Amelia awoke the next day, groggily sitting up from her bed. Yesterday had been a doozy of one, finding out that Krultathans apparently had a heat cycle, and that Human pheromones affected them. She had spent the rest of the day making a masking agent for herself to use while on the ship, both for Viza's sake and her own.
Walking over to the alien equivalent of a bathroom, she stepped into the shower and turned the water on, thankful they used actual water and not something like sonic showers or anything. While she had been at it she also used the chemistry kit she borrowed to make some soap and conditioner with the neutralizing agent and an artificial cherry blossom scent, which she planned on using now and testing to see how long it lasted today before having to reapply. A bit of an experiment of hers that made her smile a bit.
'Once a scientist always one I guess.' She thought to herself.
30 minutes later and she was out of the shower and dressed, putting Hal, in his bracer form, back on as she had taken him off to not get him wet. He was waterproof of course, but some things are just rude to do even if it wouldn't hurt. Seeing his ocular open up and raise she smiled softly at him.
"Morning sleepy. Rest cycle go okay?" She asked him.
"Good morning Miss Amelia. Capacitors are currently at 33 percent capacity, a secondary low power cycle is required. I'm afraid you'll be on your own today again." Hal responded while looking up at her.
"Ah, get some rest then. I think I'll visit our resident feline bodyguard and have a chat on the things that the data pack left out in regards to the galaxy." She replied as she went about fixing her hair up in its normal ponytail.
"Is that due to a desire for mating with the Krultathan?" Hal inquired curiously.
"HAL!! That is NOT an appropriate topic! And no, I have no romantic interest in Viza. I chose him to make sure the scent blocker will work." She said, her face turning red from embarrassment.
"Your logic is unsound, Miss Amelia. The masking agent binds and neutralizes all naturally made chemical scent chains. Its effectiveness is irrefutable." Hal countered.
"Hal, I barely know Viza. Where is this coming from?" Amelia asked, starting to get frustrated with him.
"That was not a refutation." Hal said, ignoring her second sentence.
"Hal, enough. Promise me you will be on your best behavior or I'll confine you to the room for the day. Am I clear?"
"....."
"Am I clear?!"
"....Yes, Miss Amelia." Hal eventually responded with.
"Good. Now I don't know what's gotten into you, but there's nothing between me and Viza, we only met a few days ago and apparently, Human pheromones are like a drug to his kind so it'd be unfair to him anyways. Are we clear?" She said, sitting him down on the bed like a child.
"Affirmative. Will I be accompanying you still today?"
"Yes, Hal, you will. But please mind yourself, I don't think the galaxy is much better with A.I. than Earth is based on how they reacted to the info on V.I." She tells him, her face lost in thought a moment before she holds out her arm to him. "Now come on, let's go start the experiment."
Hal climbs up and forms himself against her arm, one 'hand' holding onto hers a bit longer than necessary before folding in and going into low power mode.
'Jeez, what is with him today.' Amelia thought as she headed out.
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Twenty minutes later and she was in the cafeteria room with Viza as he got something to eat, she herself not being hungry at the moment.
"So, to try and avoid the, um, incident, that happened yesterday, I was thinking we could take turns asking questions about each other to gain more information about the galaxy and Humanity." She explained to Viza as he paused in the middle of tearing a piece of meat off to look at her.
"Hmm, I don't see the harm in it, but I must stress I cannot tell of any information that has been deemed as military secrets." Viza responded after a moment of thinking about it before heading back into the cut of meat.
"Okay, then first off, why do you eat meat raw, wouldn't cooking it be more efficient?" Amelia asked.
"I'm afraid I do not understand...what is 'cooking'?" Viza asked her, head tilting to the side.
'Oh gods they don't have cooking.' Amelia thought, horrified while looking at Viza. Suddenly he made a sound between a chuff and a murr and confused Amelia even more.
"By the void, I didn't think you'd believe that so easily." He said as Amelia realized he was pulling one over on her, the strange sound he was making apparently their equivalent of laughing.
"Yes, some species have cooking, technically my species does for some select foods, but for the most part, we do not require cooking our food as we are obligate carnivores. We evolved to eat meat without cooking it, and only have a small number of fruits that we can digest." Viza explained to her.
"I confess I am surprised that your scent is so different. Can humans change their scent at will?" He then asked before tearing off another piece of meat.
"Oh, no, I borrowed a chemistry kit and developed a pheromone blocker. This was a sort of test run for it, whether or not you could still detect it or not." She explained as she watched him eat.As she thought, they were obligate carnivores, and up close she could tell more about them. Krultathans had two sets of long canines on their upper and lower jaw, one set on each larger than the other giving her the idea of one being a primary set and the other a secondary. Their tongue, oddly enough, didn't seem to have dendrite as an Earth cat would. Interestingly she noticed that he had a second set of eyelids, almost invisible, that slid over his eyes when he bit into and swallowed meat, an odd non-feline quirk.
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"So the onboard doctor seemed surprised we used VI, is that frowned upon in the galaxy?" She asked cautiously, wanting to see a bit more about how the galaxy might view Hal.
"Not exactly, no. But most species that make VI before first contact also make AI and usually are killed by them. So seeing one that has VI but no AI and still pre-first contact is extremely rare." He said hesitantly.
'So AI is frowned upon even in the galaxy...great.' Amelia thought as she waited for Viza's next question.
"So Terra is a class 4 death world, right? How the void do you humans survive on it, let alone thrive? Most of the galaxy considers sentient life on a class 4 impossible. We haven't even found one on a class 3 yet." Viza asked, looking intently at her. Evidently, this was his main question for today with how attentive he was suddenly being, waiting on her to respond.
"I'm not sure what we do differently, we are just...evolved for it. We were originally an arboreal prey species but because of changing climates, our ancestors moved to the grasslands. We learned to walk upright because it gave us a better range of vision, lost most of our fur and learned to sweat to shed heat, and eventually learned to use this to become hunters. We lacked claws or large canines, so we made tools to be our claws, and fire became our teeth. Thanks to sweating, even if we couldn't run fast we could run for a long, long time, so we used that in our hunting as well, it's a technique called persistence hunting, and humans are really, really good at it. We would chase prey or other predators until it collapsed, then hurl rocks or spears at it to kill it, and eat it. From there, we eventually rose to the top of the food chain, developed societies, farming, etc, and further invented tech to serve us, and changed certain parts of our planet to suit us. Fast forward a bit and here we are." Amelia said, only noticing the sudden silence that went over the cafeteria after she stopped speaking. Viza himself looked shocked at her, having dropped his food on the table.
"That...is terrifying. By the void. You ate other predators?" Viza said, unable to hide a bit of fear.
"Well, yes. If they threatened us. Most people don't nowadays though, no real reason to." Amelia confirmed.
"I've seen some data on the other predators of the planet. How are you not in constant war with them? The canines seem especially terrifying."
"Oh, that's simple. The ones we liked, like canines, we pack-bonded with, and trained. They're our best friends now. And the others, well if they survive they learned to fear humans. It's no stretch to say that on a species scale, humans are the most feared species on our planet." She said with a small laugh at the joke.
Viza wasn't laughing. He was horrified.
"P-Pack bonded?" He asked, unable to control the shiver.
"Yeah. Humans are really, really social creatures, and we kinda have this...cuteness complex. Anything that isn't an immediate threat and has certain generic characteristics, we can pack-bond with. We're really good at taming wild animals using it too. While dogs and cats are known, some others would be a large herbivore with a kick of more than 2000 pounds which we tamed to ride called a horse, an herbivore with horns and weighing more than 800 pounds called a cow is another. Snakes, lizards, hyenas, foxes, big felines, and more. While a lot of them as a species are wild, individuals however can be pack bonded with. Not exactly tamed but, close enough. Some people even have bonded with small insects like arachnids, even rocks."
Viza had no idea how to respond to this, his mind was in shock as he tried to process what she was saying. They actually tamed both herbivores and predators? On a class 4? and not just as small pets but as work animals? This was too much as his paws went to his head to cover his ears.
"Enough, enough, please." He practically begged her to stop.
"You okay Viza? Having a headache or something?" Amelia asked, wondering what was wrong.
"What is a...no don't tell me, just please let's stop for now." He stood up, heading to the door.
"I need some time if you'd be so kind, Lady Amelia." Viza said before leaving.
He left Amelia there wondering what had happened.
--30 Minutes later-----------------
Amelia was in one of the many diplomatic rooms, using one of their holopads to look up the limited information being released to Humanity, when Viza finally returned.
"Oh, welcome back. Sorry about that, I guess I threw a bit too much at ya." She said, one hand rubbing her neck ashamedly.
Viza for his part, seemed like he had just had a run around the ship...five times.
"Your homeworld is...certainly something, Lady Amelia." He responded, though his tone of voice seemed off, or perhaps that was just the translator.
"It sounds worse than it is, honestly. I'm sure other species would seem just as extreme to us." She said, trying to help him feel better for what was apparently his species equivalent of a freakout.
"Lady Amelia, I don't think you..." He started, before his ears perked up as if receiving an idea.
"On second thought, follow me to the gym room." He said to her, motioning her to exit first.
She stepped out and then followed as he took the lead, guiding them through the ship that seemed to have too many hallways for its own good until they reached a door a bit larger than the others. Viza seemed to inhale before opening the door, revealing the exercise room.
For the most part, it looked standard. Black matting on the ground softened any accidental falls, multiple sets of workout equipment from treadmills, weight benches, flex benches, pull-up poles and more scattered about. There was even a kind of rock wall on one side, albeit it looked like one set on beginner. The room was brightly lit on all sides and as they walked in Amelia couldn't help but wonder what the purpose of coming here was. Sure she was in half grav and it was awkward walking in it, but she didn't think she needed to worry about muscle retention when she was able to set the grav in her room to 75% earth grav.
"This, is what you humans would call a gym. A exercise room meant for multiple species." Viza started, then motioned her to follow him to the weight bench.
"This is the standard weights and standard amount used for most species." He said, pointing to the pre-weighted bench. It took a moment but her retina was able to sync with the translator to show it was about the equivalent of 25 kilos.
"The hardier species can manage a bit more. My own species holds the record at almost double that. Well, held would be more accurate once Humanity joins the Galaxy, isn't it?" He said, then gave a knowing look at her.
This time it was Amelia's turn to be shocked. 50 kilos is their record? its lower than the average for non-competitors and isn't even a fourth of what the world bench press was. Humans were monsters in comparison.
As if it were a joke, she cautiously moved to pick up the weights with one hand, made even easier in the lower gravity while still retaining her stunned look.
"The other species are eggshells." She mumbles to herself as things finally sinked in. Forget worrying about offending someone Humanity would have to worry about not accidentally breaking people.
"Um, well," She starts, putting the weights down. "You still have claws, that's at least something humans don't-" She started, trying to cheer him up only to turn and see Viza holding up a picture on a holopad of clawed gloves and the like for humans.
"-Have naturally?" She finished looking sheepish.
"Lady Amelia, I appreciate the attempt, but this is serious. For all intents and purposes, you are the current representative of Humanity, and you aren't even aware of what kind of Galaxy you are representing your people to. You must understand, you come from a Class 4 Deathworld. That is not something insignificant. Your gravity, weather, evolution, everything, on your home planet is magnitudes greater than the average sapient cradle world. Because of this, your people are going to face hardships unique to them, such as being stuck with instinctive impulses, or with strength that doesn't fit, as you just have shown. The sooner you realize this, the better." Viza spoke, sounding somehow kind and soft while also deadly serious.
"We're supermen in a world of cardboard." Amelia said quietly, looking down. She had already guessed it from how people had treated Earth, but having it thrown in her face just made it more real.
"So what do I do? It's not like humanity can just not have these traits, it's inherent. And a sapient species is going to take one look at us and see us as either a threat or a tool. I cant change that, and i'm not a diplomat, so what would you have me do?" Amelia returned his gaze with one of her own.
Viza chuffed, seeing that she understood, then responded.
"Simple, you do nothing."