#confused alien

"Karvon, come meet the love of my life!" The human known as Steve picked up a small, orange, four-legged thing that had been rubbing itself against Steve's leg. "This is Barbecue Sauce. Isn't she the sweetest?" he asked as he cuddled the thing and kissed its apparently fuzzy cheek, causing the creature to suddenly emit a low rumbling sound, like the engine of a brand new Tribonet Cruiser.

Karvon stared at the pair, feeling all the more bewildered. The research that had been conducted on the care and feeding of a human flickered through his mind; he was certain that Barbecue Sauce had been listed under what the humans called a Condiment and not an Animal. Specifically, a brown, thick substance that spiralled either onto food or next to it.

Karvon's four stalk eyes quickly scanned the living quarters for any plastic receptacles large enough to contain and squeeze out creatures but to no avail.

"She's my little princess," Steve continued, pushing the the possible-comdiment's ears down. "I did have a dog, his name was Steak, but I lost him last year. It was so sudden. Now, I guess I spoil BBQ a bit, but I want her to know she's loved, you know? I hope Steak knew. I love Steak." The humans head drooped like his conversational tone; Karvon was getting used to human emotion reading and could tell this was sadness, so he waved his stalks in sympathy, even though Steve had his eyes on the floor. "I love BBQ just as much, obviously." Steve suddenly seemed to change his outward feelings as he held Barbecue Sauce out from him, under its frontal limbs. "I wuv you so much I could just eat you up! Yes I could!"

The remembrance of having seen a creature called a dog appeared to Karvon, conflicting with the information of Steak being a human food that came from a not-dog creature. Perhaps Steak came from not just the large, black and white thing but also from the smaller, light-brown and incessantly loud dog that he had had the misfortune of meeting upon his arrival to the planet. Small Steak could be a human delicacy, if the rumour of humans valuing smaller food more was to be true. Was the value based on how much love a human expressed for their living food before it was prepared for consumption? Was that the reason a human would often share its dwelling with other particular life forms?

Humans have been captivated with explosives since their invention. It could be from wanting to be the loudest things around, the feeling of the pressure wave, or being visually and/or audibly pleasing. It could even be an evolved conflict in the brain resulting from the reward and FoF centers activating simultaneously at the sight of fire. Whatever the reason, it is a direct influence on the speed of their technological advancement.

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Steve: Hey Jim, check out this thing the aliens gave us for the experiment!

Jim: Cool! Want to blow it up to see what happens?

S: Heck yeah!

~1 year and many explosions later~

Altraz: Why where you trying to destroy the thing we gave you for the experiment?

J: At first it was to see what it looked like. After it withstood the first explosion, we wanted to see just what it would take to destroy it.

S: Turns out, only the highest of ordinance humans can safely make stopped it from working.

J: So we reverse-engineered how to make the material it is made of and it is now used in everything from toys to Starship fleets.

A: It’s been a year! How did you figure out how to make it so quickly? It took my species 600 years to perfect it when the Gremforal gifted us it!