Every time I see some joke about Star Trek-style teleporter technology I'm like "I should write a story about the potential of this technology re: the whole 'killing and copying people' thing and the ramifications of being able to essentially print people" and then I remember I already wrote it. Every single time.
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I paused in the hallway to ask Mur, âWhatâs that smell?â
He didnât stop, tentacles working fast to carry him away from the cargo hold. âClient opened a box. Iâm going to tell Wio to turn up the air filters for a bit.â
âAh,â I said as he hurried off. âIs it toxic?â
âOnly in large amounts,â he called back. âIf they have to open another one, tell them to do it in the airlock!â
âRight.â I turned toward the cargo bay, where something smelled unpleasantly sulfurous. If I hadnât know full well that we didnât have any animal cargo at the moment, I would have suspected large-scale digestive troubles.
When I entered the bay, there were no alien cows or whatnot, just a variety of boxes and three Heatseekers. The guy with dark purple scales had to be the client. Judging by the relaxed body language and a couple of comments Iâd overheard earlier, I was pretty sure that both Paint and Captain Sunlight had known him for years.
âIt just doesnât sound sustainable,â the captain was saying. âYouâre missing out on a lot of possible sales.â
âWeâre doing all right,â he objected. âSure, itâs extra work to trade in some of the bartered things and the rare currency, but at least thereâs no bank taking a percentage.â
âEven with that percentage, you would see more profits,â Captain Sunlight said.
The guy scoffed and shook his lizardy head, saying a few consonants but no actual words.
Paint placed an orange-scaled hand on his arm and asked gently, âIs it debt?â
âNo,â he said, way too fast to be convincing.
Captain Sunlight used her own yellow hand for a facepalm. âAmethyst.â
âItâs not a lot of debt! Weâll get it paid off!â
âPlease tell me you didnât set up shop on an unbreathable moon because you thought the Seers are less likely to look for you there.â
âWhat? They are! And anyways, we would have gotten it paid off already if the hybrid color looked the way it was supposed to.â He waved at the open box at their feet.
Paint and Captain Sunlight both followed his gaze, then looked up and caught sight of me lingering in the doorway.
âUh, hi,â I said. âJust curious about the smell.â A puff of air from above told me the filters had just kicked into higher gear.
Captain Sunlight introduced me, making a visible effort to look professionally crisp instead of exasperated. âRobin, this is Amethyst, an old friend from a previous ship. Heâs currently growing fruit on a moon with unfortunate air quality, and this box wasnât properly ventilated before sealing.â
Amethyst protested, âWe usually just let them air out at the market. Itâs outdoors; the gas disappears fast.â
Paint asked him, âDo you think people would buy more if they didnât smell bad, though?â
âThey donât!â he said. âThe berries smell good! Itâs just the air!â He bent and plucked something small from the box, holding it out to her insistently.
I strolled forward while Paint took the berry hesitantly. At Amethystâs urging, Paint tasted the berry and said with some surprise that it was very good.
âSee? Our customers love them! Theyâd just love them more if the colors had blended like they were supposed to.â
Now that I was close enough to look into the box, I saw an insulated pile of what looked like red blueberries with darker speckles. Amethyst picked out another one and handed it to me, held between delicate claws.
I took it, glancing at the captain. âDo I need to check with Eggskin to make sure this is human-safe?â Iâd met precious few food-berries that werenât, but our cook/medic would have been very irritated with me if Iâd been incautious on the rare occasion that one wasnât safe.
Captain Sunlight shook her head. âItâs fine; youâve had these before. Theyâre just a different color. And the air doesnât affect more than ambiance.â
I nodded and inspected the berry. To my amusement, the three dark spots made a nearly perfect smily face. I opened my mouth to point it out, but they were already talking again.
Paint said, âI really do think the smell is scaring people off.â
âIt dissipates so fast, though! Only the first few customers in the morning are even there to smell it!â
âHave you tried selling at different locations?â Captain Sunlight wanted to know. âYou might have better luck at one of the big stations.â
âSure, but everything in easy reach needs a bank connection before you even apply. And I swear some of them have Seers on staff just to make sure no dangerous criminals or whatever want to get a foothold.â
I was skeptical of that, but so were Paint and Captain Sunlight, so I let them debate the point. Elite telepathic crimestoppers seemed unlikely to hang out at a space station market, even a big one, but who was I to say? Iâd hardly been on the lookout for them. One of the many benefits of operating on the straight and narrow without skipping out on a loan shark or whatever Amethyst had done.
While they talked in circles about the best way for him to pay off his debts and get the same kind of banking connection that most of the civilized galaxy had, I crouched to look at the rest of the berries.
Oh my gravity, theyâre all like this. I carefully scooped up a handful, flicking a glance upward, and looked them over carefully. Every single one was red with a purplish smiley face. And when I remembered to taste the one in my other hand, I found that they were indeed very good.
I grinned up at the three Heatseekers, probably with berry juice in my teeth. âI have a suggestion.â
They looked down in surprise. Captain Sunlight prompted, âYes?â
I held up a berry, face-side forward. âDo they all have this pattern? Not just this one box? Because that is something of a human sigil, representing happiness.â
âWhat?â Amethyst asked, eyes wide.
Captain Sunlight squinted at it. âOh, that does look like the â what do you call itââ
âSmiley face!â Paint exclaimed in delight. âDo you think people would buy them just for that?â
âAbsolutely they would,â I said. âMarket them as âgood luck berries, here to bring smiles into your life,â and youâll get a lot of attention. Especially if theyâre in convenient little containers for people to take home and give to their friends.â
âReally??â Amethyst asked. âThey ⌠yeah, they do all have the same three spots. I had no idea it meant something. We do get humans coming through that market, but thereâs a lot of competition for food.â
Captain Sunlight said, âThen I daresay you might get something of an edge over that competition with some new signs and labels. Would those be expensive to arrange?â
âNo, weâve got a good source for labels,â he said, clearly thinking quickly. âAnd we make the banners ourselves; got a couple talented artists. It could work.â
âAnd one other thought,â I said as I poured the berries back and stood up, knees protesting. âIf you keep a few little boxes set aside with that stinky air deliberately trapped inside, you can sell those at a higher price for pranking friends.â
âReally?â he said again.
âReally really,â I told him. âIf that side of things takes off, you can even branch out to selling whoopee cushions and fart machines with them. Maybe even some little electronics to play a noise when the box is opened.â
âBut start small,â Captain Sunlight cautioned, sounding like sheâd given him this advice before. âYou have plenty to work with as-is.â
âRight, yes. Good luck happy faces and joke smells. Yes.â He nodded several times. âOkay, yes, I can work with that.â
Paint said, âAnd when you get set up with a regular payment system, you can set up shop at a big station, and do even better!â
Captain Sunlight added, âMaybe weâll end up doing more deliveries for you, when your produce is in high demand everywhere.â
He smiled at that. âIâll be sure to have some complimentary boxes set aside for your crew in gratitude.â
I grinned. âIf they end up being the prank version, I wonât even be mad.â
~~~
Good news! Volume One of the collected series is now available in paperback and ebook form! (Check your local store, or this handy link hub.)
~~~
These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.
Shared early on Patreon! Thereâs even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.
The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadnât thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but theyâre too much fun to leave out of the second).
For some reason imagined a future with an Interstellar Science Review Council, where all can send in Scientific studies of all kind and have different alien species review them to circumvent "local biases", to reduce the risk of repeating things like excluding data or test subjects because "if you have A you can't also have B" etc.
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Imagine an alien species that evolved to be semi-aquatic watching humans (a species evolved to climb and run on land) jump eagerly into the water to swim with them. No safety equipment, no flotation devices, just a thin modesty suit and sheer glee.
And humans, by the alienâs standards, are terrible at swimming. JustâŚtruly awful. They canât hold their breath for long, their bones and muscles are dense, their lungs make them too buoyant, their hair creates drag, their gangly limbs are slow and clumsy, and they canât open their eyes underwater because the water will hurt them.
And yet the human laughs and splashes with their alien friend and alien canât help but marvel as the human seems to adapt in real time right in front of their eyes.
The human streamlines themself to glide through the water as best they can, trying their best to turn their grasping hands into paddles, their feet into flippers. The human watches and copies how the alien moves and mimics them, learns and copies them until they move almost gracefully.
Often, they break away from these learned skills and become a land mammal flailing in the water again, but something about the human willingly defying their nature, learning to be more than they are in a bid for connection with another species, makes the alien light up with something that feels an awful lot like fondness.
Love the idea that the evolution of aliens on another world isnât necessarily kinder or any less brutal than humanityâs evolution but aliens are still left in shock at just HOW MUCH âHumanityâ had to endure before it became Humanity.
Alien planets have experienced an extinction event maybe once, perhaps even twice if theyâre just that unlucky during their evolutionary history and had to start the long process of rebuilding and adapting from the rubble. And then they look at humanityâs evolutionary history andâŚâWhat the F**k?!â
Humanity has had no less than FIVE MASS EXTINCTION EVENTS.
F I V E.
Weâve have space rocks dropped on us, had the sun blotted out, had that one time where everything just fuckin died (Literally called the Great Dying) and our evolutionary ancestors still managed to squeak by. And thatâs not even mentioning the âless direâ events in our history including multiple ice ages, at least three wide spread and lethal plagues, two really really bad just truly awful wars, and a whole bunch of other natural disasters that very much should have at least slowed us down for a lot longer than they did.
The aliens learn about all of this and turn to their squishy, delicate human companions and say
âWhy does your planet want to kill you so badly? Do you need help?? Do you want to come with us???â
And the humans are just like âThanks but no thanks, I get homesick.â
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Curiosity rover cracked open a Martian rock, revealing a sight never before seen on Mars - a dazzling display of yellow sulfur crystals.
Reading that it is sulfur crystals and my "supernatural/occult brain" turns on for just long enough to imagine "demons formed on Mars and moved to Earth as the planet dried up. Or the planet dried up because they left?"
Humans are Space Orcs story where humans are known for our storytelling and acting abilities. While these talents are somewhat respected, thereâs a major stigma against humans because weâre also the best liars.
âHumans donât actually feel anything at all, they just mimic emotions to trick others into believing themâ
âNever trust a human. They lie like the rest of us breathâ
âHumans spend so much of their lives acting, itâs impossible to tell when theyâre being truthfulâ
âIn human culture, great respect is awarded to âactorsâ who are able to mimic other persons and emotions with startling accuracyâ
âSome âactorsâ are able to âperformâ hundreds of unique charactersâ
âActing is so ubiquitous in the human culture that many consider it polite to lieâ
âSarcasm is a common, casual game played between humans, where one human says something untrue and the other human must guess what truth they are thinking. Humans unable to perform this ritual are often ostracized by their peersâ
âIf you see a human crying, do not immediately assume they are hurt. Humans have been known to use their âactingâ abilities to trick unsuspecting travelers into giving up an unreasonable number of belongingsâ
âAll interstellar travelers are required to read up on popular âscamsâ or âconsâ performed by humans in the region they are traveling toâ
While exploring a vast and inscrutable city which seems to predate life on earth I am gently picked up by something incomprehensible with the higher-dimensional equivalent of a cup and piece of paper, then lovingly set outside in my natural habitat. Unfortunately the being exists outside of time and can't really tell human cities apart from one another so I appear without warning in ancient sumer.
"Humans might currently be succeeding as a species not because of, but despite, our moral aptitude. We have taken this universal normative system that governs and constrains social behavior for most animals to weird extremes. Animals with their less sophisticated normative systems are the ones leading the good life."
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on the subject of Humans Are Space Orcs i keep thinking it would be funny if âpursuit predatorâ humans got together with an âambush predatorâ feliform species. and like. humans enjoy walking around with their friends! and the feliforms enjoy huddling in a concealed location with their friends! and it takes all of half an hour for a human to pick up a scarf and make a sling to take their pal with them while they go grab some lunch.
our new friends are like âare you sure this isnât an inconvenienceâ and the humans are like âare you kidding we do this with terran cats whether they like it or notâÂ
also the team-up of humans and the feliform species gives most herbivore species in the galaxy screaming nightmares because here is a mobile tower that will follow you for 16 hours straight and itâs carrying a bag full of sneaky murder like itâs a baby this is not okay
âLet me get this straight about you Earthlings. You cannot drink water from the most abundant source on your planet because it is 3% salt, yet you can easily process various poisons like capsaicin, caffeine, and menthol, with no harm and even some benefits?â âThe human body is weird, man.â
âHow did you chucklenuts make it through the mind-boggling obstacle of the interstellar void without knowing the difference between an Electrolyte and an Alkaloid?â
We do not know what a âchucklenutsâ is
âItâs an affectionate term used for the closest of friends. Ok. Lemme break it down for you, Space Roomba-â
We are not Roombas. We are vastly superior to a mobile vacuum cleaning engine
âYea but yer still Robotsâ
âRobotâ is German for Laborer. We do not labor. We exterminate.
âYer a tedious Roomba and you will be quiet for a moment so I can explain!â [presses button]
EEEEEEEEE THAT IS MOST UNPLEASANT
âŚwe will be silent
â⌠good. Right. So, Alkaloids are made by Plants, see, and theyâre meant to interface with Cellular Machinery, ye ken? They have specific effects, and theyâre constructed and destroyed within the same framework as shit like ATP and Fructose. Ye ken? Itâs a chunk of code. Electrolytes? Salt? Bitch, that ainât food, thatâs Voltage! We use that stuff to regulate the electrical potential across membranes; it provides the background voltage to run our redox reactions, kennit? Onboard too much of that shit, it starts frying things! Down at the cellular level, ye ken, membranes rupturing, folding wrong; itâs not the same thing at all! Besides, exactly what kind of mass percentage you think folks can tolerate of capsaicin? 3% would be equally deleterious, you smug bucket of bolts! You didnât bother studying us at all before you invaded, did you? No wonder it was such a fukken cinch to get the drop on ya.â
WE WILL CONQUER
[presses button]
AAAAAAAAA THE PAIN
âWelcome to Earth. Itâs a rough neighborhood.â
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