Challenge #00557 - A182: Comfort Conniption
inspired by http://internutter.tumblr.com/post/77932780162/challenge-00429-a054-urgent-call-home
T’reka might not be as tactile as humans a lot of the time, but repeated exposure would presumably get her mostly used to them and the amount of touching, hugging etc. that tends to happen around humans, even when trying to be careful.
Extrapolating further: A scene with T’reka, a human and a new numidid having a minor conniption fit over perceived threats.
It had taken some significant time for both species to learn expressive body language. On the Numidid side, they shared the significant disadvantage of being scientists, and therefore inexperience with touch-gestures in the first place.
Hugging was right out. Su-syn and her family knew this.
They would gesture with open arms, but embrace with one. Covering the bird in question with the limb as if it were a wing. Winged coat sleeves became part of the human ambassadorial wardrobe, to assist with the verisimilitude.
As did a baby sling, when Su-syn live-birthed her young.
T’reka and her flock of students found it fascinating. Ze…. fascinating. Human infants were almost completely helpless and therefore guarded with a ferocious zealotry appropriate for a deathworlder with helpless young.
And there were days, like today, when she left her infant in the care of others, because an unknown factor was going to be present.
Administrator Ser was inspecting the facilities.
Numidid kind already benefitted from the humans’ punch-pen medication dispensers. Deaths from broken bones dropped eighty percent following their widespread adoption and training. Though the public did re-name ‘science breathing’ to ‘calming breathing’, just to avoid the stigma of the intervention’s origin.
Such breathing T’reka was doing now, in The House of Peace, where she planned to make a ceremony out of meeting the odious man once more.
“There now,” Su-syn sang. “We doing all. You is ready. Hush,” and laid an artificial cloth ‘wing’ across her back and squeezed lightly. “All is good. All is well.”
T’reka snuggled into the embrace and found it comforting. A predator species capable of crushing her in a thought, holding her as tenderly as she would a newborn. Possibly more so.
An unholy squawk shattered the peace.
Administrator Ser had arrived early.
Su-syn put her hands up to her shoulders, palms open, fingers splayed in a display that she was unarmed.
T’reka made a show of hopping off the human’s lap and greeting Administrator Ser with all due deference. Cringing and keeping her head low as befitted a scientist of her station.
Su-syn remained very still, watching Administrator Ser by looking at the furniture nearby. All the careful things she used to do, so many years ago. All that was missing was her camouflage costume. Gill-clothing or something.
“You were in the arms of a dangerous creature,” boggled Administrator Ser.
“Yes, sir.” T’reka bobbled and hunched and grovelled in his general direction. “As you see, they have successfully overwritten their primitive genetic programming. They saved my life. Even after it was explained to them that they didn’t need to.” She didn’t say, They value me. Not only as a scientist, but also a person. Kal’rike is going to suffer a brain drain when other young scientists find out about the tolerance of insanity.
“And you trust them?”
“They trust me with their infant.”
Administrator Ser boggled again. “Well… That is a definite indicator of trust,” he managed a few, discrete, science breaths to still his nerves. “I take it we are riding one of their… ungulates?”
“Horsss, sir. Yes. At a more sedate pace than the -ah- celebrated Life Run.”
“I have had many requests from other scientists willing to study this land… and the occupants.” A glare at Su-syn. “Humans and scientists seem to be a perfect fit.”
He had no idea which doors he was thinking of opening. T’reka could tell. And knowing that she could sway his thoughts one way or the other, that left the ethical question of which way she should make him lean…
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Challenge #00527 - A152: Creative Collaboration
That showed up on my dashboard. Your prompt is:
“Music Night during the Amity Incident”
There was a small flock of scientists with her now. Including a very sweet, very junior male whom T'reka kept accidentally deferring to out of social instinct.
Koku had taken to very prominently wearing his ID with the ‘Junior’ part of his 'Junior Assistant’ title highlighted with the help of the humans photo-reactive ink.
Her fellow hens, three of them, were easier. She had seniority, rank, and a certain amount of hygiene standards to mark herself above the others. She didn’t abuse her power. Though sometimes, the thought was more than tempting.
The one thing she was strict with them about was in regards to personal grooming. Dust-baths during exterior exploration days, water baths during in-camp days and regular treatments for parasites. Here, the humans were helpful. They had inventions to help prevent their own kind from injuring themselves through scratching or picking. And though Numidid had no use for spinner rings, they found that chewing gum would give a person prone to picking something else to do with their beaks.
But what surprised her the most was how readily her younger contemporaries and the humans adapted to each other.
The humans had a short, seven-day week. And on the Sun’s day, they would take their ease and perform various ceremonies strictly for relaxation and entertainment. The variety of this entranced Koku where it simply perplexed T'reka, and both would find themselves staring at whatever was going on on the humans’ stage.
And then Syriki shyly asked if she could sing up there, too.
Diminutive Syriki, she of the deep black feathers and the hushed voice, and the permanently cowed posture, surprised everyone that night by not only having a wondrously loud, but also tuneful singing voice. The humans were so impressed that they unanimously stood up to make their celebratory noise. Applause.
The following act - a cadre of human puppeteers with homemade chickens - seemed embarrassed to follow her on stage.
“It is your turn,” she murmured in English. “The showing must to go on.”
The humans all adored Syriki. They lavished her with any kind of kind attention and -T'reka noted in her journals- tended to baby her owing to her small stature. They could not turn down her gentle insistence.
It was a comedy act. Puppet chickens brawked and buckawed their way through a well-known human tune with the occasional appearance of a humorous ping-pong ball.
“Oh dear,” whispered Syriki, almost hiding under T'rekas wing. “I see why they were embarrassed, now. They didn’t want to insult me.”
And, to show there was no hard feelings, she glided from her perch to the stage and joined in. She had an immensely good time and, after a heart-stopping moment of shock and awe, so did the humans.
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Challenge #00517 - A142: Conclusion-Jumping
One of the many early miscommunications when the humans first started to contact the galactic alliance: Alien expresses interest that human is still alive having broken one or more bones, slightly dense human gets the wrong end of the stick entirely and now half the camp thinks people with injuries like that are killed, because why else would something like a trifling broken arm mean you die?
Susan was learning what many in the new proto-city of Wiwazheer were calling Chickenese. Grey Chicken -aka Trekker- was learning English. Many things, she was sure, were getting lost in the translation.
She was hauling Jaime back to Central - literally the centre of town - to get his arm properly set when Trekker invited itself along and lit on the back of Calico.
“You is preparing dead?”
She answered in Chickenese. “No. Friend no dead. Friend hurt, me taking for help.”
“…’m s'posed'a see little birds,” Jaime mumbled. “‘ey izzat Grey Chicken?”
“Yup. That’s Grey Chicken. Says zir name is Trekker. Trekker, this friend naming Jaime.”
“He is living? Me am seeing fall. Me am hearing bone crack.”
“Friend breaking bone in arm. We is fixing.”
“Us folk breaking bone, us folk dead,” said Trekker in confusion.
Susan did not have the words to ask, Do they kill you or do you just die? That was a question for the doctors in Central, who had Trekker’s DNA on file. All the same, an APB concerning being careful with projectiles around the alien bird would be wise.
And a solid plan to save the bird’s life should the unthinkable happen.
Susan got the impression that Trekker was trying to protect Wiwazheer and all the humans therein from some menace outside of their current experience. Though it was hard to imagine a species of warlike birds if they died from a broken bone.
Now was not the time to judge. Now was the time to take notes and, at the earliest opportunity, run like hell for the xenobiology labs to ask interesting questions.
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Challenge #00487 - A112: Why They Never Came By
The humans’ reaction to finding out what the rest of the galaxy thought about them before actual first contact (bonus points mentioning the Pioneer plaques)
The humans learned fast. They apparently learned by messing around with things until something happened that they understood, and worked outwards from there.
And they had learned to read Ulu.
T'reka watched and recorded various humans at the Communications Centre that had once been a Hide Unit. They sat or stood at various info-stations and accessed data on a seemingly random basis.
Most avid of them all was Su-syn. Every single day when T'reka was not active in the jungles of Toxic Island, Su-syn would find her way to the Beach Path Hide Unit and find something to read and translate.
T'reka noted with some strictly internal alarm that today’s exercise for Su-syn was the Wikipedia Galactica’s extensively cross-referenced file on humans. The local addendum concerning emergent capacities for adaptability and amenability towards other species was waiting an extensive peer review and - T'reka was certain - her own demise by natural causes.
“Warning plaque?” Su-syn read. She checked the calendars and resumed her reading. Very soon, Su-syn began experiencing a breathing difficulty that involved a lot of short breaths and grinding noises.
And since Su-syn was very alarmingly gravid, T'reka abandoned her paper-in-progress to glide as fast as she could to the Comms Centre. Concerned for her friend. The sky-raker trees meant that T'reka could climb high and therefore cover vast distances.
When she arrived at the Comms Centre, T'reka discovered Su-syn leaning against the console, water streaming from her eyes, and a repetitive bark of a call coming from her throat.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…” (gasp) “HAHAAAHAHAHAHAAAHAAAA…” (gasp) “HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA…” (gasp) “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!” Su-syn broke off in coughing.
The other humans did not seem at all concerned. “Su-syn,” she called. “Is this normal reaction? Is you wanting medic?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she squeaked. “All fine feather,” she added in Ulu. “Who wrote this? It’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen…” Su-Syn leaned back, clutching her distended belly and did more of the disturbing calls.
“This is normal reaction to… funny?”
“Yes!” and more of the barking call.
Humans are not alarmed by their status of dangerous animals, T'reka later wrote, Rather, they seem greatly amused by it.
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Challenge #00486 - A111: Camouflage
“Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.”
There were always things to learn. Things like, once an anomalous shape is recognised, it’s easier to spot. Dappled shadows were better to hide in and blending was important.
“Gotcha!” said the human. “You really suck at hide-and-seek, T'yrt'yr[1].”
“I followed the rules,” she objected. “And your guidelines. How is it that you keep finding me?”
“You’re a charcoal-coloured bird hiding in an ocean-grey nook. You stand out like a sore thumb.” Tor laughed, trying to show her where her wing stood out against the place where she had once hid. “See?”
“I want to surrender,” said T'yrt'yr. “I do not understand how a pale-hide like you can hide everywhere. Or how you can spot me and have different names for identical colours.”
“They look like identical colours to you,” Tor explained. “To us… not so much.”
“Please do not walk me through salmon-fuscia-rose-pink again? They all appear to be the same hue.”
“Maybe we could build a treehouse? At least then we won’t be arguing about colours.”
“Let’s play on the beach. We can collect shells.”
“Sandcastles?”
“You read my mind.”
Two children from different worlds sped together for mutual fun. One occasionally assisting the other by using their arm as a perch to throw the other to glide ahead of them.
Two friends amongst many other like them on a planet called Amity.
[1] pron: chir-chir
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Challenge #00485 - A110: Irresistible Force
Hey look what came around with new bits on it! http://siphersaysstuff.tumblr.com/post/73671577343/therobotmonster-moniquill-siderealsandman
Prepare for a barrage of prompts based on it :P
1. “Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.”
[AN: I love that post so much that I’m hinging a book on it :D Bits you see here may or may not turn up in the finished opus]
T'reka leaned heavily on the trunk of the tree that she was resting in. Gulped at her water and desperately tried not to faint. A local year of physical exercise had reformed her body from the stereotypical soft and weak scientist into that of a Scientist of Steel.
She was fitter than most of her fellow kind in the distant city of Kal'rike, but the human had yet to stop her steady pace.
“Again?” said Su-syn. “Just roost on my backpack, I don’t mind.”
The carrying capacity of humans boggled T'reka’s mind. The fact that a juvenile human could carry travel supplies and a grown cogniscent on her shoulders was awe-inspiring.
“My am thanks,” she managed in Human. Su-syn’s head was warm and soft and inviting to lean against. “I understanding human rumours of unstoppable hunting.”
Su-syn laughed as she continued on her relentless pace. “And I haven’t even trained for cross country,” she said. “I’m just doing Kori a favour. That’s all.”
“You is walk more over five Flights.”
“Yeah, it is about two and a half clicks, now. On the plus side, we’re getting close.” Su-syn walked her through almost invisible signs that the ungulate known as Midnite had been in this locale. Dung on the ground. Hairs in the knotbush. Broken twigs and foam from the animal’s saliva.
“You is stop to showing me,” worried T'reka. “Will not horse Midnight get further running? Horse is faster over human.”
“Eh. Horses are faster, but not really in the long term,” Su-syn resumed her steady pacing. “Midnite’s a sprinter, so he does short little dashes and gets tired.” She pointed to a depression in the foliage. “Stopped for a roll. We’re gaining on him.”
It wasn’t a full Flight further that they came upon the black ungulate gulping water from a stream. It - he - raised his head to stare at the two of them.
Su-syn already had a ’crabapple’ a small fruit native to her original planet, the aptly-named Terra. “Hey there, beautiful,” she sang. “Lookit I got…”
The animal walked over and enveloped the crabapple in one bite. And, in a movement T'reka almost missed, Su-syn captured the beast in a rope leash. A halter. The ungulate flicked its ears back and rumbled.
“Well if you didn’t run away,” Su-syn admonished the animal, “I wouldn’t have to catch you like this.”
“We is to riding back?” enquired T'reka.
“Nah. Midnite needs a good rest before he can be ridden again. I’ll walk him back.” Su-syn had barely stopped. She didn’t even stop for water. Just tipped it into her mouth from the container at her hip. “You’d better stay on my backpack. Your feet are sharp and I didn’t bring a blanket.”
T'reka investigated the crystals forming on the ungulate’s hide. “These is salt!”
“Yup. Horses sweat just like humans. We need salt, and they need more of it, because they have more skin to sweat with. But you knew we needed salt.”
Alarm. “How is you knowing?”
“We found your probes on the pipeline,” said Su-syn casually.
Which lead T'reka to wonder exactly how long the humans had known she was in their neighbourhood…
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(submission instead of ask because you can’t embed pictures in an ask, reply privately if you prefer)
This was something I started ages ago, it fell by the wayside when uni work got ahead of me and I don’t know if It’ll ever be finished, but as a very rough base it was what I thought T’reka might look like because I had never seen a guineafowl before but do own a grey chicken, sans most clothing because I wanted to get the feathers sorted before figuring out what to put over them. (the little smudge on the right is a hand, there was the little girl reaching towards her that I cropped off to save space since she was still in super-rough)
For an idea of how detailed it was planned to go, look at T’reka’s right hand. How far off is it in terms of what she actually looks like?
I added my own scribbly-sketch attempt at T'reka. The pointy thing on her head is a bone crest that Guinea Fowl have.
Everyone should google Guinea Fowl. They are incredibly adorable birds. On the ground, they look like speckled basket-balls with heads and legs. They fly by throwing their heads in front of them and flapping madly to catch up. And they have the worst survival instinct of all Earth’s creatures: they react to a loud noise by sticking their heads up and calling at the top of their lungs. Seriously. People used to hunt them with police whistles and shotguns [::PEEEP!:: (birds stick their heads up) “lulu lulu lulu” ::Blam!::]
So of course I had to have the first species to contact the highly dangerous humans be a bunch of birds with the survival instincts of a meringue duck.
I know I haven’t stated as such in the stories, but the default clothing of Numidid kind is a vest and leg-warmers ensemble.
[I keep feeling I’d do better in Spore’s Creature Creator. Bluh]
Challenge #00470 - A095: Not Dangerous - But…
T’reka’s work on Toxic Island was to look for potential new compounds or cures in the dangers of the jungle, but humans have been working with flora and fauna of those levels of toxicity and higher for centuries, including some of the species only encountered by the other cogniscients on Toxic Island since they seeded from Earth
It follows that a) humans have already discovered medical applications using these things
b) humans are probably going to have a lot easier time working with new “highly toxic” substances than most other cogniscients
Medical science might take a bit of a speed boost once they arrive.
or they might set everything back years while everything has to get tested on non-insane species, I mean humans still do that organ transplant thing without batting an eye.
This was accelerating too quickly for T'reka’s liking. The humans built things far too rapidly for her dazed mind to handle. They installed a functional door for her village Hide Unit literally overnight and supplied her with a ‘welcome basket’ of alarmingly accurate favourite foods.
Including cricket fritters.
The Co-operative Research Institute sprang up in a matter of days, using the mid-path sky-raker tree as a base. Stairs wound around the massive trunk and a perplexingly-named 'elevator’ took those unwilling or unable to climb up to the lower branches.
What surprised T'reka the most was the engineering. Humans were capable of taking a basic concept like the construction of her tree-borne domicile unit, mix it liberally with their own knowledge, and produce the increasingly-massive structure with harm to neither tree, wildlife, or any assisting Numidid. They were a shockingly adaptive species.
The smaller children were the best at picking up Ulu, and even the adults learned how to swear in it relatively fluently. There were some words or phrases that came out mangled, of course. T'reka had similar trouble with some human words and phrases. Forgiveness on both sides was vital.
T'reka found herself holding the adaptive classes for the medical technicians who were bold enough to venture out to Toxic Island. Trying to teach them how to be open-minded and adaptive enough to work with an assumed-dangerous species on potential medical breakthroughs. Lessons that included lies-to-children levels of walking the medics through the increasingly bizarre things that humans did to heal each other.
“They cut open their companions?”
“First, they assure that the companion is sleeping and unaware,” repeated T'reka. “Then they cut. I have survived a similar procedure when they set my leg.”
“Set?”
“Humans break bones and live to tell the tale,” she said. “The process called 'setting a bone’ is that of aligning the broken pieces so that they heal relatively straight.” Of course, she offered her healed leg for inspection. The scar from the original injury was still visible, but the work from their 'surgery’ was almost imperceptible. Those bold enough to feel her leg would detect the subtle lump where the bone had mended itself.
T'reka bought up the surviving documentation of the event. “In a way, I was lucky the humans were prepared. Seconds after the injury, Su-syn injected the injury site with an anaesthetic chemical, and administered other medicines to prevent me from going into fatal shock. She kept me warm with her body and rushed me to their medical facilities. I am told, after I arrived, they administered full anaesthesia and worked their hardest to ensure I survived.” A wan smile. “I do not remember much after the rushing.”
One of the more observant students pointed to the files visible on the main screen. “The humans let you access video footage of their… O-pir-a-shon?”
“Yes. I find it personally disturbing. I have made this file public access with suitable warnings for the content. The humans do far more on each other. Cutting out cancerous tumours, tailoring their skins, and…” she had to swallow and breathe to stop herself from retching. “Organ transplants.”
“Pardons, learned teacher, but those last two words make it sound like they swap around their internal organs like a mechanic would switch out engine parts.”
“Almost. They print a frame for a replacement organ and grow the remainder in laboratory conditions, then they take out the old, defective organ and replace it with the newer model. All under anaesthesia, of course.”
Gasps and murmurs and -yes- some hoots of alarm. T'reka let them settle their feathers before the next truth bomb.
“In their ancient history, they used dead humans for those replacement parts.”
Three fainted.
T'reka let the others assist in their revival. How would they react when she got on to subjects like 'caesarians’ or 'chemotherapy’?
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Challenge #00429 - A054: Urgent Call Home
T'reka’s first communications with the others in her colony group/science base/whoever, after being around the humans for a while
“Uh. Trekker?” said Su-syn. “Your… thing making noise.”
T'reka checked it. It was the urgent-summons. And there was no time to get to her base. “I must checking in! No time. Running is too slow! If I fail, they burn continent.”
Su-syn grinned. “Not worries.”
It was called a Horss. A large herbivorous ungulate that could easily make five Humans. She thought humans moved fast. This moved faster.
T'reka held on with all claws to Su-syn’s back-coverings and marvelled at the motion. Despite being made biliously ill by it. The impossible quadruped ran on its middle digits’ claws. Fingernails. And it did so in a rolling, seesaw gait with two cogniscent life forms on its back.
It covered kilo-flights in instants. Before she knew it, she was blinking at her base camp.
“Up, Trekker. Go! Go!” The human casually threw her, standing, from the back of the Horss. “Save our skins!”
T'reka flew for the ladder, literally. Her own mad flapping made her gain half a depth, but it was half a depth less that she had to climb.
Even under the threat of curfew, she had never climbed so fast.
Up the ladder. Up the stairs. Up the other ladder to the main comms and simultaneously hit the talk button and grabbed the headset, cramming it against one tympanum.
“Kal'rike post! Kal'rike post! This is the genuine voice of T'reka the Mad. Code phrase…” There is was. “Bicep fossil jelly millet. I repeat, this is the genuine voice of T'reka the Mad, code phrase - bicep fossil jelly millet. Call off the attack. Call OFF any attack!”
Static. “We hear and rejoice, T'reka the Mad. Action has been given the come-back signal.”
Only then did she settle the head-set across her brow. Only then did she perch and make herself comfortable. “Initiating video feed for confirmation.”
She turned on the camera. Tweaked its pickup range. Smoothed down her feathers. Produced an amenable expression for the people watching on the other end.
“Greetings from Poison island,” she sang. “I have been made aware there is a problem?”
“You’re communicating with the humans!”
Casual. Treat it casual. After all, she did wander, daily, through many things venomous, poisonous and otherwise deadly. “Isn’t it amazing? They are excellent mimics and can be taught proper speech.”
“But… humans! We must seed the other planet and evacuate at once!”
“With respect, we do not have the resources. Further, I must humbly counter there is sufficient evidence that these humans are not monsters.”
“Where?”
“Sitting here. They came to me. Talked with me. One even rushed me home so that none would die. I humbly posit that these are abnormal humans. They are decidedly non-violent, for all their disturbing habits.”
“They must remain on the island. And you must restrain your communications to the humans you have already met. We expect a full proposal on this… this… vulgar-insanity of a proposal.”
“Which I will write tonight. I must also confer with the humans. They must know of this, too.”
“This is historical-insanity, T'reka the Mad. I trust you understand this.”
“Through to my ever-lasting spirit, sir,” she nodded. “True flight to you.”
He ended the comms after a formal, “True flight.”
Once the communication was completely over… T'reka allowed herself to shake and shudder and cry out her terrors. Such display would not have impressed her superiors.
And, at the other end of it, Su-syn was gently patting her back through the thickness of a blanket.
“All well?”
“All well,” T'reka answered. “How you get up?”
“Careful walk. You ladder small.”
Mental note. Humans were extremely adaptive.
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