#pacca

I have however found a most fascinating (and somewhat infuriating, I admit) consequence of the human speech organs. Humans form speech through a series of intricate organs within their body: lungs, vocal cords, tongue, lips, and various cavities within their skull. This produces soundwaves of various kind, which audibly translates to words and languages. Most fascinating. However, it is limited. Very limited. Apart from the necessity of the presence of all these parts of the human body, it also requires that the intended listener has organs or means to hear these sounds, as well as the knowledge to properly translate them into understandable words. The translation bit has been handled with the help of something Captain Archangel call 'IL-implant'. I have yet to ask what this is.

However, their speech motoristics also means a limitation in what sounds they are able to produce, and thus what words they are able to pronounce. Human speech is fascinably ambiguous in that manner: melodic and kind of poetic when handling their own words and language, but frighteningly often they fall short on non-Eartling language. My name, for instance, they struggle with. Indeed, they call me Pacca: harsh and hard, far from the fluent, graceful name I presented to them. Even so, I cannot be angry or upset with them. Every species has their flaws. I, for instance, have found myself at a disadvantage when it comes to handling cupboards. My grippers (the humans call them 'fingers') aren't ideal for the delicate process it means to grab and unlock so called locking mechanisms. I also lack much of the strength that the humans have.

It appears this journey may teach me not only about the humans, but also a lot about myself and my species. I admit that I am, as the humans would put it, excited to learn.

247595-18

The crew has taken to call me 'him', like the Captain, slotting me into their male gender. As I attempted to explain that in fact I am currently tua, the sixth of seven maturity states, expected to evolve into siha, the fourth, as the next season begin, they asked me what pronoun I would prefer. This pronoun question confuse me, but it appears as that Earthlings — so called humans — keep their 'gender identity' throughout their entire lives, and thus it is beneficial for them to use pronouns that refer to their body construction. I have been told that there are exceptions, when humans change their body construction to better fit the pronoun they prefer, but in those cases it is the human itself that decides when and how to change their gender, with the help of so called surgery. Their bodies doesn't shift automatically.

In the wake of this new information I asked why not simply change the pronoun rather than the body construction: it appeared to me that such a complicated procedure would be less desirable than simply obtain another pronoun. The human I spoke to, however, spoke most passionately about how the pronoun in itself is useless: it is in fact the body construction that is important, and thus the procedure may be both risky and complicated, it is still preferable.

Curious. Most curious.

Of course, upon further conversation, I was informed that the various body constructions had various functions. With that in mind, I can understand taking such risks. If one desires another function than that one's body currently makes possible, a change would be preferred, despite the risks.

The human body construction remains a mystery to me, but I am most impressed with what I have learned so far, and I remain excited to learn more.

247595-24

The nature of humans hasn't ceased to amaze me. They have so many quirks and habits: I am exhausted from trying to learn and remember them all. Clothing, for instance. Pieces of fabric, leather and occasionally metal that they cloak themselves with, to cover themselves. Apparently it has many functions, but two were repeated to me from several humans. The first one is to shield one's body, as it's 'inappropriate' to show one's body, or be 'naked' as they call it. Secondly, it is a way to preserve warmth, as the humans has a tendency to operate in temperature less-than-ideal for the body to operate it. When questioned about it, some humans furthered their argument to specify that clothes allowed them to adapt to a wider range of temperatures, by either shedding clothes or put more clothes on.

In my investigation I've learned that humans are so called warm-blooded mammals. Their bodies keep a steady temperature, but if it increases or decreases with more than about a degree (the humans on Archangel uses a scale called Celsius to measure heat: the human body usually has a body temperature of 37,5 degrees Celsius, or 37,5 C, for short) the body begins to malfunction. Sybil, the human doctor, told me that the human body can't handle a body temperature above 42 C, and if it decrease to 33 C and lower, the human risks severe damage. In order to keep this from happening, the human body, amongst others, sweats in order to decrease the heat that builds up naturally from within.

This fascinates me, I must admit: the human body is slowly turning itself on fire (Sybil informed me that without sweating and other natural heat-reducing functions the body temperature would increase with about one degree per hour!) and must counteract that with other measures. What a device the human body is! I am astounded and intrigued, truly. In comparison with my own system (which Sybil has shown a flattering interest in — I am very humbled, indeed) it strikes me as particularly intricate and, in many aspects, contradictory. I might even be a bit jealous.

How odd.