Proud To Be A Space Orc

I think we found the perfect enrichment for human crew members.

Our humans really enjoyed this area we provided for them.

They can run, fall, climb and more, to their hearts content.

They really enjoy being lifted and thrown into a large pit of foam blocks, or plastic spheres.

Note: our crew is mostly Xarnian, so we possess the necessary strength to lift the average adult human despite the density they have evolved on their deathworld.

Human larvae enjoy it the most, but even the mature humans are also thrilled by these activities.

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 alien’s standards, are terrible at swimming. Just…truly awful. They can’t 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 can’t open their eyes underwater because the water will hurt them.

And yet the human laughs and splashes with their alien friend and alien can’t 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.

Like, relieving tension is a response that aliens would almost definitely understand, but there are more intuitive ones. Massage, deep breathing, exercise, hell even sex make more sense than laughing from a purely biological perspective. But laughing? Briskly expelling air from your lungs so fast that it can overwhelm your system and sometimes cause even more physical tension? Wild.

You text an alien friend "lol" and they ask what it means and you have to look up the etymology because it's 2781 and it's just been its own word for centuries to tell them, "laughing out loud."

"What is 'laughing out loud'?" And then you send them a GIF and they text you back in all caps "ARE YOU IN DISTRESS?? DO YOU NEED MEDICAL ATTENTION??"

And you have to talk them down and explain and they start to feel better until you let slip that at least it wasn't so strong you couldn't breathe and then they spiral again because "this response causes asphyxiation? And it's INVOLUNTARY????"

Not that aliens are humorless of course, but I definitely don't actually lol at most od the Reels my friends send me. I just smile at the cleverness or the stupidity. This, I think aliens would understand—they smile at humans' cleverness and stupidity all the time.

I almost wonder if they would assume the other side of laughter first, due to its oddity to them. Because we know very well that sometimes laughter can let off tension in a bad way, too. A witch's cackle, a villain's chuckle, a little girl's giggle in a horror movie.

Would it be affirming, I wonder, to see the horror on a human's face when they lose contact with a member of their crew planetside and when they finally make contact again, all they hear is a slow, dark snickering through the comm?

After all, it's such a strange thing to hear, laughter.

Would it be a relief to see their faces pale with the same unease that the aliens' feel every time they hear that odd sharp sound from the depths of human throats?

They're chaotic and messy and invasive. They talk. So much. I doubt I will become close to the new human.

Voyage Log 199: The new human arrived some time ago. They seem different from the way their species is typically described. They're..... quiet. They keep to themselves but aren't unfriendly when approached. I'm not sure what to make of them.

Voyage Log 210: Human Chris has taken sitting at the same table as me during meals. We don't speak and keep a respectable distance. It's... not unpleasant.

Voyage Log 219: Chris is fond of gardening as well! It is a difficult hobby to have on a ship. They have shared several tips as to how I can improve the health of my Hyacinths.

Voyage Log 241: I have been suspended from active duty for breaking Von's olfactory sensor. I assured the Captain that I did it on a whim and certainly not because Von destroyed Chris's Geranium. I am most definitely not attached to the Human.

Can you imagine being an alien and this thing just broke its bones at you?????

I'd be scared tbh

Why did it make that noise

That's a bone breaking noise

A species divided up into 4 age groups, born to youth age that stays with their parent, youth to matting age where they should still be cared for but their parent won't anymore because their having more children, mating ages to elder, and elder

So they have a ritual dance thing with food or trinkets where youth and orphans will attempt to win over an elder to care for them

Other species are often invited to these gathering since there would not be enough elders, but other species aren't always the best at caring for species that aren't their own, and would likely learn not to accept the item offered by the youth since that means your agreeing to take care of them

One of the other species might think it's funny to invite a human to one of these gatherings, and after the human accepts the item from whichever youth was brave enough to approach them they inform them what they agreed to (brave because either they found the human scary or had heard how poorly outside species had cared for the young they accepted. They would likely be the tiniest, sickest looking, desperate reject out of the group)

Human has of course now been challenged, how dare one challenge a human

The human pours themselves into learning everything they need to know to care for the youth and raise them well

Later the time comes when the youth are of mating age and return for a coupling ritual, probably held alongside the youth ritual

In comes the human with their charge who has grown from super tiny and pathetic to the strongest and healthiest one there, even far better looking and more of an ideal mate than any that had been cared for by their own elders, human is of course super proud

Humans who would be willing to take in the youths are begged to attend all future rituals and are swamped by the kids trying to gain their favor

"Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" The human, Jana, had been trying to get an answer out of them for a while, and by now was just asking out of habit and desire to hear any voice.

Ey'd been on a ship with, among the entire rest of the crew, four Peprine. Then one day, as they were in line in mess, three of the Peprine looked up in unison like a dog with a whistle or kids with an ice-cream truck, set their trays down, and started moving toward the auxiliary shuttles. Two of them were eir friends and Jana had followed.

As they'd come around a hallway they'd encountered two security officers pushing the other Peprine toward the shuttles, until that one turned toward the shuttles so suddenly that one of the officers fell. Jana helped xem up. "What's happening?"

"Some kind of Peprine mating signal calling them all home or something. Sthani was on the bridge and tried to commandeer the whole ship, but now that we're closer to the shuttles..."

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.

Alien1: hey, when did you hire a human?

Alien 2: we didn't. They just wandered aboard one day, saying they wanted to "hitch a ride." Then they never left. I think they like it here.

Alien 1: the human distribution system has chosen.

***

Alien stares at the human, who has climbed up a very high shelving unit.

Alien: Human, get down before you hurt yourself.

The humans response is to climb higher.

***

Alien is secretly filming their human, who is spaced out and just staring at nothing.

Alien: This is a very dangerous animal!

Human: Don't worry, we'll just walk away.

Alien: But it's watching us!

Human: It's hoping we leave already, so we're leaving.

Alien: It... It is?

Human: Yeah, it is more scared of us than we are of it. Let's go before the fight instinct kicks in because then it'll become a dangerous animal

so I've seen a good few posts here about aliens freaking out about humans eating things that're toxic to them but are just spicy to us, and I figured I'd add in my thoughts. This isn't to say anybody is wrong, these are aliens we're talking about and they're not my stories.

However, on Earth the capsaicin that makes things spicy only affects mammals, something about one of the receptors we have that other types of animals don't. Which is why anybody who has issues with squirrels getting into their bird feeders often have hot pepper spray on things or get things for their birds already mixed with hot pepper stuff. Cuz birds can't taste any of the capsaicin while the squirrels can and are often kept away cuz of it (not always but often).

"Do you like your serial number?" they ask. "Yes, quite. It reminds me of who I am" the robot replies. "I have heard others like me go by different names after some time, and maybe one day I'll choose one for myself, too. But right now that is my full name, yes" they continue.

Because it's not your decision to make whether or not the robot will receive a new name. It should be theirs only. What's the difference? One is more complex and the other is simplified. They were both given by strangers instead of themselves.

The LEDs along 62’s appendages twinkle- a tell that they’re mulling over an answer.

“It’s a nickname,” they explain, “you are my fourth acquaintance aboard the station, and I’ve assigned you a serial number. Your full designation is F-001-04.”

“What does the ‘F’ stand for?” I ask, curious and charmed.

Some of my favourites include:

Zoo Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they're not talking to us because of the Prime Directive from Star Trek? (Or because they're doing experiments on us???)

Dark Forest Theory: What if there are loads of aliens out there, but they all hate us and each other so they're all just waiting with a shotgun pointed at the door, ready to open fire on anything that moves?

Planetarium Theory: What if there's at least one alien with mastery over light and matter that's just making it seem to us that the universe is empty to us as, like, a joke?

Berserker Theory: What if there were loads of aliens, but one of them made infinite killer robots that murdered everyone and are coming for us next?!!

Like, the universe is at least 13,700,000,000 years old and 46,000,000,000 light years big. We have had the ability to transmit and receive signals for, what, 100 years, and our signals have so far travelled 200 light years?

The fact is biological life almost certainly has, does, or will develop elsewhere in the universe, and it's not impossible that a tiny amount of it has, does, or will develop in a way that we would understand as "intelligent". But, like, we're realistically never going to know because of the scale of the things involved.

So I'm proposing my own hypothesis. I call it the "Fool in a Field" hypothesis. It goes like this:

It is now February 15 and the largest medical facility in South Gaza, which sheltered ~2,500 people and had been under siege for two weeks, has been attacked. It is now completely out of function.

We are 21 days away from marking 5 months of ongoing genocide.

What if earth was space Japan instead?

Like, imagine if human media was really popular throughout the galaxy amongst young extraterrestrial beings for whatever reason. Aliens love to watch our movies, comicbooks, literature and whatnot. And we end up with a niche community of aliens who are obsessed with human life - or at least the weird idealised version of it as seen on TV.

Imagine a bunch of edgy alien teenagers (or the alien equivalent of it!) dreaming of travelling to Earth and meeting Percy Jackson, or visiting the Krusty Krab, or exploring the ruins of the Titanic. Imagine some bizarre-looking creature from Andromeda with fifteen legs and tentacles for eyes learning Latin so it can understand christian prayers better. Imagine some space incel defending human war crimes on alien 4chan.