Challenge #01842-E018: A Place to Fit — Steemit
Family is more than the people that excreted you, so goes the galactic saying. Family can be a bunch of loner weirdoes and their adopted Numidid keet called Pip. Scavenger M. DeVries and his daughter, Pip, cut quite a figure in the news, and they did so for all of forty-eight hours.
Because that was when the Galactic Alliance rediscovered a colony world named Amity. It wasn’t a Terran colony. Not precisely. It was also a Numidid colony. One that welcomed avian scientists. DeVries read the news out loud to his daughter as they shared breakfast. A rich and aromatic Bug Stir-fry with all the little extras for a growing Numidid and a side-dish of supplement stuff for each of them.
“Tall-mama new home?” Pip asked. She huddled close in the special pouch DeVries had made for her comfort and security. She was practicing her Numidid at every chance. Heritage and all that noise.
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Challenge #01789-D328: Integration Contemplation — Steemit
They were at the uppermost branches of a sky-raker tree that overlooked the human settlement of Wiwazheer. The first Terran city to share a planet with Havenworlders. Of course, when they built it, they had no idea. Neither the Humans nor the Numidid had any idea that they had started colonising opposite ends of the planet simultaneously.
“They are loud,” said a Numidid roosting up there. Chiineth. “They try to be quiet, but… it’s like their children. Sooner or later, they forget to be quiet and… rabble.”
“They are very useful,” said T'yor. “Remember the last big storm? They came out of everywhere to come and help us.”
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Challenge #01773-D312: Rocks Fall!
Human: “Ok, how bad is it? Just lay it on me, I can take it…”
Numid: [extent of injury]
H: “Oh, that’s it? I thought it was something serious.”
N: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘THAT’S IT!?!’ – TheDragonsFlame
Carrie came around to nervous Numidid chirping. Huh. People really did panic in their home tongue. With consciousness came an intense amount of pain. She moaned.
“[There is one alive!]” The Numidids hooted. In broken English, “You with anyone?”
Carrie concentrated on the proper musical notes, which took her mind off the pain, “[Just me,] tweedle-dee.” Ow. It was really getting excruciating. “[How much hurting?]”
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SEE! The book that’s made out of the “humans are space orcs” meme!
SEE! Aliens that aren’t permanent nudists!
SEE! A whole bunch of words because this is a novel and not a movie (yet)!
[Any scriptwriters/movie moguls who want to talk deals, I’m available for discussion. Keep in mind that I can google shit and talk at the same time]
But most important of all…
SEE! Me complain less about the money I don’t have because y’all are helping me contribute to the I Need A New Compy Fund!
Currently, this book is only available on Smashwords, so the vision impaired can easily purchase a text-only version for their needs. Those wishing to try before they buy will have to use their apps and the online sample. Sorry if this is inconvenient, but it’s the best I currently have.
This author is edging closer and closer to the $3000 they need to replacing their dying computer. You too can help by buying this book!
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Challenge #01428-C333: Educational Amusement
A bird prompt for the Numidids: The story of Kevin-the-deathworlder and the deathworlder bird. (Even their birds are brutal!) – @recklessprudence
“…and even… photographers.”
The scene cut to a camera-wielding human cautiously pursuing a Killdeer plover doing its broken-wing act. He was making soothing cooing noises, but they were clearly not working.
The person behind the camera was giggling.
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therobotmonster | moniquill | siderealsandman | friendlytroll | prokopetz | mikhailvladimirovich | bogleech |
It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.
I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.
How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?
Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.
HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN
YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.
A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT
humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.
REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.
WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE
WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY
THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.
HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS
WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.
HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE
OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD
More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.
(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)
Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:
- 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.
- Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
- We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional.
- Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.
In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.
Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.
We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps.
And by god, we will eat anything.
- We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food.
- We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin.
- We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live.
- We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out
- We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground.
- Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places.
- We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights
- We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them.
- On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet.
Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us
We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!
On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.
Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.
Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow.
The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.
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.
We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it.
Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.
They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”
All of this was the very beginning of my novel, The Amity Incident and the universe canon that humans are, indeed, space orcs. Buy it. Read it. And hopefully enjoy it.
(Source: bogleech, via tarragonthedragon)
Challenge #01163-C068: With Cat-like Tread
@callmegallifreya - But it’s a song about being stealthy! What’s dangerous about that?
Challenge #01162-C067: Ready For Inspection
@callmegallifreya - is having a species that looks like your neighbours, but has the brain of a pea some kind of insult? Vote now on your phones!
Challenge #00902-B171: In a Shared Domicile on Amity…
Random number prompt - use a random number generator and redo a prompt from the first year of instants - do NOT read the first story before writing the new one.
[AN: The random number was 133: Anywhere in the story: “The element of surprise didn’t so much rest upon someone hearing you but registering the significance of your approach.” (I hope altering one word counts)]
There was an important lesson in here, somewhere. Living with Deathworlders taught them well. Continuing to remain alive around Deathworlders taught them fast.
It was the oddest thing. Humans would sleep soundly with K’kerik in the domicile, making small domestic noises and generally behaving as if all was normal. But the instant she consciously registered that there were sleeping predators in the vicinity, and acted accordingly… the humans would startle awake and zero in on her presence in seconds.
They could always detect her when she made an effort to move silently. And when she made no effort to disguise her footfalls, the humans startled and worried when they nearly stood on her.
In the end, she talked it over with her human friend Lu.
“Oh, that,” said the human. “Yeah. The element of surprise doesn’t so much rest upon someone hearing you but registering the significance of your approach. We evolved on a planet with some really stealthy predators. Being able to detect something being quiet is something of a survival instinct.”
“I must be utterly quiet or make significant noise to be detected?“
“That’s the bunny,” said Lu.
“You humans are very strange.”
“Thank you.”
[Muse food remaining: 14. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]