Omega stared at Pylo. The alien stared back with a slight smile.
The way that their host and ‘ship mistress’ carried herself under the partial gravity of acceleration honestly Put Omega in mind of some kind of cross between a spider and a predatory lizard.
It made the soft and gentle smile and subtler anthropomorphic body language a bit more disconcerting. It was so incredibly easy to be put at ease by Pylo that she often caught herself doing it without thinking.
Aleph started to speak but one of those whip like limbs sweeped around in a crack. Stopping with the claw like ‘finger’ held up in what every terran would recognize as a ‘please wait’ signal. The fact pylo seemed to manage that when she didn't even have hands was impressive.
The silence seemed to stretch on uncomfortably long before finally breaking.
With a precise voice that immediately put Omega in mind of one of her professors.
It made her whirl a moment looking for someone new before realizing she was hearing it from the alien.
“Hello? Testing The First, Testing the Second... Good! As this is our first proper exchange I want to give you greetings miss Omega, Medium First Class, Graduate with honors from the colonial training program and member of the Triumvirate representatives of your nation’s colonial efforts”
Omega could not really help herself, she just stared, there was not a hint of innuendo, no sneaky little teases, no weird scents and half memories. The only thing she was getting was a vague warm feeling in her chest from the praise that.
Wait a minute...
That was not just similar to one of her teachers, it was almost exactly like how she had imagined a lecturer in xeno-biology would sound. In her dreams. The one that never actually gave her very good marks that she was always trying to impress the most when she was younger.
Omega frowned a bit. That was a lot more subtle then she had been expecting.
“Ah sorry, let me adjust that a bit more. Is this better?”
The slight lilts and nuance filtered away. It just became a professional tone and quality that might have fit in with any other of the experienced professionals that had trained prospective colonists at the academy.
Omega huffed and gave a slight nod.
“Good! As you might surmise I have resolved the problem with my translations!”
Aleph chirped up happily, bright as can be.
“Isn't that great Omega! She’s so much clearer and easier to understand now! Although she said that she didn't want to explain what was going wrong until she got all of us together, so I thought why not we could have a little get together and find out why she-”
Pylo made a ‘sound’ with a slight clicking hiss to quiet Aleph, the mannerism was vaguely familiar but Omega could not place it as a particular person’s. She was watching Pylo’s lips during the exchange. It was almost uncanny how they seemed to flow and match with the words she was hearing. The alien had never actually used her lips before to speak. Wait was she using her lips to speak?
Omega held a hand up to one ear while listening to Pylo talk to Aleph. Checking the acoustics.
“Yes, but I think it is about time to begin, if you don’t mind getting settled in there is a lot that I will need to do”
No, Pylo was not actually saying anything with her lips, she was miming the words and still planting sounds or words or impression of sound directly in their brains. When she turned to look at Omega again there was a friendly smile and a professional and sharp nod. Apparently she knew that Omega knew what she was doing.
“Now then I am going to present this using your visual and audio channels simultaneously. Please do not be alarmed. In addition if you are disturbed simply signal me and I can pause the presentation. Is everyone ready?”
Quarti made a barking sound and something with thirteen syllables scrambled together that Omega had never heard before.
“Good question Quarti, I’m actually reading you the exact same way as before. It’s just my outputs that have been tuned, for the precise reasons for why let us get to the presentation!”
Omega blinked a bit then turned to look at Quarti who grinned and gave a thumbs up. She smiled weakly and nodded in return. That was a good thing, letting her confirm that Pylo was still reading their brains like that, good job quarti.
And then it began and the similarity to her days in university just piled up. For one with big sweeping gestures that Omega was almost certain were only for their benefit the Siren had ‘made’ a big white expanse of a lectern board appear. It was bizarre she was ‘painting’ it in sweeping blotches of pure black flatness and then filling over in equally pure white. Until the vague rectangle was just hovering there. Empty for the time being of any detail at all.
And then Pylo was diving into some kind of preamble. It was honestly pretty mundane but at the same time that in itself seemed to be precisely what made it so incongruous.
Honestly the only way this could be more bizzare is if Pylo had decided to wear a set of old timey spectacles (despite not even having eyes) and a very prim and severe dress (to go with how her voice vaguely reminded Omega of a strange hybrid amalgamate of the colonial academy’s entire staff). But even without the costume Omega thought the posture and body language was eerily perfect.
She had apparently taken cues in the style of the drier lecturers that Omega had attended, it was a weird combination of comforting, boring and mildly horrific. Just where did this alien get all the material for these theatrics.
Aleph leaned over and whispered to her.
“I think I’ve seen some of the drama’s she’s basing this off of. It’s pretty funny she’s acting almost exactly like the teacher at the opening of one of those teleplays, ya know the one where the slob idiot somehow ends up with half the staff and classroom pregnant but no one will admit that its them? And there is this whole chase scene when they all realize she got spores in the soap in the public showers and-”
Pylo was glaring at them, without eyes but still severe and intent. It made Omega involuntarily flush with old memories of being a student. That picture perfect thin lipped frown of disappointment and everything. Omega gave aleph a gentle elbow in the side to get her to shut up and notice the silence and looming alien masquerading as a teacher.
“Ah! Sorry Pylo! Uh... please continue”
The Siren nodded severely, in what now Omega was not going to unsee as a caricature from some kind of raunchy rom-com. Damn it Aleph!
Ugh! She didn't know if this was better or worse then just having innuendo injected directly into her brain. At least then she could kind of blame the errant thoughts on the alien, but now she was catching herself imagining the stuff anyway!
Omega tried to focus on just what it was that their ship mistress was trying to get at as a distraction but so far it seemed to be a pretty basic and dry neuroanatomy one oh one opening preamble.
She’d had to sit through three or four variations of this exact topic while training to be a medium.
There was even picture ‘slides’ and diagrams that Pylo gestured at with her sweeping whip like arms. Images that Omega was certain she had already experienced burnt into her brain in older lectures. She closed her eyes a moment and then immediately snapped them open and blinked hard three times.
[https://i.imgur.com/VWdCEV8.png]
The diagrams and the white board where still there when she closed her eyes. In fact now that she was looking for it she realized that the white of the background and the colors of the text and diagrams were FAR too sharp and perfectly solid.
There was no shading, no interactions with the lighting, everything was perfect white, black and false color diagram colors.
Omega spared a glance for everyone else, but no one seemed to notice or maybe just not care. Quarti just was nodding and rolling her eyes at the explanations. As if all of this was perfectly obvious, she looked a little bit bored.
However then they got to what would have been the closing statement for the whole thing in any other class on the topic.
“Now then, this should all be quite familiar to you, it is after all the latest of terran science and medical documentation on the health and mechanisms of human consciousness and neuro-spiritual anatomy”
Omega nodded and was about to ask why they had to go on a crash course on all of this when the alien snapped a limb across the display, sweeping it up to a bullet pointed list of the various facts and known truths of human anatomy they had just gone over.
“There is almost nothing in this entire pile of trash figment fucking half-thought orphan spawn and toolborne stone raper boiled seed scum worth remembering. You should all forget all of it”
Omega’s shock momentarily paralyzed her, Quarti just burst out laughing.
Aleph tried to rally a defense.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Wait what? It can’t be all bad! Not all of it? Surely there is some mis-”
And Pylo just systematically started going through every single piece of neuroscience literature Omega had ever heard of mocking and cursing it out, occasionally actually explaining some jargon filled diatribe on why it was wrong but most of the time just staring at the topic for a moment before slashing through the line with a limb and moving on.
The strikes left angry red lines through the text as they went.
Everyone seemed to be barreled over into silence by the progression. That is except Quarti who kept giggling or making sounds of revelation and nodding happily like this was the best thing she ever heard.
“So moving onto THIS bit! Where do I even begin with this stupidity? The developmental paradigm presented here is complete stone fucker garbage and unparented birth drivel! You got the entire perceptual pathways BACKWARDS. You three are lucky I ignored most of this when you met me or I might have triggered your immune systems into eating your spleens or something worse! I’m not even joking, this neural pathway here? It’s hooked up to your digestive system!”
Omega kind of just let it wash over her, she didn't have anywhere near enough experts stored up to address everything being piled on them. Apparently though Aleph felt like she needed to put in a token defense for terran civilization’s accumulated study of the brain and soul.
“Uh but what about Thirtol’s Hierarchy of Spiritual actualization and the somatic process? Surely there has to be a basis for that in the offloading of the soul’s consciousness so that... well...”
Pylo leveled a nearly snarling frown on Aleph that stilled her tongue. It was such a look of disgust that it made Omega wince in sympathy, the poor girl looked like she was poleaxed by it.
“As I was saying, this model is fundamentally flawed, it puts far too much emphasis on the symbiotic linkages to the soul without properly attributing how much cognitive foundation occurs within the neural tissues. It’s a gross overgeneralization that only accidentally synchronizes with observed anatomical activity in mature specimens. It grows progressively less accurate the younger the subject, especially in early nymph stages of the symbiotes”
Omega raised a brow and tilted her head. The word choice had been so solid up until this point that the odd choice stood out all the more. Even without her store of experts she knew no medical literature said anything about Nymphs. At least not related to humans.
“Nymph? What does th-”
Pylo snapped whipped one of her fingers to poke Omega in the nose.
“Intermediate Nymph”
The digit snapped in a loop through the air to poke at Aleph in the nose.
“Larval”
The pointer whipped across to poke Quarti’s nose, who of course pulled back so she could bite at the thing, then experimentally chew and suck on it thoughtfully.
“Mature Adult”
Quarti muttered something while letting the finger free from her mouth only Pylo and Omega probably heard.
“Blue-delicious-sum actually mature adult, Ole Quarti-li ish ultra aged dradonga eldah”
Aleph blinked a few times. Omega tried to rack her brain, okay so the alien was inventing new jargon in reference to, reincarnations? Probably but that didn't quite seem right.
“Wait... why am I larval? What’s so different abo- OH! Wait are you saying I have a DIFFERENT nervous system because I haven’t died yet?!”
Pylo nodded sharply and made that heavy metallic coughing noise that rattled in Aleph’s teeth and billowed steam out of her sides.
“Your entire idiotic tooth grime of a species completely neglected vast segments of your population for no good reason in their documentation! Many of your foundational ASSUMPTIONS are based on practically nothing but wild speculation!”
Omega found her voice somewhere in the shock. She felt a heat in her face and an indignation over it all, this couldn't be right, it tasted like Pylo was just trying to cover her ass for earlier.
Absolve herself for hurting Aleph that first time. Well not if she could help it!
“Hey! We’ve been studying this for centuries! There are standards in place! The Papers have to pass a great deal of rigor! Just because you read something that bothers you is no reason to say all of the established facts of terran development are bunk!”
Plyo leveled her lip trembling snarl on Omega and smacked the ‘display’. Causing its surface to ruffle and flutter like feathers to reveal what Omega was pretty sure was a research paper. Each page of the document laid out all at once. Then with another smack one of the pages grew to fill the entire wall in front of them with wince inducingly clear contrast.
Then she slapped her digit under one of the sentences and the tone of a professor that had just caught their students in a trap oozed out. The voice made Omega nervous no matter how long ago classes were. She had been trained in her bones to fear that tone in this life and she probably would have trembles of it life times from now.
“How many individuals were included in this ‘study’ ? What does it say?”
Omega’s brow furrowed as she read the text then looked back at Pylo.
“Thirteen? So that’s only one study there is a lot more literature tha-”
Pylo’s whip arm cracked in the air, Omega was reminded of a circus she vaguely recalled attending in another life. It made her feel like she was an animal being trained, her face burned as she glared at Pylo.
Another paper unfurled before them, another line was singled out.
“How many for this one?”
“Twenty two, but still taken together that should be-”
Pylo snapped the display to another paper.
“Thirty.”
Again with the whip crack.
“Fifty two! See that’s better”
“Against the millions of people in all stages of the terran life cycle?”
Pylo cracked her whip again.
“Twelve...”
And again.
“Sixteen”
“Forty”
And then finally. Omega saw salvation, there a beautiful number. It was not really the best but it sang in how much better it was.
“Three hundred! THERE see we got studies that show- Oh COME ON!”
Pylo had swept the view of the display back to the title of the paper and smiled with enough teeth to let the terrans know she was not at all being nice. And Omega could not help but stare in horror at the thesis.
“Yes, the only study that even SUGGESTS it refutes your stupid backwards dogma actually might slightly be incorrect is the one with a minuscule increase in its study size. And it’s still stupidly tiny! And NO ONE CITES IT. Not in the entire library of your stupid documentation archive”
Quarti was nodding and humming something about ‘such sense, very sexy’ in a way that honestly was infuriating, it made Omega want to smack her. But at the same time she felt worn down and beaten, her face was red with shame, frustration and anger over the whole experience.
It made her feel like an idiot, a fool, it embarrassed her on behalf of her entire civilization. When pointed out like this it just, it looked so stupid. She itched to try and grab an expert, to try and prove that this was not how it worked but she could feel it in the bits of herself that retained scraps of her skill shares.
She took a breath to try and calm down.
Aleph looked like she was going to cry.
Pylo made a little clearing sound in her throat that Omega knew for a fact she did not need to make. It was much too delicate and human a sound.
“Ahem! So in closing the reason for a great deal of the complaints with my translation and diction can be traced to this gross negligence and absurdity in terran literature. Now that this confusion has been resolved It gives me great pleasure to say that I am looking forward to being PROPERLY understood by each of you.”
Quarti frowned a little bit. Omega felt dead inside.
“But ja speaking like just as silky sucky as first timewise now! Even bettah evan!”
That brought on a spark of confusion, Omega blinked a few times. But before she could even ask Pylo was laughing.
“As I said I am now speaking properly to be best understood by EACH of you. In your own way.”
The illusory display had vanished. Omega felt like she had been beaten upside the head instead of just lectured. It reminded her of university a bit, but so much harsher.
It hurt worse even that Pylo was pointing it out to them. Pointing out that the terrans apparently shared the blame in Aleph being almost driven to catatonia. That they had failed her. That Omega who was supposed to be able to ride the wisdom of generations and see this sort of thing herself had failed Aleph.
Omega had failed her and then blamed an easy scapegoat instead of looking for a reason.