Challenge #02559-G002: Needing a Hand
His name was Marvin. He traveled with a band of friends on various adventures. But his life had not been quite this pleasant before he met them. Abused, mistreated, made to feel stupid, even when he was with the gang, people he thought were his friends, it had been misery. Now, with the wizard, the kobold, and the others, he actually had a chance. But, on quiet nights like this, as they had set up camp and he was not on watch, he thought back to those days, and when asked, again, why he had trouble sleeping, after all this time, he decided it was alright to talk about it. – Anon Guest
Lady Anthe usually took the middle watch. Her being naturally adapted to the dark also made her naturally inclined to be nocturnal. It also aided in making sure Marvin was okay. Their first few nights as a party cemented the fact that he was a light sleeper, but after a few weeks, the fact that he actually had chronic insomnia became known.
It was at its worst when they were on the road. Some nights, he just didn’t sleep between dusk and dawn. He would lie very still in his sleeping bag,, eyes closed, but he was not sleeping. He would always have one hand curled around the hilt of his weapon. Some nights, that grip would be white-knuckle tight.
Most nights, Anthe couldn’t get him to respond in more than grunts to offers of conversation, but she kept hope in her heart for a breakthrough. When he felt safe, he would permit himself to be vulnerable. Tonight, her calm announcement that the stars were beautiful tonight actually got a verbal response. “I can’t really sleep on quiet nights,” said Marvin. “When I was with the gang? It was the quiet before the storm. I knew I was gonna get hurt, and the worst part was the waiting, so… when it went on too long? I’d get something wrong on purpose so the hurting would be over with. Quiet… always makes me tense right up. Can’t sleep. Waiting for the hammer to drop.”
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Challenge #02556-G001: Tearful Appreciation
“Are you alright?” The same question they got lots of times when tears would fall down their cheeks. Of course, they understood the Galactics were not used to seeing a human crying when nothing was wrong, obviously. They were sitting with their friends watching a video that showed incredible sunrises and sunsets from various worlds with a background for these wonders being the sound of an orchestra increasing the richness of the experience. And, as always, they wiped their cheeks and said softly to their friends. “It’s… just.. so beautiful.” – Anon Guest
Human Pal was an emotional cryer. As in, more than the standard emotion made hir weep. Tears sprang readily to hir face at the drop of a hat. Not just sadness or anger, but also joy, wonder, and pure aesthetic adoration. The old term for it was ‘crybaby’. Newer, more understanding terms include “hyper-responsive tear ducts” or the more abbreviated, “tearfully emotive”. Pal is… unusual, even against the Human baseline for unusual Human behaviour.
Thus, when ze enters a new place, ze prefers to introduce hirself and hir weepy eyes to as many people as possible. Ze also introduces all the concepts via the local free Infonets. Nevertheless, for the first two months of a new habitat, the one question everyone in her new community asks is, “Are you all right?”
Fortunately livesuits have chemanalysis built into their liquid vacs, so when out on a mission, the crew need only check their HUDs for status updates. The very instant the Galactic Alliance learned that Human tears had different chemical makeups depending on the emotion behind them, they added chemanalysis to tear vacs in every human-compatible livesuit. It was important information, helpful to those who might miss other cues. Outside of a livesuit, however, the question always remained.
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Challenge #02555-F365: It’s So Relaxing
Oh, I can’t really handle all the excitement and action in FPS, especially the PVP ones. I much prefer simulation games, like Frost Punk! You build your little town, and manage resources, and try not to let all your people freeze to death or starve or something. Nice, relaxing fun. – Anon Guest
Humans love to play. Their play takes every form you could imagine and some that seem incredibly unlikely. Some play involves flinging themselves physically at obstacles, off obstacles, or around obstacles. Sometimes, it’s all three at once. Some Humans play by gathering in one room together and arguing in between bouts of moving small objects around on a table. Our Human… the Human for the Wandering Trader, Human Dai, plays by interacting with computer screens.
We have tried to understand this. We do not understand this. Human Dai appears to be having fun and relaxing, but… it looks so much like their shipboard duties that we have… concerns. It is necessary for a Human to have fun or they begin to suffer. If they suffer, we all suffer the consequences. We must look after our Human.
Companion Zogh was the one who chose a day to accompany Human Dai at his play, watching and attempting to analyse him at his play. Determining whether or not it actually was play. Human Dai’s chosen array of playing screens was large and colourful and the contents did not appear to match the usual Human entertainments of explosions and flashing colours. This was truly perplexing. “You do not make things go boom?” they asked.
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Challenge #02554-F364: Learning to See
Just as there are xenophobes amongst the various races outside the Galactic Alliance, so, too, are there within. Even amongst races that are, normally, allies. They and their family, and many within their community, were such xenophobes. They chanted Earth First during the protests they ran to show their displeasure of alien races being allowed to visit their world. Some of the more radicalized ones even committed crimes to try to “prove their point”. This group, however in the minority they were, were hateful, loud, obnoxious, and at times, dangerous. And no matter how people tried to explain what a boon for Earth joining the Galactic Alliance has been, there was no convincing them.
Then several of the xenophobes were being exiled to the lunar penal colony. They expected, due to the rhetoric and spite they’d heard throughout their entire childhoods, to be brutally treated and tortured by the aliens that made up some of the security staff, and subjected to hardship. However, the therapists intended to use this as a teaching moment, and try, once more, to help these young men and women that what they’d been taught of the alliance between humans and the G.A. was not accurate at all. – DaniAndShali
Terra for the Terrans had finally been classified as a terrorist group. Bombing a spaceport will do that to a group. Even sending fake bombs to a spaceport will do that. So will loudly announcing on social media that you plan to spread diseases to any hospital that accepts alien life into its halls. As a clear and present danger to society, these aggressively xenophobic isolationists were calmly collected and sent to a therapy centre for re-education.
Tam knew what to expect. Everything she had been taught said that these outsiders were a million times worse than anything she and her family did to defend it. Therefore she expected them to plunge her into a tank of bugs that would eat their way into her brain and then eat her brain, replacing it with something the aliens could use to turn her into a shambling shell of humanity. It would be excruciating.
They recorded her. Their mistake. She stated her name, rank, membership number and that she will never consent to any surgical procedure done by a god-damned dirty alien. Whether or not that record would ever see the light of day didn’t really matter. She and the people witnessing it knew that she’d said it. There were witnesses. They couldn’t kill everyone who saw and heard things.
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Challenge #02553-F363: Here There Be Sock Puppets
An enemy deathworlder, a xenophobe, constantly making life hell for the havenworlders around them. A general, proud, fierce, having suffered many tortures and never once broke, always escaped. But now, they were being held by humans. Pain meant nothing to them. When asked about the movements of new weaponry, the answer was always a snark and the spitting or words “Do your worst, I’ll never say a word, you’ll have to kill me.”
The humans bring in what they call the 3rd degree. Several gasping, saying that’s far too inhumane. How could they do that to any cognisant?? The humans reply they are running out of time and lives are at stake. The alien smirks, he’ll never break, ever, no matter how much they strike at him, surely that simple brown box holds sharp blades and poisons, right? Then, as the box opens to reveal a simple doll, a puppet caricature of a lamb, and it’s set right by the speaker leading into his prison, a song begins… “This is the song that never ends…it goes on and on my friends, some people started singing it not knowing what it was, but they will keep on singing it forever just because… this is the song that never ends… it goes on and on…..” – Anon Guest
[AN: Thanks, Nonny, for the Youtube link to ten hours of that nonsense. I only watched one loop for curiosity’s sake so ner]
Good news, they captured a Vorax Ur-king. Great news, they potentially knew everything about his horde’s movements and plans. Bad news, the Ur-king wasn’t talking. They were closed-mouthed and arrogant with it. “I’ll never talk,” said the Ur-king, who wouldn’t even give their name. “You will not get any information about my horde or myself out of me. Waste all your resources. Try subjecting me to pain. Waste every minute of every day. Deprive me of anything you can think of. It would be faster to kill me.”
The attending Humans seemed unimpressed. The Havenworlders sighed and said, “Very well. Please remember that we did give you this chance.” Then they left the Ur-king alone in a room with two Humans, who started to smirk.
“Well, well, well, Mx Jones… They said they weren’t going to talk. We might as well skip ahead and subject them to Lambchop.”
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