i am, i am, i am

a close up to just... light shining through those waves, makes me feel faint with exhilaration every time

It's that time of year again!

A few new friends have joined the celebration this year- Yule, Diwali, and St Lucia's Day!

And when they got it out, they fist pumped and I said thanks so much and one of them said "easy." And then they left.

And it's like.

1. This topic was not agreed upon in the briefs beforehand so she and her team aren’t answering squat

2. This guy keeps asking her “what’s your favourite ship” completely unaware that part of being an avid train enthusiast means having secondary, yet at times equally strong, interests in other forms of transportation and this guy just gave her the opening of a lifetime

3. She finally has a platform and a live audience and this particular rant needs to be heard, dammit

Human technicians start hopping ships and upkeeping the general maintenance, the stuff that most aliens put off or don't notice because they never access the crevices of their ships. As human companies become more popular and lead the tech world in everything from warp cores to game stations ("it's so compact! How are the graphics so good?" Says a 60' tall grimbleback, holding a new VR headset that has all of its components included because it's so BIG by our tech standards), soon many things have accessibility ports for humans to be able to use as well. This means that these shiprats hoping ship to ship cause such a huge improvement in everything running smoothly, and there's a huge downtick in pests on ships because those "pests" are not only big enough and aggressive enough to bite a pitbull or a person in half, they're invasive to so many planets and humans hate nothing more than dog killing planet overrunning monsters.

All the while, from the Aliens perspective, humans are an elusive race that don't fraternize much with them. You almost never see a human as most places aren't exactly safe for the little things to run around in. They do export so much stuff though, and the custodial staff at the Central Galactic Outpost insists that there's more humans around than any other race if you just know where to look.

And sure it's somewhat known that some of the little daredevils hop ships and help out in exchange for room and board, usually without permission, but that can't be that common, can it?

Maybe your ship is running better this cycle ever since you stopped at the last station, that just means that tuneup was better than you thought. And maybe for some reason that program you were working on last night is finished when you wake up, but you're so tired maybe you finished it before you passed out. Somehow that faulty light in the galley has fixed itself as well, which is odd, but maybe the Engineer finally got to it. You'd know if there was someone else on your ship.

Right?

Humans are predators right? But in our day to day lives we don’t really act like predators very often. Very few of us actually have an experience with hunting, with one exception; bugs. Especially flies or mosquitoes.

Imagine you board a ship and all of your crew mates are life forms from other planets, all of them just so happen to be prey. You’re an engineer and general aren’t seen as very threatening. You’re the first human the crews ever had on board so they have no reason to think you would be. That is until somehow a fly gets onto your ship.

It’s meal time and this fly just will not stop bothering you. No one else seems to be doing anything so you decide to be the one to kill it. You go dead still and track it with your eyes, watching to see where it lands. Once it does you move slowly until your hand is directly above it, holding your breath before slamming your hand down. Finally the pesky bug is gone and you can go back to eating. To you it’s no big deal. I mean it’s just killing one bug right? But when you look up after rubbing the dead fly off the table with your shirt, everyone’s staring at you with a look of shock, horror, or fear.

After a minute or two everyone seems to unfreeze and go back to what they were doing, still nervously glancing over their shoulders at you every minute or so.

After that your crew mates seem to always be slightly on edge around you. Listening to you more often than before, and letting you lead in situations where violence might need to be resorted too. While it’s not technically your job on explorations, you in no way mind being able to protect your crew.