Earth is Space Australia

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

This is what took me a moment.

WHAT DO I DO

IT IS YOWLING IN A STRANGE LANGUAGE

IT IS LEAVING BITS OF ITS FUR-COVERING EVERYWHERE

IT HAS SHARP CLAWS AND IT’S USING THEM AGAINST MY SOFA

IT PERIODICALLY RUNS IN CIRCLES THROUGH ALL THE ROOMS BUT I SEE NOTHING FOR IT TO FLEE FROM

IT IS SHOWING PREDATORY BEHAVIOR TOWARD SMALL INANIMATE OBJECTS

alien: why are you doing that?

alien: wait you forgot to make that one vibrate!

Other human: *is eating a slice of the same pizza, but cold*

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetary alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

I was gonna make a joke like “do you do X like me or are you normal” but realized I have no idea what normal is.

“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”

“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*

*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL'EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”

“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we - did we break our human?”

a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises. 

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

With a flick of an inner tentacle, the N’tauri gambling master dropped a venomous crefcraw into the centre of the game table. The reaction was immediate.

Four fuzzy Limonstaars shrieked and dropped under the table to huddle in a mass of quivering fur. The three Kakrusch slammed on their face plates and rolled into the farthest corner like a particularly anxious avalanche. The Ighenou, the spider like creature whose species name translated into “Oh gods no get it off!” in a surprising number of languages, froze in the act of reaching for its pile of winnings and decided playing dead was the better part of valor. 

Three of the four humans glanced hesitantly at one another. Not recognizing one of the galaxies most feared and lethal beings, notorious for its bad temper and willingness to strike anything that came near it out of an all consuming rage, or because it was hungry, or bored, or it was Tuesday. They were silently debating the options of hiding with the Limonstaars (cuddly!) or behind the Kakrusch (a solid barrier) when the fourth human at the table knocked back her drink and set the empty glass upside down over the irate little hissing thing which immediately started slamming a stinger half the size of its body against the glass.

“Oi Igghie!” She reached out a long brown arm and slid a flimsy credit sheet from the bottom of the pile. “I’m gonna borrow ya creds.” Slipping the credit sheet under the glass she lifted the tiny prison and its increasingly angry inhabit and and strolled over to the violently trembling N’tauri. “So does this go back to you or should I just chuck it behind the bar for you?” She held out the glass expectantly. The N’tauri keened and slumped to the floor.

“Incinerate it!” growled one of the Kakrusch, a cacophony of agreement roared through the bar.

“Ah, where do I do that then?”

“Out the corridor, s-second door to the right.” One of the Limonstaars piped up, fluffy ears barely visible over the table.

“Cheers, back soon!”

One by one the other aliens crept back towards the table, picking up their cards and glaring at the gambling master. 

“They warned me about Terrans” the quivering mass of tentacle jelly wailed. “Whatever you’re thinking don’t try it on a Terran, those space australians will probably think its a proposition or a snack!”

One of the remaining humans reached out and patted the N’tauri approximately where its shoulder should be. “I wouldn’t worry about it.” He soothed, “I’m a Terran and I was terrified.”

“Well what the flying feschnark was she then?!” the N’tauri shrieked.

WHAT DO I DO

IT IS YOWLING IN A STRANGE LANGUAGE

IT IS LEAVING BITS OF ITS FUR-COVERING EVERYWHERE

IT HAS SHARP CLAWS AND IT’S USING THEM AGAINST MY SOFA

IT PERIODICALLY RUNS IN CIRCLES THROUGH ALL THE ROOMS BUT I SEE NOTHING FOR IT TO FLEE FROM

IT IS SHOWING PREDATORY BEHAVIOR TOWARD SMALL INANIMATE OBJECTS

it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.

“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”

“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.

“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”

“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”

“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”

“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”

“but then what is its purpose?”

Details: Six (6) members of a Mercenary/Pirate crew of little renown attempted to infiltrate ship in order to steal equipment and/or personnel.

Prior to being detained they had remained undetected for eight (8) hours and accumulated several high value materials (see attached log), and incapacitated and restrained several crewmen (see attached log) in dock #3, with the intention of using a life boat to exfiltrate.

Just prior to their would-be escape, the boarding party encountered the ship’s mascot. A cleaning unit which had been modified by crew members to mount a traditional Terran melee weapon, as well as an officer’s insignia (having been jokingly given a commission by the Captain the night before). Curious, one picked it up, before realising the mounted weapon had a nickel finish (highly toxic to their species) on the handle, and dropped it in a panic.

As the unit’s anti-impact sensors had been disabled, it immediately tried to right itself on landing. This caused it to flip over and slash the third knee of the boarder who dropped it, prompting the rest of the boarders to flee. In doing so, they tripped over a waste container, causing the unit to “chase” them, as it collected the trail of dust they left.

The security crew were alerted to the boarding party’s presence by an entry on “Sargent Stabby’s Hit List” - an account on an intership microblogging site which automatically logs any injuries caused by the cleaning unit in question - and quickly intercepted them.

Casualties: Four (4) crewmen treated for minor lacerations sustained after detaining boarding party, one (1) captured crewman treated for negative reaction to sedatives used by captors.

Belligerent status: Two (2) members of the enemy boarding party remain in stable condition in sickbay. Three (3) remaining surrendered peacefully and remain in the brig. One (1) refuses to leave the safety of a storage cupboard he went to ground in.

Recommendations/Actions:

All captured guards to undergo debriefing and possible disciplinary action for breaches of security protocol.

Remind all crew members to report missing colleagues immediately.

Retain a guard outside cleaning storage room 87 until the final boarder can be coaxed out and properly detained.

Quartermaster Stabby becomes a famous icon of the human race, proof that humans can and often are unintentionally terrifying, but maybe there actually IS something to their strange attachments to inanimate objects…?

Aliens are now convinced that humans have some weird psychic/aura powers or something. “Object Tamers” they call us. Humans are so amused that they adopt the term for themselves. They love it. They start printing it on bracelets and T-shirts. Aliens can’t tell if this is a joke or a confession.

Through a disturbing number of coincidences like the above, aliens begin to fear Quartermaster Stabby and are legitimately unsure if it has intelligence or not. It doesn’t help that humans refuse to break the joke to explain it to them.

Alien scientists try to explain the strange phenomenon that is Quartermaster Stabby. They cannot. Humans are delighted.

Quartermaster Stabby is eventually promoted to a position of authority over all autonomous drones in the entire human empire. It also escaped the ship once and managed to become the mayor of a small alien city. That city has since begun using the fact as a tourist attraction, and the episode has brought to human attention the fact that Mayor Stabby technically fulfills all of the criteria necessary to become a president or council member. (Minus the sentience.)

Humans are now trying to vote Mayor Stabby into office, using the aliens’ inability to determine its sentience level to their advantage.

They are successful. Counselor Stabby is most universally beloved representative of the human race. (Among humans, anyway. The aliens have mixed reactions, ranging from amusement, to fear, to outrage.)

Counselor Stabby goes on to somehow reveal a corrupt plot among several other counsel members and essentially averts a huge political catastrophe, all because one of the spies dropped her earring and Counselor Stabby ate it. The earring was bugged. Good call, Counselor Stabby.

Every time Counselor Stabby breaks down and has to be repaired, trillions of humans flood its social media accounts with ‘get well’ messages, and many flowers and gifts are sent to the repair bay or to its charging station.

Counselor Stabby has somehow blundered its way into receiving all of the highest honors that can be bestowed by human society. It helps run an empire. It saves lives. It cleans donut crumbs off of the floor without being asked.

All without a single sentient thought.

“Why does a human’s consideration for a ‘better bot’ mean more knives, sir?” the young ambassador said, staring at the contraption in front of him. 

“ we are unsure of their purpose, we have many reports of these creations protecting their home ships. “ The advisor said also staring at the contraptions many spinning blades. 

The residing human walked into the room squealing, quite to loud for the ambassador’s taste, at the contraption. 

“ Aren’t you just a spinning bundle of death! “ The human cried out happily? (The ambassador was still unsure of humans deployment of emotions.) The delivery droid, with knife blades above its propellors, bobbed up and down before depositing it’s ‘gift’ (as the human called it) and leaving through the bot-hatch with a frightening scream accompanying it.

and humans are like oh yeah we don’t fuck with that

and aliens are like you literally hop galaxies with little to no understanding of what you’ll find but you won’t venture into your own aquatic abyss?

and humans simply say scan it

…that I believe the @space-australians and @humans-are-seriously-weird folks may be interested in.

Picture this, if you will: human member of a mostly alien crew enjoys drawing, enough that they brought a sketchbook or three into space with them. They enjoy sharing what they create with others, whether its just a simple sketch of another crewmember or a detailed rendition of that last really cool nebula their ship passed by. Now, some aliens get the concept of drawing like this, some don’t, but just about everyone can appreciate the level of skill and effort that went into rendering a near-perfect likeness of something by hand.

So then we come to a point when the human is encouraged into pulling out an older, already-filled sketchbook to show off other things they’ve done before becoming a member of the crew. As they flip through the pages, allowing various aliens gathered around to admire each one, they come to a sketch of a human riding a horse.

Someone of course asks what kind of animal it is, prompting the artist to explain a bit about the species, after which they add: “I don’t really want to finish this one until I get a good reference picture, since I haven’t seen a horse in a long while and I don’t think I quite got the proportions right…”

Even so, their fellow crewmembers say it is a very well-done drawing, the artist mumbles out a pleased thank-you, and on they continue.

A few pages later, there’s another human-riding-an-Earth-creature drawing. Except, this animal is much larger than a horse, and much scarier looking to boot, with curling horns, a mouth full of jagged teeth, claws on each foot, spines and scales and a dangerous looking mace-like tail - not to mention the fact that it’s flying on massive wings.

“What in the stars is that?!” Someone has to ask.

“Oh, it’s just a dragon,” the human says off-handedly. “I always liked drawing the European style best, since they’ve got the coolest features in my opinion - not that the Asian Lung and American Amphiteres aren’t cool too, though, and I’ll do the occasional African Wyvern or Fae Dragon, but for a portrait of a good old-fashioned dragonrider, I want the kind that started the tradition. Anyway, I really think you botany guys will like this next one, it’s a sketch of the apple grove I used to visit as a kid…”

The human doesn’t notice the silence of their audience, and eventually the aliens recover from their shock and dismay.

Everyone who’s been talking to me knows i’ve been working on this comic about wlws and cats for a while and i’m so so happy it’s finally here!!! :D

idea stolen from this post :’3

I’m not the most eloquent writer, but I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while and figured I’d put it out into the universe.

A lot of the basis for the “humans are space orcs” stuff is the idea that we’re pretty durable compared to many species, yeah? When it comes to physical trauma, we can bounce back from most things that don’t kill us outright, especially given the benefit of hypothetical space-age technology, and adrenaline is one heck of a drug when it comes to functioning under stress. 

But that doesn’t make us unkillable, and even though we can survive debilitating injuries and not die from shock, it doesn’t mean it’s fun. Dying of shock sucks, but at least it’s probably quick.

So - Imagine a ship, adrift in space, slowly being drawn into a star or something. In order to save the ship, someone has to repair the hyper-quantum-relay-majig on the hull or in the engine or whatever. Bit of a problem though- there’s a ton of deadly, deadly radiation (Wrath of Khan style) or poisonous fumes or, I dunno, electrical current, between the crew and the repair. Like, enough to kill most species instantly, so the crew is just like, ‘welp, guess we’ll die then’. But then.

BUT THEN

They ask the human. Because everyone’s heard the stories - you’re basically unkillable, right? Could you survive long enough in there to fix it? And their human goes real quiet for a second, but still says ‘Yeah, I could fix it’. And the rest of the crew is like, ‘Whaaaaaa, it won’t kill you?’ and the human repeats “I can fix it” (which isn’t an answer, but no one catches that, not yet at least), so they send ‘em in. And the human fixes it, they come back, the ship flies to safety, and the crew is thrilled to survive. If the human is a little quiet, well, they’re entitled after pulling off a miracle. Everyone else is just excited to get to the nearest station’s bar to tell their very own human story, cuz, ‘those crazy humans, amiright?’.

The good mood keeps up until the human is late for their next shift. At first it’s just faint unease, but- but they earned a bit of a lie-in, right? No reason to begrudge them some extra rest, even if it is a little weird for them to oversleep. They’ll be fine. Humans are always fine. 

(Right?)

(…Wrong.)

- What is… help. Help!-

- ake up! You have t-

- been days. You need sleep, you-

- nother transfusion. We could-

- out of sedatives!-

A week later, the crew finally reaches the station. They stumble into the bar, haggard and haunted. And over the next months and years a new rumor about humans starts to make its way through space. A rumor unlike any before.