doubts about himself before. He'd always prided himself on his self-assurance and his ability to deal with those intellectually inferior to himself. Having to depend on someone, especially such a new, primitive species like the humans, was something so new to him that he didn't know how to react.

Before he knew it, he was at the human's door. Sighing, he resigned himself to the humiliation he knew was coming and knocked.

"Enter!" came the call from inside the room. Rjoll was stunned. She should have stopped what she was doing and greeted him at the door to perform the standard greeting ritual of inviting someone into your living space. No species he'd ever interacted with had foregone this practice.

Uncomfortable, Rjoll opened the door and peeked inside. The human was siting on their bed with hands folded in their lap and eyes closed. Glancing around, Rjoll took note of the human's room.

Sparsely decorated, the room consisted of a single occupant sized bed, a bedside table with a drawer and lamp, a chest to hold personal items and uniforms, a desk and chair, and a wooden ornament hung above the headboard of the bed. On the desk was a notebook and pencil with a leatherbound book decorated with golden gilded pages and the same wooden symbol in gold on the cover.

The human muttered something under their breath and glanced at the ceiling before standing up and approaching Rjoll.

"Hello sir, my name is Christina. How do you do?"

"Uh...I am very well. Xenohistorian Rjoll at your service. I am under the impression that you are the human assigned by the Terran-Xeno Relations department to assist me in my research. Is this to be held true?" Rjoll was caught off guard by Christina's off-hand and informal introduction but he congratulated himself for recovering so well and redirecting the conversation in an appropriate direction.

Christina smiled at Rjoll. "Yes, I am to be your primary source on human history. I'm sure that you've read my file sent to you by the agency," (Rjoll had not, in fact, read that file)," but in case you haven't had the chance, I am a world historian back on Earth. If you require access to documents, I can give you supervised access to the human internet for research purposes only."

Rjoll was pleased that the human could apparently be professional and asked if they had a seat that he could use. Might as well be nice to the human so that he could get as much information out of her as possible.

Christina nodded and brought over the chair from her desk and sat on the bed facing Rjoll. "Well, lets get started then," she said," What would you like to know first?"

Glancing around the spartan room again, Rjoll focused on the wooden ornament. "Lets start with you. Who are you, what do you do, what's that symbol on your wall."

"Well," Christina started, "I've already introduced my self but I can do that again. I am Christina Carpenter. A civilian historian currently on government contract with the TXR department for the duration of your research currently set for one month. I served briefly in the United Earth Space Exploration Corp. Like the United Earth Space Fleet, but civilian, not military, and focused on exploration, not defending our space. As for that symbol on my wall, how familiar are you with human religion?"

Rjoll grumbled and mumbled, "Not very" before mentally slapping himself and speaking up. "I am not familiar with the majority of human related topics. Please explain everything to me as if I were a student, but without speaking down to me if you please. I can always get a more respectful human if you decide to not show me the proper respect."

Christina closed and rolled her eyes, then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and began speaking. "Alright. That symbol on my wall is The Cross. It is the symbol that represents Christianity, one of the most popular faiths on Earth with roughly 2.4 billion of the 7 billion humans on Earth being Christian. A monotheistic religion with the God being of three parts: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost/Spirit. The holy text of this religion is called the Bible. Literally translating to Holy Book. There are sixty-six books within the Bible split into the Old and New Testament. The key beliefs of Christianity are: there is one God, we are all sinners, His son died for our sins that we would be forgiven, His son rose from the dead, and the Bible is the word of God as given to humanity.

We believe that God is a loving and good God, often referred to as our Heavenly Father because Christians believe that we are all God's children. Christianity is a religion that focus mainly on forgiveness, redemption, and relationship. We als-"

Rjoll cut Christina off. "Sounds like a weak religion then if you focus on forgiveness. What do you do if someone insults your religion? Turn the other cheek? Where's the honor in that. Weakness."

Christina smirked. Fine, she thought. Let's do it that way then.

"Actually, yes we are to turn the other cheek and grant forgiveness, mercy, and grace. But do you know how God's child, The Son, part of the Holy Trinity, died? Would you like to know?"

Rjoll nodded, convinced that nothing this human said would be able to change his mind.

Christina's smirk fell. Poor, poor Rjoll. He doesn't know what he is getting into.

"Jesus, the son of God, had 12 disciples who are also known as apostles. They were his students who followed him wherever he went. Jesus traveled and performed miracles and taught about God and the new kingdom to come. Well the Jews, what Jesus was, did not like that he was performing miracles and claiming to be 'The Son of Man'. Particularly the Sanhedrin. At this time the Romans had occupied the lands of the Jews, and the Romans were not merciful masters. Judas, one of Jesus's apostles, was paid 30 silver pieces to betray Jesus and identify him to Roman officials who had been convinced to arrest him by the Sanhedrin. A trial was held for Jesus and he was found innocent of breaking any Roman law by the Romans. The leader of the Romans, Pilate, still sentenced Jesus to death because of pressure from Jesus's own people.

Jesus was whipped until skin separated from bone, had a crown of thorns shoved on his head, and forced to carry his own roughly hewn cross through town to the place where his death would take place.

And do you know what we did Rjoll? We nailed the Son of God to a tree (common alternative name for the cross) and left him like that for six hours.

And still he did his work. He forgave a thief of his sins while they were being crucified together. He took care of his mother's future while he was being crucified, and when Romans mocked him, he asked his Father to forgive them 'for they know not what they do'.

So yes, Christianity is a religion that focuses on forgiveness for that is what we are called to do, but don't forget that the reason we can do this is because we were first forgiven by our God who 'gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life'. The Son who was tortured and nailed to a tree through his wrists and ankles; who was left there for six hours before he surrendered his spirit.

So yes, we forgive and we find not weakness but honor in forgiveness because we strive to be like our God.