Challenge #02713-G156: Pax Origins
A shockingly smart and devastatingly cruel crew track, hunt, raid, and kill the biggest threats to peaceful ships. – LatinoThor
They called themselves Dragons, for the ancient tradition marking hazardous seas with, Here There Be Dragons. Their territory was astonishingly vast for what encounter logs suggested was one ship. The last records in the surviving black boxes stated that one ship was seen, but that didn’t mean that just one ship was there.
Authorities were slower to act about the attacks, since the Dragons were routinely attacking bands of pirates bothering the Alliance shipping lanes. The Dragons were selective, picking the worst offenders who killed passengers and crew to get what they wanted. Some of their first targets were those who blew up the ship and used any survivors in livesuits or life pods as target practice.
Authorities only knew their name because they announced themselves before their attacks. When one black box revealed that the Dragons were also Humans… there was even less inclination to track them down and apprehend them. Not even when the space pirates were “licensed privateers” from an antagonistic polity in the Edge Territories.
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Challenge #02712-G155: But I Want It
Everyone’s heard of the Terrible Twos. Well, everyone who’s familiar with raising human infants. A piece of information that’s been surprisingly slow to make its way around, though, is that those years are only so terrible because the little ones have wants and needs and thoughts that they don’t know how to communicate; a combination of not being exposed to the words for what they feel and having tongues too big for their mouths, making it near impossible to articulate the words they do know.
All of this can be circumvented with any form of sign language and a bit of effort to introduce more vocabulary on the part of the caretaker(s).
That said, toddlers are universally curious, not so good at thinking ahead, more mobile than expected, and surprisingly good at disassembling everything they come across in an effort to find out what’s inside. What happens when a mixed-species daycare, meant for the young offspring of ship-board passengers, finds itself saddled with a toddling human who, while familiar with instructions to be “gentle” with soft, furry friends (in an effort to get them to stop yanking the poor skitty’s fur and sticking their fingers up the dog’s nose), hasn’t gotten the memo that the whole of the universe isn’t familiar with the cobbled-together signing vocabulary they use with their parents to communicate such vital things as “baby eat waffle” and “baby drink juice” when they want something specific. – Anon Guest
The Human toddler is a primer on Human instincts with a negative impulse control. They are all action and very little in the way of reason. Even the Humans who spawn them are shocked by the mobility of a small being with legs less than a quarter of the length of an adult’s. Their capacity for improvisation can boggle even the most experienced minds.
As for the inexperienced minds… Meet Laeth. Ze has had the presence of mind to keep the Havenworlder children separate from the Deathworlders, but this was the fourth time ze had captured the very small Human Pip attempting to open the keycard-locked door to get into the Havenworlder rooms.
“Pip, you should go back to the room you came from. That is a better place to play.” Laeth, one of the many who were carers for the children, moved hirself to gently herd Human Pip back to the chamber from whence they had come.
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Challenge #02711-G154: Helping Companions
An instructor greets his new students in the class known as “Know Your Human” A class meant to prepare various individuals for the maddeningly wonderful work known as being a human’s companion.
It is well known that humans are insane, dangerous, and violent. And yet, they are also the most gentle, kind, thoughtful, and soothing species in the galaxy. You will find they are wild, yet tame, they are beyond stupid, yet terrifyingly brilliant, they brought their furry headaches known as cats, yet those animals turned out to be so valuable there’s not a single station without one. They’re as terrifying as a very large, very hungry, Oshit, as destructive as an exploding star, and yet they are the least terrifying and most creative species yet discovered.
For those studying humans, all of these facts are 100% true. There is not a single lie anywhere to be found. But, my students, don’t be fooled. This species, and this course, will test the limits of your endurance both physically and psychologically. However, in the end, after your training here, you will be able to better work with, and handle, the humans you are assigned as your companions. And, you will find, it will be the most rewarding, and the most heartbreaking, career you’ve ever had. – DaniAndShali
Humans are a contradiction. They can be, as they have said themselves, the smartest dumbasses in the universe. They can be the kindest, most protective aggressors known to intelligent life. They can also be the biggest, meanest bunch of softies to ever walk and talk at the same time. They can be both needlessly cruel and illogically compassionate depending entirely on the circumstances around them. They could be both the strongest and the weakest of all known cogniscents at the same time.
It was hard to remember any of that when meeting an actual Human for the first time. They were not much taller than Companion Thele, certainly not very much bulkier, even with their livesuit on. They looked… weird… but then all different lifeforms looked weird until one got used to them.
“You’re new at this, aren’t you?” said the Human. They had a remarkable grasp of GalStand for a barbarian just introduced to Galactic society. The instructor had said they were remarkable mimics, but this… This was another of their contradictions.
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Challenge #02710-G153: Paradox Wreck
As a warning for any future scientist: Do not hook up a warp-drive engine to a gravity-generator. you will create a gravity cannon that will obliterate 1/3 of a class zegalbond warship, but also lose 1/3 of you blood without any wounds. – Anon Guest
They called it ‘warp drive’ in flagrant violation of copyright at the time of the wreck’s discovery. What it did was create a temporary 'soft spot’ between real space and the parallel dimensional brane known as 'hyperspace’ in a slightly less dodgy violation of copyright. The experiments were successful in all but one detail - the 'warp’ drive was inexorably tied to the gravity generators.
Gravity drives and hyperspace do not agree. The artificial gravity forces translate into 'deep time’ pockets once inside. It’s basic safety to turn off the gravity drives before entering such a 'soft spot’. We know this now, but sometime between the modern era and three millennia hence, that vital information becomes lost.
Of the survivors, there was one in desperate need of urgent medical care. That survivor, the chief engineer of the experiment, was missing one third of their entire blood mass with no signs of injury. The crew of the Misty Hope were not much better, and very disturbed to learn that they had been thrown three thousand years into the past and some thousands of light years from their point of origin.
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Challenge #02709-G152: Fixes Any Problem
A: “You can’t be serious, we’re really going to be going all the way back to the port in nothing but… duct tape??”
H: “Sure! And we could even take the boat with us to use for later sails if we wanted to!”
Note - yes Sail boats have been made, beautifully so, out of duct tape. Here’s a video of my favorite team doing so, the Mythbusters! – Anon Guest
“Well, ductape and these lovely whippy canes,” said Human Jan. “Hold this one here for a sec’.” Since Human Jan had already employed both hands, both feet, and one knee to the extant construction, Frew had to assist.
What the Human held easily, Frew had to struggle with, using all of his strength. However, that strength lasted just long enough for Human Jan to quickly apply some more ductape to the resultant joint. It was the last join in the entire seemingly fragile frame, which looked like it was one good sneeze away from turning into a cage-turned-torture-device for Human Jan. Nevertheless, the ductape held. “This will remain stable?”
“Abso-tively. I’ve seen this done before. Heck. San Francisco has an annual ductape regata. It’s a heck of a thing to watch. Someone made a yellow ductape ducky, last year. That was hilarious.”
“You are not building a duck,” said Frew. Just to be certain. You never could tell with Humans.
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