#atrix

Atrix, spawn of the Frostmaiden, the girl with snow for hair and a storm in her eyes.

* = disliked the product - would not repurchase ** = liked the product - would not repurchase *** = liked the product - might or might not repurchase **** = loved the product - would repurchase *HOLY GRAIL!*

1. atrix Beauty Charge Honey & Yuzu Hand Cream (80g) source: n/a thoughts: I love the scent of these hand creams, but they aren't the moist moisturising. rating: **

2. heimish All Clean Balm: Mandarin (5ml/0.16oz) source: sample thoughts: I really like Heimish's cleansing balms, but I prefer the original one more. I feel like this one was more oily. I like the consistency of this, as it wasn't too thick to the point that it becomes hard to spread. rating: ***

3. steambase Tea Tree Scalp Water Scaler (250ml/8.45oz) source: YesStyle thoughts: I feel like this did help with my scalp condition. My scalp isn't as itchy compared to before when I use this in combination with a regular shampoo. I like the packaging of this, as it's a skinny bottle and has a cap that I can easily determine if the bottle is opened or not. This product also comes as a refill so you do not have to buy the bottle again. The refill allows you to fill the bottle up at least 2 times. rating: ***

4. O HUI Age Recovery skin softener (150ml) source: Jolse thoughts: I really like this. It is hydrating and very light. It also absorbs really well. I used this during the day and would pat it into my skin at least two times. rating: ***

5. Davids natural mint+charcoal toothpaste (149g/5.25oz) source: well.ca thoughts: I did really like this toothpaste, but as I use it more I feel like it doesn't do that great of a job in helping me whiten my teeth or keep it white. Plus this is an American product, which I want to try to lean away from. I just checked and it seems that this is now discontinued. rating: ***

6. I'm from Supul Body Scrub & Wash (300g/10.58oz) source: YesStyle thoughts: I really love the look of this, a simple glass bottle with what it is on the bottom in black font. It's a very minimalistic look. However, the product itself wasn't that great. I didn't find it that exfoliating and the product was kind of hard to dispense, compared to the lotion. But I do love the scent of this. I got this for about $30CAD on YesStyle. rating: ***

7. AYUNCHE Rebalancing Mask (200ml/6.7oz) source: Stylevana thoughts: I don't know if this really did anything for my hair or scalp. This has a herbal kind of scent to it which my mom did not like. I did not mind the scent at all. It was okay but at the price of $74 it was a very steep price for an okay product. At the time when I purchased this it was a brand that was hard to find, but now you can find it for about $25-30CAD. Stylevana has also added additional AYUNCHE products now and this mask is at a much much lower price point now. rating: ***

8. The Saem Perfumed Hand Shea Butter: Garden Rose (30ml/1.01oz) source: Gift thoughts: I found this to be very thick and it wasn't moisturizing enough. It does smell very nice though but not something I would get. rating: *

9. NARD Himalaya Herb Body Wash (100ml/3.38oz) source: Stylevana thoughts: This smells very nice. It has a very earthy and forest kind of scent to it. The formulation of this was quite nice. It lathered well and I feel like it cleansed my skin well without stripping it. rating: **

10. SKINFOOD yuja C Vita Daily Mask (30 masks) source: Skinfood (Korea) thoughts: I really enjoyed using this. I feel like it really helps with my skins moisture levels. I'm definitely more prone to using these when they are out on my counter in a container rather than a bag. I can't wait to use my other ones. I'm really attracted to these daily masks in a tub and also the overnight gel masks as of right now. rating: ***

11. By Wishtrend Green Tea & Enzyme Milky Foaming Wash (140ml/4.73oz) source: YesStyle thoughts: I really like using milky or gel type cleansers, hence I did enjoy using this. My skin didn't feel dry and it felt like it did do a good job of cleansing. The only thing that I don't like is the design of the bottle. The product dispenses well however the tip always has a dried/harden part of the product which annoys me a little as I really have to mush that bit to make it into a better consistency. This took me 170 days to finish and I used it twice a day. rating: ***

12. Skin & Lab Clean & Easy Blemish Spot Patch (54 patches) source: YesStyle thoughts: These have two sizes in them. You get 2 sheets of the 10mm with 15 on each sheet and 2 sheets of the 12mm with 12 on each sheet. The concept of these for the application are nice as they are quite thin. They have a step 1 and 2 sticker on top of the patch for easier application. But I found that it didn't always peel properly. Good thing is that the sheet itself still has like a perforated tear so you can just peel off the step guide and then peel the patch off from the sheet. These work just the same as any other spot patch. I still personally like my G9 Skin ones as they are all one size, since I rarely break out in places where the small sizes would be required. rating: **

13. Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey Cologne source: sample thoughts: This has always been my favourite scent from Jo Malone since I discovered the world of perfume and fragrances. I have mentioned before that I do gravitate towards citrus scents more but I don't mind this floral scent at all, as this is light. I really do enjoy Jo Malone scents as they are light and layer-able. I never got around to purchasing a full size of this as it is quite expensive plus I do want to go through my collection before buying any new ones. rating: **

14. Petitfee Super Seed Lip Oil (3g/0.1oz) source: Stylevana thoughts: I really like this, especially the applicator. I like that it's a plastic applicator and not like the doe foot. Cause the applicator doesn't get as dirty/ sticky as you use it more. As for the formulation, it's not sticky and it absorbs quickly. I do feel like its moisturizing but not as good as the one by Clarins and the one I'm currently using, by Hince. I feel like this one would be better for the warmer months as it's lighter than the Clarins and Hince ones. This smells like honey which is very nice. rating: ***

15. hersteller Wonder Veggie Juicy Treatment Essence (150ml/5.07oz) source: Jolse thoughts: I really like the ingredients in this as it contains some really good ingredients. This essence is said to be made up of 90% kale extract which helps improve skin strength with a slightly acidic formula. I feel like this was quite hydrating and that it did a good job of maintaining my skin condition. I definitely prefer something a little thicker at night rather than having to layer a thin essence multiple times to achieve the hydration I need. I used this at night, patting this into my skin 3 times. I finished this in 118 days. I really enjoyed the Wonder Veggie line by hersteller, but probably would not repurchase again as there are other products that are similar for around the same price point. There wasn't much of a scent to it, very clean and fresh. rating: **

16. Carenology95 Be:Fine The AC Spot Treatment (10g/0.35oz) source: Jolse thoughts: This has been my all time favourite spot treatment. I see results even if it is slow. Especially if you're consistent with it you'll definitely notice a difference. But this is getting harder and harder to find. rating: *HOLY GRAIL!*

It took Dave a surprisingly long time to ask, “Why are we here”.

“Philosophically you mean?” Asked Phalanges Mitten.

Dave “The Human”, an Adult female Tsin said “Not really.”

Phalanges Mitten, adult Human male — But technically a seven-foot tall dusty purple dinosaur, for tax reasons, squinted a bit at his friend and pursed his lips.

“Well in the long term, to provide an environment for replication, because evolution doesn’t really care why or how as long as you do. Medium term, to make sure the toilets don’t back up and short term, because it’s Delicious Unexplained Crunchy Food Stick day, and we wanted lunch?”

Dave examined his all-species ‘It’s not chicken, but you can eat it’ finger. She dipped it in some Aumu sauce mixed with chives. “I mean, you’re not wrong…” she said. 

Leaving comments open to see where the conversation went was always a fun game.

“But no, I mean the station. We’re orbiting this planet right, because there’s something down there that everyone’s interested in, but not urgently. But I don’t think I ever asked why?” She said, and snarfed down the breaded mycoprotein with a frankly adorable muzzle wiggle.

“Oh.” Said Phalanges. “Well, uh, it’s of special scientific… uh. Actually, that’s a good point.”

And at this point, let’s introduce Cat Fantastic: Cat is an actual Atrix, but currently they’re about the size of a chonky iguana. Cat’s issue is that he doesn’t have a patch of chromophores on his forehead, which is the very important non-verbal part of Atrix communication.

Frankly, not having the patch trips some really severe ‘uncanny valley’ responses, and the Atrix just got over their tendency to stamp on hatchlings who are missing their display patch.

Due to Phalanges (Prior name: Dave the Human, which an astute reader would also notice is the name the Tsin is using) hanging out in the Atrix section, someone arranged for Cat to team up with Phalanges. Who and how is currently a mystery, but now Phalanges has his own ‘Little Guy’.

Which is to say, they’re hanging out together and Cat is learning the fascinating subject of fixing the station’s sewerage and reclamation system, and officially they’re a team.

Cat in this instance peeks over the edge of the table from where he’s sitting on one of the chairs munching his own lunch and says “Graaaaaaak”.

Phalanges and Dave look at him with surprise. “Really? Well, I’m glad someone looked it up.” Says Dave. “Go on then…”

A tale of cultural incompetence.

So the way Cat Fantastic tells it is like this:

At some point in the history of the planet, the inhabitants had developed nations and a couple of religions.

One in particular did very well due to the leaves of a specific type of tree: It had very broad smooth leaves which were naturally coated with an antifungal, anti-biotic wax. Which made them ideal for washing down and using as plates, or for wrapping food. Or, indeed, boiling off and making an effective topical medicine.

This gave the nation a bit of a boost. They didn’t get sick as much from spoiled food, their first aid was a bit more effective, and so on. And so over time, the practice of using leaves from plate trees led to two important results:

First, there were more people, so more plate trees were cultivated to produce more leaves.

Second, the people developed a whole set of traditions, and beliefs which codified into a religion, who’s main theme was that the people were so good and perfect that the gods had gifted them with paper plates. 

And anyone who didn’t use them, like those icky guys over by the coast, who insisted on using wood bowls smeared with leftovers, were extremely gross and obviously not in favour with the gods due to being somehow inferior.

OK, so the obvious solution is to grow more trees, clear out all this useless vegetation and only keep plants which you can eat.

And thus agriculture was born, followed shortly by the coast people being forcibly converted into leaf plate using or mysteriously all setting fire to their own huts and vanishing, what a mystery.

You should definitely not look into what’s being used as fertiliser for the plate trees.

Anyway. This nation, very pleased with their righteousness, took their brilliant way of life and slowly nibbled away at their neighbours, most of whom were still hunter-gatherers.

All was great, hail the plate tree.

And then because they’d planted a vast monoculture, and cleared out anything that wasn’t food or plate trees, they caused a massive environmental collapse. 

Due to the insistence of e.g. introducing a fast-growing, water hungry plant to a biome that couldn’t really support it they caused desertification.

They wiped out many ‘pest’ species and flora that was pretty important to the smooth running of the ecosphere, causing further collapse.

“Ah.” Said Dave. “Yes, I can see where this is going.” She added and nodded to the planet, which was not a healthy colour.

“Speaking from experience, turning your planet to dust is a real embuggerance.”

Phalanges nodded sympathetically. The Tsin had discovered space robotic space flight and, within thirty years, developed orbital bombardment. Then someone had determined that those guys over there needed to be taught a lesson.

And that’s how the Tsin spent the last half millennium living in bunkers and trying to restore a working biosphere from whatever their ancestors had managed to preserve.

It’s also the reason the Tsin are having an issue with genetic bottlenecks.

Phalanges nodded in agreement. Humans had done a number on their biosphere, but the remediation had been more or less working, albeit slowly and fitfully when the Wallandernook showed up and sold them a janky old spacefolder, and it’s hyperefficient energy conversion engine.

“So they, what, tried to outrun their environmental collapse by invading more land?”

“Graaak”

“Ha, called it…”

The People had indeed pushed further to plant more plate trees and acquire more Prisoners-With-Jobs to look after the farms, temples and so on.

By the late stages they’d even begun to realise that the leaves were the issue and that one could make replacements out of pressed fibre, or eventually, basic plastics.

Which of course were both problematic in themselves, and also deeply heretical to traditionalists.

And now, the planet was a nutrient poor world with a massive monoculture, slowly speciating from the original plate trees, with massive deserts and dessicated plantations, and a crumbled array of civilisations.

The cities and towns abandoned by the people who’d slowly gone back to hunting and gathering and slowly fading away.

And above it all, a station filled with people from other worlds who’d banded together to discover what history was left, and document it.

“Wow.” Said Phalanges, lunch long since finished. “Sounds exactly like the sort of thing Humans would do.”

“And Tsin” said Dave.

“Graak.” Said Cat.

There was a sign on the wall in three of the Universal languages used in the sector:

[Do not tell the Humans something is Impossible]

Ipsquib read it in two of the Universal languages he knew how to read and then said to Atrix Attomyar Denoue, “What the heck?”

Atto, in Passable Tsin, said: “You know the Humans. You tell them they can't do something, and it just encourages them.”

Ipsquib, pondered this. “Like... doing things that aren't physically possible, like that one EVA guy who forgot his suit who ran outside a space station nude to talk to their friend?”

Atto thought about it. “Pretty sure that's just made up,” she said, “But yeah I guess, or more worsely, they're rules lawyers.”

“Eh?”

“Remember that legal case on Epsilon Eridani - The one with the jewellery?”

“The Glitter Band?”

“Yeah. They caught someone stealing it, but it belonged to their family before the Intercine, and it was stolen, but because the other side won they upheld it as owned by the thieves, but then the regime fell and... anyway, everyone had a claim to it.”

“Right. I still don't follow it. How did it work out?”

“One of the human lawyers,” said Atto, “Managed to prove the entire species didn't exist and thus by the wording of the law, it could never have been owned by any party, and therefore it must be an artifact of a non-native species, and as the only representative of a non-native species in the courtroom, he awarded it to the family of the original owners. Nobody could figure out how to legally prove them wrong.”

Ipsquib paused and thought about that for a moment. “OK, that's… Ugh. Humans.”

Garf, Un-Named Male, Phalanges Mittens and Cat Fantastic were in theory working on part of the live ecosystem reclamation down in Sanitation.

Not an especially unusual situation, since they were after all, really high tech sanitation engineers from the future; or from their point of view, Life Support Tech.

A job's a job and people like to breathe clean air, not die of 'drinking water' or have to wade through sewage of any level.

The issue had been traced to monitoring probe that was hallucinating, and thus the apparent issue had been resolved in two minutes of work, three of swearing at a stuck bolt, and ten of getting Cat Fantastic to go get the replacement part, which had led to a long discussion between Garf and Un-Named male about how weird it was to see a Little Guy without a Big Atrix.

"Yes -- but Cat drives that tool trolley around, so it helps." Phalanges said, referring to the robotic workbench nicknamed "The Office".

The workbench was originally designed to follow a worker around, but since Phlanges didn't have a pouch for his Little Guy the way Garf did,t he and Dave had converted the thing to keep Cat warm.

Later, once they got the manual remote replaced by a unit Cat could use, they'd added a basket for snacks so Cat could do a drinks and sandwich run to the Cafeteria, and a cargo box to haul parts and tools.

Around then Dave herself showed up and took a professional look through the viewport at huge tray of essentially very wet dirt that a variety of mosses and fungi and earth plants were cohabiting on.

Dave of course was the certified expert in this system, so it behoved her to stick her snout in and take a look-see.

"Stuck gas probe?" she guessed and then rather theatrically reached in and picked up a bottle of Lychee soda from the snack storage using two claws.

Garf and the two Little Guys reacted appropriately with amazement and Phalanges who was actually Human and usually fairly good at this stuff had to say, "OK what am I missing?".

Almost everyone held up their hands.

Phalanges looked around and then held up his hand.

"Oh. Oh!" he said.

Tsin have three fingers and an opposable thumb. All of them have large, sturdy digging claws.

Atrix have two fingers and two thumbs, which have thick, conical claws.

Terrafruit Fruits of Earth (Tee Em) bottles have no claws but are very smooth and incredibly hard to hold unless one get's their palm and fingers around it... and Dave had lifted it human style.

Dave's not human. She's a Tsin. This may or may not have been mentioned before.

Phalanges, biologically human but extremely well integrated with non-human ergonomics gets it.

"OK... I can tell you're dying to show off." he said.

"You bet your sweet bippy I am!" said Dave who's mastery of colloquial English was charmingly archaic.

She held out a hand and on examination: There were silicone pads fixed in place on the inside curve of her claws - Textured pads.

"Hang on, is that...?" said Phalanges, and Dave said "Yes! Fingerprints!"

"Who's?"

"Nobody's. It's a generated, semi symmetrical pattern, and they're all the same." explained Dave. "They're called Humanfingers."

"A name that will not cause any confusion or sound weird and creepy." said Phalanges wryly. "Though I can see the use."

"Yeah. They were invented on the station." Dave said proudly. "And I think the marketing lab is working on the name. As per normal it's Eat your Own Mushrooms time so I have been Authorised to distribute everyone's test sets. Let me just reach into my pocket..."

Dave made a show of taking out individual packets with just her claw tips. Two small sets for Un-Named Male and Cat Fantastic. One for Garf, who started by helping un-named Male get his on so he could help her.

Phalanges took the hint and helped his Little Guy, and soon Cat was practicing with them on The Office's control pad, Un-Named male doing some backseat driving.

"And of course, because the computer was told to automate the manufacturing and disbursement for all non-humans based on staff profiles..." said Dave with glee.

"Oh no." said Phalanges and held out a hand.

Dave dropped the last packet into his hand. It contained ten thimble like objects with oval pads on each.

"The print team were so amused when they got the error that they didn't have the right biometric data that they whipped up a unique set for you." Dave told her buddy.

Phalanges - Priorly the other Dave of Dave The Human and Dave the Human ceremoniously put them all on and made menacing finger wiggles. "You know this means that I can no longer be identified for my many future crimes via fingerprint." he said.