“Sal. Sal.” An incessant, nagging voice was badgering his ears. He hoped that if he ignored it long enough, it would go away.
“Sal. Come on, man. You know you need my help.” Xin’s voice hid her anticipation of victory over him.
“I’ve got it, I just need a few more… there!” Sal’s joy was palpable. He had the computer system connected to the lighting display in the lounge room after far too long attempting to troubleshoot the problems. Driver removal and re-installation, different cable port sizes and an out-of-date renderer made it almost seem like Sal would have to admit defeat, but he had prevailed. Take that, Windows 63. Sitting around the projected screen was Sal, G9 and Xin. She later had a meeting to discuss her suitability, or more likely unsuitability, as a candidate for the Partner Program, but for now decided to watch Sal’s discussion. To their credit, G9 had sat quietly as Sal desperately wrangled with the damned computer, their swishing tail brushing against the cushions. With the screen projecting his, somewhat haphazardly put together, history and media archive from his laptop computer, he was ready to begin. Rubbing his hands together, he turned to his alien partner.
“Alright G9, thanks for waiting. So, here’s the deal – you’ve got a lot you want to know and so do I. As your guest, I’m happy to let you go first and ask away. All I’ll ask for in return is to give me an opportunity later to shoot some questions of my own. Capiche?”
G9 tilted their head at the last word but quickly seemed to process it. Sal was still wondering about where these translators came from but could hold on until it became a more pressing matter. Clicking their claws together G9 sat a little closer.
“Thank you, Salvador. I have much I wish to ask. Firstly, I must ask a question that regards both you and your fellow human, Xin Rouse,” G9 calmly said. An interesting start, Sal thought, but who was he to judge. Looking over at his fellow Torcher, they both shrugged and nodded at the Cambiar.
Inhaling softly, G9 continued, “Why are there two main castes of humans, the one that Xin takes and the one you are, Sal?”
Sal crossed his arms, confused. “Castes? If you are referring to our sexes, then I believe that was on the complementary basic information your bosses, the Rexia, gave out,” Sal had hoped his alien had done their proper reading before this, as it would clear up some basic misunderstandings.
However, G9 shook their head. “I wanted to hear your explanation. The documents provided had been generalized by many others, human and Cambiar alike. I wish to hear you discuss it.”
“Uh, sure. I’ll do my best.” Sal looked towards Xin who was smugly grinning at him. Fan-fucking-tastic. “So, uh, humans don’t really have castes as you seem to have, with the big differences between your shapes and sizes. We are divided between men and women however.” Sal coughed slightly. He hadn’t been expecting to talk about men from Mars and women from Venus on this expedition, but neither had he expected aliens.
“As you can see, there’s some big physical differences. You can check the diagrams in a bit if you like. The main focus is that female humans receive the genetic information, to gestate and give birth to the children and men are, I guess, the genetic donors.”
G9 seemed a bit confused, “But… why? Why is genetic information traded? Can you not produce your offspring individually?”
Well, this was a big difference. Sal glanced at Xin, who was barely covering her giggles, for assistance but saw she was no help. “No, G9, I can’t make my own children by myself, and neither can Xin. Humans, and pretty much all multi-cellular organisms from Earth use sexual reproduction to help spice up our genetics. There’s some that can, like some plants, and reptiles, I think? But for most complex forms of life we know of, and humans for certain, we need a partner to produce offspring.” Sal felt awkward broaching the topic but felt it necessary. “G9, if you don’t mind me asking, how exactly do the Cambiar produce offspring?” He had known they reproduced via cloning, but the details had been lacking.
G9 looked up and excitedly snapped its teeth together. “That is a good question, Sal! I am more than happy to explain. Cambiar reproduction is carried out through the stimulation of XNA reproduction in the desired region of the body, which develops over a number of human weeks, before it detaches from the body and begins independent development. If specific features or modifications are desired from the offspring, gene revision is carried out in the reproductive cluster prior to detachment. Otherwise, the offspring will be a genetic copy of its parent.”
The information hadn’t been too much in volume, but the implications were significant. It cleared up their reproduction, but the idea of gene revision and XNA produced more questions. Cautiously Sal asked, “Right… I think I see. G9, do you mind clarifying what exactly XNA and gene revision is, as you said?”
Without pause, G9 answered quickly, “XNA is our genetic material. Do humans not have XNA? Perhaps my translator is at fault? I apologize for this error. I will rectify it as soon as possible. The second question should prove easier to explain. Cambiar can freely adjust and adapt our genetic material through a revision process, to achieve a desired physiological change. Larger adjustments, such as switching castes, can take a few human weeks, but smaller or less complicated alterations may take only a few hours to minutes to complete.”
Sal stared a bit dumbstruck. What in the hell? G9 said it as if it were common knowledge, as if changing one’s genome was as easy as picking out a meal at a diner. As he sat, staring blankly, Xin prodded her comm-device into Sal’s cheek. Looking over and taking the rudely offered appliance, he saw a small article from the general CCH archives about XNA - Xeno nucleic acid, alternative nucleic acid structures that used unnatural molecules. Scanning through, he saw additional notes, added by the Expedition Fleet about how Cambiar used dozens of varying XNA structures, which they could alter down the allele level to adjust their shape and function.
Just as he was beginning to fully understand, a light tap to his arm caught his attention. Looking up, he saw G9 extending their hands, digits spread. Moving from their claw tips downwards, the bone-white colour of their skin was being slowly eaten away and consumed by a growing black shade. It spread across the skin, snaking out like a spiderweb being woven in a timelapse video. After minutes of quietly watching, the colouration stopped just above the joint, giving the impression his Cambiar partner was wearing elbow-high gloves.
“Fuck me…” Sal gaped like a moron.
And G9, seeing his expression, pushed both corners of their mouth upwards using their claws, forcing a smile. “I have not adapted my facial structure to allow for human expressions yet, but I hope to provide them soon. I hope you enjoyed that, Salvador.”
“Uh huh…” Sal trailed off, blinking.
“Apologies Sal, I hate to impose on you, but I ask if we can continue our information exchange? I am excited to see some information that will leave me in a feeling as you are.”
Snapping out of his trance, Sal grinned. “Right, right, of course. I’d hate to leave you unsatisfied. Let me see if I can help you with that.” Xin gave a wolf-whistle that Sal promptly ignored.
He flicked through some pages on the archive about human life, how Earth used to look, general life from ancient times to before the S-Drive was produced.
“You say these places and names as if they no longer exist. Have these places been replaced on Earth?”
“Not… exactly,” Sal sheepishly winced. “Earth was the homeworld for our species, but after we had some serious conflict between two major factions, the atmosphere was destroyed, and all life not evacuated was lost. H&H is part of a group of corporations that left the planet before things got too bad, taking their workers with them. There were a few stations already built, but the evacuation pushed space expansion ahead much quicker.”
Eventually, the images changed back to those of Earth, but during a far worse period of time. During the last years before the Eternal War was officially declared, the planet was far from a good shape. Its surface cratered and oceans caustic, the sight was a sore one, even for those born nearly a century after its demise.
G9 sat, looking at an image of Paradisian Asset Removal Ship, colloquially known as a Glasser, vaporizing a Heavenly Doctrine city with explosives, as smaller ships and aircraft circled the destruction. A small army of goreskins, rapidly grown artificial humans deemed so unethical, even the Doctrine tended to avoid using them, were depicted staring blanking at their incoming demise.
“Why?” G9 calmly asked, the translator not carrying the weight of the question from their original tongue.
“It’s… a difficult question. Human, for all our best qualities, are rather stubborn, and pretty shortsighted.” Probably not the best way to describe humanity as a whole during first contact, but Sal couldn’t help but be honest. “In the end, these two factions couldn’t decide on what was the best option for Earth going forward, and neither would compromise. By that time, no one could stand against them, apart from each other. Power begets power, I suppose. Maybe… destruction was inevitable, based on their mindsets.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“I see. What about you Sal? What about the corporations you and Xin are a part of?” G9 asked.
“Well, I would like to say that compared to these nutjobs…” Sal stuck a thumb towards the screen that now displayed the flags of two states, a white and grey abstraction of lines for Paradise and a red-gold tapestry of a single man rising above a sea of outstretched fists. “The CCH is at least trying to continue humanity without needless destruction. They’re not perfect, far from it, but I‘d say we’ve at least comprised as little to keep best parts of humanity and Earth. For all their faults, the corporations are greedy, but not sadistic.”
Sal watched G9 contemplate the idea for a while. As they seemed to digest the information, or at least his view of it, he turned his crewmate, expecting some cheap jib. Surprisingly, Xin looked relatively thoughtful, lightly nodding.
“I’d say that sounds about right.” Xin said. “The corporations, H&H included, can be kinda crappy, but there’s a lot they did to keep things working well for regular guys like us. Hell, the CCH is made up of companies that didn’t get absorbed by Paradise in the US and Europe and made into clans for Doctrine in Asia. Plenty of other companies took the easy option, got made part of their structures, but our ancestors at least tried something different. There’s a lot to dislike, but compared to the competition?” Xin rubbed her leg’s burn scar. “There’s no choice in my mind.”
Though Sal had been honest in that he disliked the violent aspects of Paradise and Doctrine, there had been a more personal reason for his hatred of the latter. G9 didn’t need to know, and he kept his lips sealed on the matter.
G9 soaked in the information. They flicked through more images, showing the press conference where the dramatic founding of Paradise took place, with crowds and protestors being pushed back by police. Another image showed a view of the flight paths leaving the western hemisphere of Earth, as the last planes escaped Paradise’s borders. Next, they saw the cabinet room of what had once been the People’s Republic of China in a state of utter chaos, the censored bodies of politicians were spread across the room as a single, indistinct figure took his place on the stage – the Jade Emperor. Blacked out in all pictures and videos, no one knew what he looked like, only that he would be over two centuries old, likely thanks to the age-reduction medicine of Evergreen. Even his name, Yuan Xia, was just a rumour. In many of his people’s eyes, he was some sort of ageless demigod, wielding the power to smite armies with a snap of his fingers. Sal didn’t want to put much faith in those rumours.
The next series of videos and images were much more pleasant, with the early demonstrations of the first successful Schrodinger-Jump capable ship moving between Luna and Earth in a split second. Salvador took the time to quickly explain Quantum Identity Structures, a concept completely foreign to G9. The QIS acted as the true consciousness of any multi-cellular organism, generated upon the first true neural signals being fired. Though the physical biology of an organism was obviously important, without a QIS, consciousness didn’t exist. Without a brain to host the QIS, the non-particle-based cloud of information dissipated away, and without a QIS, any living organism was functionally brain dead. The discovery of the QIS in the 21st century had led to massive arguments over religion and the idea of the ‘soul’ in science. It was a debate Sal wanted no part in and was just happy to keep his little cloud of consciousness with him whenever he went faster than light. Thankfully, no way of disrupting the QIS had been found outside of using a S-Drive, and Sal hoped it stayed that way. True to the human crew’s initial observations, Cambiar had a clear QIS pattern that was on the same level of sentience as that of humans, the only other occurrence so far. It would have definitely been awkward if shuckabrush had turned out to be the more developed lifeform, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Some videos of native life on Earth drew attention from G9, with giraffes and their long necks apparently being a favourite. One section quickly skimmed through the life of Poo Poo the Bear, worldwide animal sensation before his assassination in during his presidential campaign in 2065, marking the last real animal celebrity in human history. Not a tragic loss in Sal’s eyes but he admitted to himself he didn’t know much about regular animals, let alone bears. A personal video that Sal had taken displayed a view of Titanlock station from a departing vessel. The two divided upper and lower halves had been formed from the interweaving of the first evacuation ships, Atlas and Sol’s Core, to settle on the small asteroid of Gaia. Hundreds of free-floating auxiliary stations hovered nearby acted as private areas for the major corporations or the wealthiest individuals of the CCH.
The Collective Corporations of Humanity had been formed from a collection of neutral nations and companies that had evaded the wrath of Paradise and Heaven’s Doctrine over the 21st century. Once the Eternal War had become an inevitability due to the sheer force behind the two opposing sides, the CCH built as many evacuation ships as possible to escape the incoming conflict. With the usage of the S-Drive, the first ships were able to escape to the stars to establish a new foothold for humanity in 2113. The screen displayed pictures of the construction of Titanlock, the various insignias of the major seven corporations standing out. Though there were many ginormous stations built early into the age of expansion of the 2100s, Titanlock stood out at the pinnacle of artificial habitat engineering. Housing over a billion people, it boggled the mind with its scale.
A video showed the first combined-policy meeting of the group that would become the CCH. Members from Henry and Huell Incorporated, Galant Corporation, or GaltCorp as they were often known, Tripwire Services, Glass Tip Productions, Black Sun Enterprises, Second Sun Ltd, and Silver Domain were seen signing the first treaty between one another, false smiles plastered on every face. The companies certainly didn’t appreciate having such competition nearby but knew that none of them could hope to opposite their enemies by standing alone.
Finally, the last video was of Dusty’s early birthday party. The young man hadn’t gotten the chance to celebrate before the Expedition Fleet left, so the Torchers had a small one together in their dormitory. The planning had been haphazard and Dusty was so new to the team that he thought he was about to get hazed by the group. Instead, it had been a sweet moment, and a great way to bring him into the team. Sal was enjoying the video, until he noticed something.
“Xin, do I always smile like that?” Sal asked cautiously. Christ, he looked like a psycho, teeth fully bared.
“Uh yeah, why?” Xin said.
“Remind me to never grin again.”
“I like your smile, Sal.” G9 interjected.
Shaking his head, Sal exhaled. “Well, G9, it hasn’t been the happiest discussion of our history, but something I feel was necessary for context. I can’t even imagine what your values, society and morals are like, but I would hope you can at least see some of the positives of humankind going forward.”
G9 studied Sal’s soured expression. “I thank you for showing me this Sal. I value your honesty. I cannot say that the history of the Cambiar has the same mixture of glorious or tumultuous events as mankind’s but when we discuss it, I hope you are able to extract some… meaning from it.”
Sal thought it was a strange way to ask about his appreciation for alien history, but he shrugged.
“Before we continue on society and history, however, there are some more topics under biology I wish to explore more urgently.” G9 shuffled closer.
“Uh sure, you cool with that Xin?” Sal looked over at the sunglass-wearing woman.
Lazily, Xin gave an aloof thumbs up. She had turned to her comm-device and was playing a loud and flashy game on it.
“Alright then, let me just load up the archives.” Sal turned to the computer sitting on his lap, as he scrolled through the various categories to look through. However, he stopped when a curious face peeked over the top of the screen. Sal put the computer on the side as G9 approached closer and closer.
“Um, are you alright?” Sal gave a nervous chuckle.
Without warning, G9 reached down and lifted his shirt to his neck, revealing his torso.
“Whoa what the fuck?!” Sal exclaimed, trying to wrench his shirt back down against the astonishingly strong grip of his alien partner. Xin took notice and started laughing.
G9 sat staring, unmoving, at his bare skin, taking in his muscles and scars. They released one hand and stroked his skin. G9 caressed up and down his chest, feeling his chest hairs. Rubbing the firm skin of his pectorals, G9’s fingers traced their toned edges. A claw tip ran along the edge of his giant, diagonal scar that ran from shoulder to hip. No, not fucking there. He had fought hard to not show that off to anyone he knew. The last time a woman had insisted on stroking it during sex, he’d kicked them out. Memories of Tartarus Nine bubbling up, his body acted before his mind could react.
Sal stopped trying to tear G9’s hand away from his clothes and instead pushed the alien away and onto the couch, hard. They let out a sharp whine, falling into the cushions. Thrust back and snapped out of their trance, G9’s ocular orbs stared intensely before returning to normal.
“What the fucking hell’s the matter with you? Look, I get you are curious but there’s a limit to what’s ok, so don’t touch me without asking. Especially not there, goddamnit!” Sal spat fury, and G9 shied away from his rage. Xin was no longer laughing.
Heartbeats passed by. Looking down, G9 muttered a single word, the translator stiff in its tone but their natural voice weak.
“Sorry.”
Breathing heavily, Sal tried to calm himself. G9 seemed to curl in on themselves, making them as small as possible.
“Look,” Sal muttered. “Ok. I get it, we’re new and strange, and there’s probably tonnes of stuff you want to do, or things you want to say, the sort of things that the Cambiar find normal, but humans are different. For one, groping someone like that out of the blue, that’s not ok.”
“I’m… sorry.” G9 pulled a pillow close to them. “There was… a video. Another Uvolo showed me it. They said that humans might enjoy what I did. I just wanted to show my appreciation.”
Fucking Christ, who showed the goddamn aliens a porno?! Calming his nerves, Sal took a deep breath.
“Fine. Ok, fine. Let’s make a rule – next time you want to try something that involves touching, or grabbing, ask me first. It might be fine, it might not. Next time, ask first.” Sal turned away, the sight of the shamed alien building a knot in his stomach. “And… I’m sorry I shouted. I just don’t like people touching there, got it?”
“I see. Sorry.”
Damn it, the mood had been ruined. The moment was, thankfully, broken by a message on his comm-device; Elijah needed his presence. Was the investigation into Ruby Eye ready so soon? Sal stood up and said his goodbyes, leaving Xin and G9 in silence. His mind should have already focused on the job at hand, ready to put his years of experience to work. Despite his efforts, his thoughts were still fixated on what had happened. It was not just the worry that he had admonished a curious extraterrestrial that was simply attempting to explore, or that he had he had reacted so poorly to his scars, reminders of the past, being touched. It was that, despite his anger, a part of him had enjoyed the uninvited groping from an alien, and that made him severely worried. Sal’s sense of self security had taken a blow, and part of him had recoiled in fear.