Challenge #02730-G173: Hunting for the Delicate
Some older humans bring their alien friends to a bingo parlor for a night of playing bingo and having snacks. – Anon Guest
[AN: Though I am of bingo-playing age, I only have the vaguest idea how it is played]
“This is a perfect game for the frailer sort,” said Human Jem. “Little strenuous activity, but it still tests observation, response time, and searching skills.”
This was a Deathworld game, so Glex knew the right question to ask. “What are you hunting?”
Human Jem laughed and nodded. “You nailed it. We’re hunting numbers, and these,” they handed Glex a piece of cardboard with a grid on one side, “are the hunting ground.” The grid, on further examination, held numbers within each square. “The goal is to get five of them in a straight line. Vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.”
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Challenge #02729-G172: Tis the Season
Human 1: so what about you?
Human 2: I learned how to make paper cranes so I’m going to make them in different colors and put them in everyone’s bedroom with notes like “this little bird told me xyz”
Human 1: …
Human 1: epic. – Anon Guest
Aprilfools: A Human holiday/tradition involving trickery, deceit, pranks, and practical jokes. Owing to many Terran Colony calendars becoming out of sync with the planet of origin, the entire Terran month of April has become a collective season of silly jokes. Always find out what kind of Prankster your Ships’ Human is. Such foreknowledge has saved many lives. – A Galactics’ Guide to Human.
Humans have an interesting sense of humour. Attempting to discourage them from things they deem harmless has been a long and arduous journey. However, most of them do indeed prefer to share the laughter rather than cause lasting harm. Dye in the bathing water supply is a popular. Bubbles in fountains. Tiny writing somewhere inaccessible with the words, took you a lot to get up here and read this scribed carefully there.
Why the Humans insist on doing this is unknown, but it is known that the celebration of this peculiar holiday helps hold off Silly Season during that particular time of the year. All things considered, many species preferred the individualised shenanigans of Aprilfools to whatever mass hysteria occurred during Silly Season. It was easier to clean up for one.
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Challenge #02728-G171: Inner Motivation
I am thou, thou are I, from the sea of thou soul I come forth. Pity a man who yearns for their own protection, and become the spearhead that pierce through the oppression! – Anon Guest
[AN: Thee, thou, and thy are hard pronouns to use. My grammatical arse had to provide a correction to balm my soul: “I am thee, and thou art I, from the sea of thy soul I come forth.” I have no idea why, but I can conjugate ‘Thee’ on instinct. Call it a gift. This is also something possibly three other people on the whole world care about. Also: Offensensitivity warning for depictions of domestic abuse]
Sometimes, you can actually hear the moment when an intelligent being snaps. Sometimes it’s just a crack, like someone realigning their knuckles. Sometimes, it’s a sound similar to glass surrendering to immense pressures. When Shan snapped, it sounded like a slab of granite sundered by a sudden impact.
“You’re right,” she said. It was Shan’s voice. It was his body doing the talking, but the new being with those words wasn’t the Shan who had been progressively whittled down to less than nothing by his abuser. “You could kill me in so many ways. You can make certain the world never knows I’m gone. You can beat me and hurt me and make my life so very painful.” His arm moved of its own volition. Striking out so suddenly as if it had forgotten the carving knife in his hand. “You made me need you, but I don’t need you.”
The knife sunk in. Past clothing. Past skin. Through internal organs and only halting when it was embedded in bone. The creature who was now within Shan regarded it all with clinical fascination. She will threaten jail. She will say I owe her. She will threaten. She will hurt me. Shan was used to it all.
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Challenge #02727-G170: Doing What You Can
The human was not the ship’s human. They were a passenger. They were also paralyzed from the waist down. When she ship crashed, when the human’s movement assistive device was rendered inoperable, when the human found themself trapped in the wreckage with half a dozen fellow passengers, all either injured or too distressed to move…
Well. A sufficiently determined human with two working limbs, several cases of dental floss, a non-operative movement assistive device, and six people to rescue…is still going to need medical assistance after dragging everyone else to safety with a makeshift sledge and harness. – Anon Guest
“The world is made for legs, so I have a neuro-linked exo to make my legs work until I get a nerve patch. They’re still trying to find a compatible syntho suite for me, since I was born like this. Fun times.” If there was a further part of the conversation, Lil didn’t remember it. Trauma interrupts the process of making permanent memories. Lil couldn’t remember if ze had said the part about thanking the Powers that multi-species spaces were easier to navigate than the ones made for Just Humans.
Ze probably had. It was hir favourite bitch session. This world, surrounded in patches of fire and smelling of ozone, was not made for legs. It was not made for any mobility. It was an accident site. Worse, hir exo pants had suffered a fatal error and shut down. Lil disconnected and dragged hirself out of them.
Pros and Cons. Pro: The exo bracers spared me from broken legs. Con: My legs were non-functional anyway. Pro: There is no problem so big it can’t at least be helped by a little ductape and a lot of ingenuity. Con: I have dental floss. Lil took a deep breath, coughing at the smoke. “Okay,” ze told hirself. “Let’s get to it. Resident Deathworlder saves the day, blah blah blah.”
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Challenge #02726-G169: Only Two? Since When?
A: ok, what’s in between your legs?
B: DETERMINATION
A: alright then guess my race
B: human
A: why yes but actually no – Anon Guest
[AN: I don’t think any decent person would actually utter the words “what’s between your legs” because that’s way too intimate a question for casual conversation. Person A in the above interchange is unbelievably rude]
Not every meeting between Humans and members of the Alliance is easy. There are a rare few when some participants seem to refuse to get along without passing ridiculous levels of intimacy. Some Humans, the Alliance was learning, were just too curious about certain aspects of other life forms. Once a common language is established, certain aspects must be categorized in order for civilised behaviour to progress.
This involved a large number of uncivilised questions.
The Terran Colony was initially mis-translated as Prominent Grass, owing to a miscommunication based on phonetic translation. The Humans there had a rather rigid view of their own bizarre biology, and a willful opposition of scientific evidence that opposed their opinions. In all other aspects, they appeared to be relatively progressive for Deathworlders, but appearances are often deceiving.
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