Memory transcription subject: Estala, Ex-Prestige Exterminator, current predator.
Date [standardised human time]: December 20, 2136
“What about the economy? When Humans arrived the economy on Venlil Prime tanked.”
“Last time I checked that was the Federation’s fault for cancelling trade with the Venlil. Really not our fault that the Federation is so messed up.”
I was officially out of ideas. I had tried being easy prey, I had tried listening to the human, I had tried being combative. What should have been an easy task had somehow spiralled into meeting after meeting. I should at this point just call the entire thing off, because clearly this predator was defective.
Here I was explaining everything negative with humanities contact with the Federation and Joseph just took it as a challenge, because of course he did. We fell into a routine where I provided a negative, then Joseph argued against the point, after which he then attempted to provide a counter positive that humans had brought along with them.
I was within arms reach, and the only move Joseph ever made was to occasionally provide an absent minded glorious scratch to the back of my neck, just in the right position to provide that relaxing feeling of joy.
Did you really believe that something as minor as a discussion would cause Joseph to harm you?
No, I had to admit that deep down I no longer believed that Joseph would hurt me. Maybe another human, maybe another predator, but not this one. The only time he’d even shown the slightest anger had been when he’d learned of my past.
Learning of my “Abruptly cancled childhood” as he called it, had caused him to spiral into an hour long anger filled rant involving repeated use of the phrases “What the fuck” and “Seriously whoever did this to you needs to be punched in the throat”.
I didn’t feel harmed having the opportunity to help people at such a young age, I couldn’t understand why Joseph hated something that let me save lives, or seemingly was filled with anger on my behalf.
Regardless I still had to try towards my original plan, because otherwise what was the point of me coming to these meetings? Really I should be on the lookout for a new target.
But you don’t want to do that do you?
No, I wanted to keep coming to these meetings, so I had to keep trying. Since the revelations about the Krakotl’s past they were the only stabilising feature of my life right now. It’s strange to think that I would describe actively being face to face with a predator in such a manner.
Have you considered just meeting with Joseph because you enjoy his company?
“The fact is in a perfect universe Humanity meeting the Venlil would have had huge economic boons due to tourism and general trade. It’s actually a little sad to think about to be honest. So next is my turn to provide a positive about human and Venlil interactions, let me think…”
Joseph took a moment to stroke his chin thoughtfully, before twisting his fingers into a painful looking set of movements, providing a loud snapping sound as he perked up.
“Video games! Our interactive media has been a huge hit with the Venlil, Tetris has basically become a new niche sport in the bigger cities, things like minecraft and other building sims are obviously super popular, and there’s even a rumour that one of the guys on the Starcraft leaderboards is a Venlil who is currently on Earth.”
Joseph broke into a large smile, a move that once would have filled me with fear and dread, now instead warmed my heart to see the human happy. Did I really have to keep having a reason to come to these meetings? Wanting to actively meet with a predator for no reason sounded like a symptom of predator disease, so for now I focused on the goal of the conversation.
It was my turn to provide a negative.
“Humans have brought along a feline non-sapient predator with them, with many reports of destruction of innocent wildlife.”
This caused the face of the human to fall in defeat, seeming to think for a moment and giving a resigned shrug in response.
“Yea I got nothing for that. The people who brought their cats are idiots, I get it, but idiots. Seriously one of the alien species is literally a space hamster, that is going to end really badly.”
I frowned, the outright admittance to the negativity of Human’s actions was strange.
“Why would humans knowingly keep around predators they know are dangerous and harmful?”
Surprisingly this caused Joseph to laugh, giving yet another shrug as he tossed another handful of seeds to the flock of birds that followed him around.
“Because humans are idiots! It’s always hilarious reading about our supposed 5D chess ‘predator trickery’ on the federation internet, because humans are dumb. Especially me! We see something cute and small and want to nurture it regardless of the consequences. Take a look at this Earth animal.”
Joseph fiddled around with his Holopad device for a few moments, before holding it out to me to show what looked like a predatorial nightmare of a Zurilian. My immediate reaction was of fear from a clear predator. Having said that, I had also seen videos where humans showed off Earth’s twisted and broken biology that didn’t follow normal rules.
“Let me guess, this is a prey animal?”
“God no! That is an apex predator that would very much eat me if given the chance, you’d be fine as you can fly away. Even though logically I know that they are super dangerous, when I see a bear a not insignificant part of my brain suggests ‘Hey, that apex predator is fluffy and friend shaped. You should go pet the friend’”
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I just stared at Joseph for a moment, confusion running through me at the revelation that all humans seemingly had a deathwish. Why would you even allow something dangerous to remain on your planet?
“How did you manage to survive long enough to get to space?”
“We’re not sure. Still if I had choose between the flaws of wanting to protect things that are cute, and the messed up situation that is fucking child soldiers, then frankly we can-”
“It’s your turn.”
I desperately interrupted Joseph: I did not want to go through another version of the rant, hearing it two times already was more than enough. Luckily for me that seemed to work, as the fury that was starting to build up again instantly derailed into the human’s more normal happy self.
“Next one is easy. Food. Even you have to admit to the power of human food.”
I took that moment to glance at the newest bag of mangos Joseph had handed me on this meeting, forlornly realising that I was going to have to leave some of them behind simply because I literally couldn’t fly with that many.
“But even our cooking seems to have taken root. The other day at the Library I heard a group talking about curry as if it was a religious experience.”
Wait, was Joseph saying that curry was human? Even in my self isolation I had heard of the new food that had been created in the Sweetwater region; it was practically impossible not to. Anyone who had tried the meal had quickly become an apostle for the dish, desperately trying to convert anyone they found to the glories of the new Venlil craze.
“That can’t be right, would it even be legal to sell human food?”
The human gave a shrug.
“I dunno, maybe it’s a Venlil from the exchange program who decided to adapt the recipe. Honestly, checking out a curry made with Venlil ingredients sounds like an interesting field trip. Anyways it’s your turn.``
I struggled for a moment. I had to admit that when you actually went through them, there were very few actual negatives the humans had caused. Sure people were terrified, but when you went through the claims one by one, so far there had been no reports of humans actually doing anything to justify said fear.
Well apart from maybe one thing.
“How about the uptick in prey on prey violence. Before humans arrived on Venlil prime there were practically no cases of such predator disease, but after humans started being integrated there have been two cases of prey killing prey alone.”
There had been a lot of discussion as to what had caused the sharp increase. The leading theory had been of human’s aggressive nature rubbing off on the Venlil. Even the most pro-predator voices had to admit that humans were far more willing to use violence than federation species. That’s what theoretically made them such a potentially good weapon against the Axrur.
But me bringing this up caused Joseph to point at me and smile, not his normal happy smile, but a wicked predatory one, one that caused a shiver to go down my spine and my feathers to ruffle up. As if I was an innocent creature suddenly caught in a trap.
“That’s because you’ve been measuring the wrong thing. Give me a second.”
He fiddled around on his holopad for a few moments, that smile not leaving his face, before handing it over to me.
“You’re an Exterminator right? So for the honour of the Federation and all that jazz, what’s the difference between these two cases.”
I looked down at what had been handed to me, two predator attack files placed side by side, heavily redacted from what I could tell, with the names replaced with a number and the photos of the events replaced with text descriptions. It took me a moment before I asked the obvious question.
“Wait, how do you have these!”
“For legal reasons any files that get uploaded to this community were ‘found’. For actual reasons the Federation sucks at cyber security. I think someone did a password dump of every Exterminator account and like 40% of the passwords were just ‘Inatala’...”
I felt a little smug at that revelation. I had always pushed for better password security in-
“... with an additional 40% just being ‘Inatala’ with the first letter replaced with a number.”
I felt less smug.
Still I decided to ignore the terrifying conclusion that any human could get access to any government system they wanted, and instead focused on the task I’d been given. Even though they were redacted I could still remember both of these cases, both had been placed on my desk at some point.
The first had been a Venlil called ‘Vaski’, killed by a predator in the dark side bordering town of Endwood on July 17th 2136. The second was also a Venlil, named Regven killed in the city of Dawn Creek on August 6th. I stared at both for a while, before shrugging and giving up.
“They’re both the same, aren’t they both predator attacks?”
“You see, this is the problem, you see a murder and instantly think only a predator could do such a thing. The first one has multiple injuries, claw marks, obvious signs of being eaten and had multiple witnesses reporting a predator that could do such a thing in the area. It’s a remote location, so you are more likely to be in contact with wild animals. Basically a textbook case of someone being killed by wildlife.”
Joseph stopped for a moment to breathe and shoo away a few birds who had gotten too close.
“The second has only two precise wounds, with no other signs of injury. Only one part of the body was missing, the heart. Nobody saw anything that could do such a thing, and while the area is suspiciously lacking cameras, none of the recorded areas around the death have signs of a predator. Dawn Creek is way too industrialised to harbour a creature strong enough toliterally break open a ribcage. The logical conclusion is that the attack required intelligence and was done for a none eating reason: it’s a murder.”
Well that couldn’t be right… a prey would never do such a thing. But the human made a good point.
“What about if someone had disturbed the predator before it could eat? Maybe the predator couldn’t be seen on cameras?”
“So the first thing a hungry animal does is get to the hardest to reach areas first? Then only does damage to one organ? Also unless your wildlife is terrifying, animals can’t go invisible or teleport into and out of existence.”
Joseph was right, there had to be another reason. Maybe it was a… or perhaps it could have… How could this have happened? Even worse, how did I not see this, how did I not question this? Now it had been pointed out it was obvious. This was literally my job, did that mean that I’d missed at least one diseased Venlil, who now free to roam about with predator disease killing others?
“There’s also been two other murders that follow the same MO, same method of death and removing the heart. A medical worker on October 23 and a general farm hand on December 4th. I used that one as an example because it’s not just a murder, it’s a serial killer. The internet has dubbed them the ‘Heartbreak killer’”
My head was spinning. This couldn’t be the case, but the human’s logic made sense. Why would a beast only interested in feasting on flesh take the time to only remove one organ? What would be the chance that such a thing happened three times? Why did I never see this before, how many more had I missed?
“If you want to look, search on the human internet for ‘FederationColdCases’, about 30% of all supposed predator deaths, aren’t. General rule is, if a predator species is never officially mentioned in the death, it’s probably something else.”
I felt a wave of calm wash over me as Joseph scratched the base of my neck once again.
“I’ll stop talking about this now because you look a little shell shocked.”
Shellshocked: ‘shocked or confused because of a sudden alarming experience’ as my translator helpfully informed me. That rather did explain my current mindset as I tried to push away what I’d just learnt and its implications, choosing instead to focus on the relaxing effect of the human’s touch.
But not before my errant thoughts had one last barb to leave behind.
They never did state which predator killed your father.