The first indication that something was amiss… aside from what had now become ‘the usual’ was the drones. Humans may not have wings, but they have never stopped dreaming of flight. This is yet another of the strange traits among humans is that they have the insatiable urge to do things that they can’t do, shouldn’t do, and would be insane to do. Man was not meant to fly, so he made a way to do it anyway. Dlamisa developed flight by accident. Zenti developed it out of desperation. There are many reasons why intelligent races developed flight and space travel.
But only humanity developed it out of a desire to do what they could not do, and to fulfill the dreams their race has held to since ancient times. Now it is so common that they turn flight into toys, namely ‘drones’.
Most races have them, but none in such vast numbers as humans who use them for almost every task from the delivery of fresh food (mostly ‘pizza’ which as of this entry I have yet to try), to package delivery and more importantly on this particular day… news reporting.
Drones painted in the color of various agencies raced over homes and sidewalks and descended on the front of the Walker household like a swarm of locusts. Among those that were painted with ‘legitimate’ corporate logos there were others that were either black or painted in various wild colors.
In the aftermath of this event I took the time to study the use of drones in human history, and in a very strange way, the ‘Drone Culture’ that developed after the creation of the first camera mounted drones, encapsulates humanity’s enduring ability throughout their lives to experience ‘childlike wonder’. Most species who engage in heavy investment in the rearing of children, pass through a stage in their youth where they are endlessly fascinated by everything around them. A boundless curiosity and a desire to know new things is part of their maturation process.
But in humans, this trait does not necessarily die. I say ‘necessarily’ because it can. And when it does die inside someone, they are like the walking dead. But when it remains alive throughout a human’s life, as I would live to see, you have living treasure. ‘Drone Culture’ is a microcosm of this wonderment. Always trying to see what they haven’t seen before and experience vicarious flight through the use of machines.
But then again, there was that moment… when the drones descended on the house of my humans, the guards from our respective governments remained alert, and a cacophony of voices shouted through the speakers. I regret to this day that I found it such a struggle to be close enough to hear it all.
But I did hear some of it amidst the chaos of bobbing, hovering plastic and metal machines that I could see through the window. “Are the Walker’s here? We want an interview! What really happened at the park? Is it true that an alien attacked a human?! Was the alien given special treatment because he’s a foreigner?! Is this part of a wider threat to humanity?!”
“Is it true that the alleged victim knew the human who was attacked?! Was this set up? Is it true that William Walker once worked for a defense contractor specializing in living weapons development? And that Rebecca Walker used to clerk for disgraced Interstate Departmental Relations Chairman John Hsu?”
Humans… they are natural storytellers. In the absence of knowledge, they will begin filling in their own details and imaginations for just about anything you can imagine. Sadly there is another side to this, a side I was hearing. While most humans are xenophilic, fascinated with other living beings, the Universe at large, and eager to learn, there are others who are xenophobic.
Human supremacists who reject the idea of sharing their world or even the galaxy at large with other intelligent beings. While they are a minority, they are quick to jump on anything that they think might support them. Ironically they fail to realize just how ‘not dangerous’ most other intelligent races are in comparison to themselves, since prey races tend to evolve intelligence rather than predators, and the most common survival trait for those races is to flee. Lurid stories of the short war with the Zenti are passed around in xenophobe circles, with horrendous atrocities imagined that even the Zenti could not have done, even if they wished.
For these xenophobes, fear seemed to be their chief focus, fear and hatred, and some of these were well enough connected and well funded, the storytelling nature and political nature of man was an ugly unification.
“Have you filed a lawsuit against the park, the owner, or the perpetrator?!”
“Why has nobody seen this mystery girl that was ‘allegedly’ attacked?! The people deserve answers!”
Of course not all of these were the common corporately affiliated ‘reporters’, rather there was a wide variety of others here, short form video makers, bloggers, vlogers, and various other individuals seeking out a possible source of content.
Humans… humans… humans… at this moment perhaps this reads more like a journal of my life than a serious academic report, but a crowd like that, all those machines pointed toward me, and even without the people themselves being present I could still feel a lot of hostility before I got out of earshot and headed toward the basement to hide myself in my room. My tail shivered and all my worries, so recently alleviated, were back again.
I did have the presence of mind to realize that whoever was behind the presence of ‘hostile questioners’ or ‘reporters’ as they are commonly known, probably hadn’t gotten word of our mutual governments getting involved. I closed the door to my room and sat on my bed, on the shelf sat the balloon animal the officer gave me before. I had it sprayed with a clear coat of enamel to preserve it.
Against my will, I was scared all over again, the specific words were impossible to discern any longer, but the hubbub and noise was still loud enough that I couldn’t hide from it even when I covered all eight ears and pressed them tight against the fur on my skull.
It was then that I heard the muffled noise of a knock at the door.
“Bailey? Can I come in?” Fauve asked.
I nodded stupidly a few times.
“Are you there?” She asked.
Facepalming is not a gesture dlamisa use, but if it were, I would have used it. ‘Idiot, she couldn’t hear you nod!’ I thought, and said, “Come in.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She opened the door, slipped inside, and shut it behind her.
Her cracked red eyes had a puffiness around them that was characteristic of recent emotional outbursts, and her cheeks were flushed as if she were ashamed. “I’m sorry you got in trouble over me…” She said and sat down on the bed beside me. Her hands wrung together and her feet shuffled on the floor. “I didn’t mean to… I really didn’t. I just wanted to swim, I wanted us to all go have fun… I didn’t mean for anything like this,” she gestured in the direction of the exit to the house that led out to the driveway where our bodyguards voices began to go up in an ever louder shout, “to happen.”
“Fauve… what are you talking about?” I asked, I was baffled enough that my hands slipped from my ears and she slipped her hand into her pocket, pulled out her datapad, and after unlocking it, she handed it over.
Whatever was on there, she couldn’t say it. So I looked. “...If you’d just gone with him…”
“If you weren’t dressed like that…”
“...Lead him on of course he’s going to think…”
Fauve’s frustration came out in her voice while I read. “He grabbed my arm, I was scared, he wouldn’t let go, but maybe if I’d just hugged him goodbye then none of this would have happened, maybe he would have let go…” She pursed her lips tight and took a deep breath, “then you wouldn’t have gotten handcuffed and none of this would be happening…”
There is a particular oddity in humans, something I’ve never found anywhere else in the galaxy, admittedly I’ve only been to fifty or so worlds and I’ve only met a hundred or so intelligent races, but I doubt very much this oddity would be repeated elsewhere. And that oddity is something commonly known as ‘Main Character Syndrome’.
A variant of this is called ‘Spotlight Syndrome’. They are very similar conditions endemic to most humans either persistently or sporadically. These syndromes refer to the belief found in a person that everybody else is focused on them in some way. “Everybody is watching me… noticing me… thinking about me.” The distinction between the two is in the favorable vs unfavorable standard. Spotlight pertains to the belief that all their flaws, foibles, missteps, are being noticed and magnified for all the world to see. It is anxiety inducing. By contrast, ‘Main Character’ refers to a more favorable self image in which a person believes that they are the star of the show, they are the protagonist and everybody else is just a side character in the drama of their existence… or an antagonist they must defeat.
Human children in the course of their maturation, have both of these in their heads in some way. A very young child will assume everything is about them. Are mother and father fighting? The child will believe it is their fault. They are quick to blame themselves, this is in part because their empathy takes time to develop, and until it does, until their brain has reached full maturity, some level of self centeredness is the only way they can be.
This helps them survive as they learn and grow, but it also makes them very vulnerable. Parents who place blame on their children for things their children didn’t do will suffer horrendous developmental side effects precisely because they cannot imagine things being any other way.
What I was seeing was Fauve in her worried state, accepting blame for something she had no responsibility for, not that I could see. Outside, the noise of the drones and our agents shouting, both grew louder.
“This is a very strange world you have here, you know?” I said, setting the datapad on the mattress, I leaned back, my own fears forgotten for the moment, my hands on the soft mattress, I looked up at the smooth ceiling. She cocked her head at me and asked…
“What do you mean, Bailey?”
“That failed human. He was an adult, wasn’t he? I didn’t bite an undeveloped one?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I think so. If he’s working full time he has to be an adult, underage people aren’t allowed to work a full six hour day.” She answered. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Them, those… far off people, they’re giving you, a small human who isn’t even grown, a whole lot of power over a grownup. It seems strange, I thought grownups were always supposed to be responsible and in charge. Am I wrong?” I asked her, and she actually chuckled a little.
“No, no you’re not. I wasn’t trying to do any of the things they say… I just wanted to go… I just- but if I’d just done what he wanted…” She frowned and her body shook with barely suppressed anger.
“Did you have to? Is there some rule here that if an adult male grabs a female of your species, she is his until he lets her go?” I asked, I was fairly sure there wasn’t.’’
“No!” Fauve exclaimed, angry tears ran down her cheeks, “I didn’t want to go with him! I didn’t want his hands on me! I was just going to swim! I was just minding my own business! All I did was smile at him and wish him a nice day! Then he came over to me, and I tried to get around him, but he wouldn’t let me! He kept blocking my path! He kept that creepy smile on his face while he was demanding my name! Then he told me that the park was his dad’s and said he could get me onto rides for free if I was with him. The way he said ‘rides’ made my skin crawl…” Fauve hugged her arms around her body…
“He was gross and crude, I just wanted to go, so I told him ‘some other time’ and tried to be nice instead of making it clear by being nice… maybe if I’d shouted for help then… maybe if I’d told him no some other way, or louder or… maybe if I hadn’t slapped his phone away when he tried to get to close and force me to get into frame with him… maybe he wouldn’t have grabbed me that hard… I made him mad and..”
I lowered my ears, she missed the gesture, but when I said, “I get it. And I’m not even human. You’d make a pretty good dlamisa, Fauve, but it sounds to me like he understood but didn’t care. You can’t blame yourself for his decisions, and how could you predict the decisions of a dlamisan exchange student?” I let my jaw drop open to bare my teeth and let out my imitation of a human laugh. “You protected your choice, that’s a right here, isn’t it?” I asked, and she sniffled, rubbed some stray snot from her nose and gave a little nod.
“So then what are you apologizing to me for?” I asked and shrugged, finally turning to face her, “I’m decades older than you, even if my race is longer lived, if we proportion it to humans, I’m older than you by at least a few years. You didn’t make me do anything, you didn’t make Wolfbeard do anything. All you did was exist and try to live your life. As an anthropology student I can tell you, there’s nothing wrong with that. Nowhere I know that is… except I guess, in the heads of Wolfbeard and people like him. So don’t be so hard on yourself, OK?”
I winced as the shouting got louder and reflexively covered my ears, shut my eyes, and looked down.
“Are you… OK?” Fauve asked, inching a little closer to me.
I regretted the poverty of curse words in my own language, I’d forgotten, Fauve didn’t know why we came back early on the first trip, William hid it from her.
“I’ll be fine. It’s nothing, we just have to wait until the people outside get rid of them all. They may just be machines, but crowds are still… they’re not things my kind deals with very well.” I admitted. “Too much noise, too many smells, too much stimulation… It hurts. It hurts but it’ll pass. Don’t worry about it.”
Another peculiarity of children is the nature of their resolve. Human children have an innate sense of justice, sometimes it is wrong, one child will take a toy from another, or rob one another of their treats… but they have a natural sense of when they are being wronged. It may take time to develop empathy for others, but they know very early on what ‘wrong’ feels like. And when a human child is wronged, the whole world knows it.
In theory this stops when they’re very young, but in reality it just changes, and Fauve was a particularly stern young girl. I could see her already starting to rise to her feet, the wheels turning in her head while she prepared to give the reporters outside a piece of her mind that they would not soon forget.
Once again I thought to myself, ‘She would make a good dlamisa…’
Then after a lingering look at me, when the noise outside grew again, she sat back down, and put her hands on my head so that her fingers were over mine, giving further protection to my ears.
And as the sound outside became a little bit duller thanks to her gesture I thought, ‘...but she makes a better human.’