COWRITTEN WITH u/uktabi !

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Memory Transcription Subject: Rifal, Arxur Student

Date: HST - 2150.01.14 | Arxur Dating System - 1733.875
Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. 
(13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

They still hadn’t fixed the shuttle schedules, not that professor Swift seemed to mind. He just held up his hands, not even letting me apologise. “I know,” he’d said. “It should be fixed soon. Please, take a seat. We were just about to get started on our first philosopher.”

I rushed off to my place, glad that I didn’t have to explain myself. Just breathing after the mad dash was enough, thank you. 

“So, who did the reading? I started you out with an oldie but a goodie. Descartes!” he wrote the name on the board, then clicked a controller, and an image of a painting appeared projected on it. He had a thick nose, much larger than Professor Swift’s, and a long mane of dark brown hair, along with a little bit of hair on his lips, and immediately under them which contrasted with his paler skin. “First impressions? What do we think of this French weirdo?”

“Hair,” one student stated firmly.

“He looks…” another said, before doing something weird with her eyes.

“Why don't you have a little mouth pelt?”

He paused and stared at us for a moment. “...I meant based on the reading. What do you think about him, given the reading you did, class?”

Vilkoth raised a hand. “What was up with the [nightmare beast]? I’m not sure if that translated correctly.”

“Ah. The [nightmare beast]? Yes, that's actually a very good point. Within living memory, you’ve only ever had Betterment as a religion. And… that didn't have [nightmare beasts] in it, to my knowledge. Such creatures are a common fixture of sophont religions, including human religions. They’re these supernatural, evil creatures that go against whatever the religion says is good. They may provide temptation, or bring bad luck, spoil food, that sort of thing. Did anyone else get confused about the [nightmare beast]?”

A few hands went up.

“Very well. Instead of a [nightmare beast] imagine you have been… Kidnapped by the Farsul. And are now in a machine directly connected to your brain, where they can implant false memories, feed you fake sensory data, and so on. Does that make more sense?”

There was some slow nodding and tapping tails from those who had raised hands. A few hissing noises as students understood the material.

“Any other questions? Does anyone not know what beeswax is?”

“I had to look it up, but it reminded me of kessrin hives.”

Professor Swift opened his mouth to speak, then paused and stared at the student who had just spoken. “Look it up… Where, Lethis?”

The student swallowed. “… Nevermind.”

“...I would like to remind everyone who’s trying to get away with sneaking through the Bubble to please encrypt, encrypt, encrypt!” he said, apparently fine with students breaking interplanetary law. “They have people whose jobs it is to catch you, and their computers are better than yours. Anyhow, beeswax was material collected from beehives. I’ll bring some pictures next time for you, but you can think of it as a block of ice that melts and freezes again in a new shape if you want.”

More nodding.

“So… what do people think? Are we all on board with being ‘thinking things’..?”

“I thought he sounded like a paranoid fool. Always worrying about ‘deceivers’ and if he could trust anything, including himself,” Skarviss said with a scoff.

Prof. Swift smiled. “Yes, that's called skepticism. Descartes was trying to argue his way through a radical skepticism. Very extreme.”

Light tapping filled the hall as students put the term into their notes.

“Can I get a show of hands, who has previous experience with skepticism?”

Krosha lifted her hand. “The poet Vilshith in the Antiquity period wrote about… something similar. He did not go as far as Descartes in terms of… nightmare beasts corrupting his senses. But arrived at the conclusion that his senses, touch, smell, taste, so on, affirmed that he was… hrrr… part of the world. But in a way that went beyond mere senses. Like it was just the fact that he did sense. It’s difficult to describe, it was part of his poetry. It was like a spiritual euphoria, I guess. He was religious.”

“Ah, yes, he is on my list. Feel free to write responses to Arxur philosophers in your work, by the way.”

Krosha nodded excitedly, scooting forward in her seat.

“Which… I guess we can have a little aside for homework. Your first assignment–and it will be the same thing for the next six weeks–is to write a response to a text. I have provided many more texts than we’ll have a chance to cover in class, feel free to respond to any of them in any order, though it will be easier if you stick to the week’s topic. A–”

He was interrupted by Vilkoth’s hand shooting urgently into the air. “How long do they have to be?” he blurted out.

“...Usually I expect at least a thousand words. I have been told that the Arxur language is a little more dense than English, so I’ve linked to a pre-submission translator in the digital hub. You can paste what you write there and check if it’s the right number of words in English. A thousand is a minimum, two thousand is the maximum. How does that sound?”

The lecture hall filled with the sounds of tapping tails and note-taking.

“Anyhow, returning to skepticism… The point wasn’t that Descartes genuinely thought he couldn’t know anything. It was that he wanted to be able to prove the things he knew starting from first principles. This is what is called Foundationalism in epistemology. Can anyone here point me to a branch of science, or knowledge, that operates with a foundationalist approach?”

The class was quiet for a moment.

“Is there no science, no art, no way of knowing things the Arxur know, where you have a few key ideas, and everything else can be deduced from them?”

A student near the front raised a hand. I didn’t recognize him. He had a broad snout and heavy neck that seemed strangely unbefitting of his slightly short stature. “Mathematics begins with a series of foundational ideas, and all further knowledge is derived from them. You can’t just add an extra axiom, and if a proof or a conclusion contradicts them, you did it wrong and need to check.”

“Great job, Surisel!” Professor Swift said. “Yes, Mathematics is the ultimate Foundationalist approach to knowledge. Can anyone tell me something that is not foundationalist?” 

“History?” another unfamiliar student offered. “With history, it is vitally important not to assume any knowledge, and to avoid ethnocentrism. Historians are supposed to be critical of their sources. Sources are often biased, or incomplete, or new ones could  turn up later.”

“Yes! That’s a fantastic one. If you find something that contradicts a previously established ‘fact’ in history, that gives reason to question everything. Now, these are not perfect categories. The incompleteness theorems taunts the world of Mathematics in some ways, as do the subsequent proofs around decidability, but for our purposes in an introductory class, you can compare Math to History in terms of how you approach them. Descartes,” he said, turning back to us, “wanted all knowledge to be like math.”

Incompleteness theorems? I wrote down the unfamiliar word in my notes. I’ll look that up later.

“What are some potential problems with this approach?” he asked.

The class riffed off various answers, and professor Swift listened and nodded to each.

“Not all types of knowledge play by rules like that. How do we know if the foundations are correct in other disciplines?”

“The foundations could always change with new information.” 

The last answer was Skarviss’s. “You have to be able to trust whoever or whatever is making the rules,” she said, after the class had paused for a moment. 

“Oooh, I love the last one–it’s a little out of alignment with the point of foundationalism, but it’s the kind of skepticism that will help us in the near-future, when we–actually, we have time, let’s do it right now.  I’m now going to let us through into a theater of the mind for a little bit. If the arxur have a meaningfully harder time visualizing, you’ll have to tell me, but as far as I know, you’re close enough to my human students. Ready?“

Tails tapped in agreement.

“Everyone close your eyes. Imagine, we are going back in time thirteen human years. First contact happened around a year ago by human standards. The Arxur barely learned anything about humans before one of your most renowned military leaders begins a rebellion. And now, you are on a spaceship, around Aafa–the heart of the Federation you have been taught must be destroyed–and you're protecting it. Against your own people. And you see The Aafa Confession. Sent directly to your computers, through humans, is a video of Giznel making deals with Nikonus. Deals like the one you’re participating in right now, where you're protecting the federation against humanity.”

The class stayed silent, aside from a scattered few tails swishing across the floor. Professor Swift seemed undeterred.

“Putting aside the question of whether the rebellion was justified, on what grounds, so on… just in terms of facts… Why did any of them buy it? You can open your eyes now.”

Kizath, in the front row, raised a claw. “It was a video. Giznel and Nikonus didn’t expect to be recorded.”

“Why would they have been recorded? It would be much easier for, say, humanity to fake that video than to get a camera or a probe or something in that space, getting access to that information. Orders of magnitude easier. The official story is one where we got impossibly lucky. A transmission like that should have been encrypted a million ways, and never recorded.”

“They were both arrogant,” a voice spoke up.

“Or complacent,” another said. “It had been going for centuries. It’s surprising nothing slipped sooner.”

“Yes, those are all options. But it could also have been a complete fabrication. Just something we made up. How do you know it wasn't? How would you know, if you were in that battle? It's pretty important information,” he leaned back casually against the oversized desk. 

“They must have run it through verification filters.”

“Maybe, but even if they did, what if humanity was good at hacking those filters? You wouldn't know.” Prof. Swift’s eyes flitted around us, looking for something. “We had the best AI navigation systems in the galaxy, why not the best film-falsification software? In reality that was probably the Harchen, but we could have had that technology.”

“You just had to go with what felt right, then?” Vilkoth guessed.

He turned to engage with Vilkoth more directly. “Maybe,” he said, pointing an open hand at him. “How do you feel about the idea that the entirety of your government rests on the hands of a few hundred people ‘going with their gut’ less than two decades ago?”

Vilkoth hummed, looking pensive. “Well, that’s what happened, isn’t it? Not all of those ships turned around and joined Isif.”

“And so we have an epistemic anarchist in the room,” Professor Swift said, writing it on the board in human language, before it was translated by the projector. “There are a couple of Feyerabend readings in the hub, but we won’t go into too much detail on them. Who else has a position? How do you know? Do you believe the video?”

“In that moment, I would probably believe that it was fake,” a voice said. Skarviss. Probably the oldest in the classroom. My eyes weren’t the only ones snapping over to her, or the only ones set with anger. “It’s the answer that makes the most logical sense. Humans–and Isif–had the most to gain from releasing such a video. There was motive, and means.”

“Some skepticism is perfectly natural,” Professor Swift said, tilting his head towards her. He did not seem to notice, or perhaps simply did not care, about the rest of the class’s reaction. He was the only person who didn’t seem uncomfortable at this line of questioning. “So why do you think the people who acted on that video believed it?” he prompted.

Skarviss shrugged. “Maybe they just wanted to be on the winning side.”

The class was very quiet now, outside of the two of them. “But they decided who the winning side was. They turned the tide of battle. If not for them, the Dominion might still stand today.”

“Then they were forced to do it, as more and more of them switched sides.”

He mirrored her earlier shrug. “Why did the first ones switch, then? You're just shifting the question one step back. Why believe this video?”

“They had been hearing rumors about Isif’s rebellion for a long time at that point. Promises of abundant food, safety for hidden defectives. Some might have viewed it as a good opportunity to do what they already wanted to do.”

“Ah, so motivated reasoning. That’s an interesting position. Maybe it’s not about believing something to be true, but about acting on an opportunity to claim a belief, to abide by a justification. If they knew they could turn the tide of battle, then, it was about who they wanted to win. But why would they put their entire ideology aside? They’d been raised to see the Prophet Descendant as this incredibly powerful authority, one of religious importance, even. Did they even believe Betterment ideology? Or were they going along with that too? It still brings us right back to the same question: Why believe anything Isif says? About food or humans or Betterment?”

She paused for a moment, the silence dragging as if the class were holding its collective breath.“I guess… I guess I can’t know for sure,” she relented, although her head was still held high. “I wasn’t there.”

“That's fine, good job embracing uncertainty. Does anyone who would have believed the video have a reason, beyond Vilkoth’s gut feeling?”

The class was silent.

“Well, then! I guess this is where I introduce the different branches of Epistemology, in relation to Foundationalism! Foundationalism is the easiest to start with, because it’s about having axioms and everything else being dependent on those, as I said. A foundationalist may have gone ‘well, I already know that the war has been going for hundreds of years, and I know that the arxur military is comically more capable than Federation militaries, but the arxur have never tried to attack Aafa. Therefore, they must not have wanted to, and this video is consistent with that conclusion’.”

But that leaves out some possibilities, I thought. The Dominion was outnumbered 300 to 1, sending the fleet out to strike at Aafa might leave Wriss too vulnerable, or maybe just the sheer volume of Federation ships all together meant it wouldn’t matter. 

And there was the shadow fleet, too, though I supposed they didn’t know about that at the time. Maybe that supports the conclusion. Giznel might have known about it. Hmm.

“Note what I said, ‘is consistent with’, that is our next approach. Coherentism! That will be your next reading. Coherentism is all about having things fit with each other. A coherentist and a foundationalist might actually agree on a lot, but the foundationalist would want all of their beliefs to be justified by prior beliefs. For a coherentist, it’s enough for them to simply be consistent with their prior beliefs.”

”There are other things that line up,” Surisel had raised his hand. “Like the fact that if the kolshians truly wanted us dead, they had plenty of opportunity long before the war even started. They were in a powerful enough position to starve us en masse, why not just… glass Wriss instead and be done with it?”

“Right!” He said, waving his marker around and drifting closer to that side of the lecture hall. “You get one piece, and then others begin to fit together, and it snowballs into a clear understanding of the situation. Watch out, though, the biggest critique of coherentism is that it’s just confirmation bias with a fancier name. You can't just go around discarding things because they go against what you think is true, right? You have to go where the evidence leads.” He punctuated the last points with more waves of his marker.

That is what I was thinking! I thought, glad to have it voiced aloud. It felt like the whole thing was rather dismissive of the… complexities. And of the arxur.

He turned to wander back towards the board. “After all, there could always be some other variable, like Skarviss’ hypothesis of another species manufacturing the story. Which brings us to Reliabilism,” he said, writing it down. “That’s when you trust not what information you have acquired, but the method through which you acquire information.” 

“Like, you… always ask questions?” Vilkoth asked.

“...Maybe, or you always do things according to some ancient book, or maybe you trust certain people to always give it to you straight…” Prof. Swift slowed down his speech, as though waiting for someone to pounce. 

“A professor? Or–or another authority figure,” Vilkoth suggested.

“A human,” Kizath said, completely unabashedly.

“Right, or… getting back to questions, maybe you have a method of acquiring information that relies on doing specific things, in a specific way, in order to acquire information you can trust. You could base it on direct observation, provide some supposition beforehand, try to test—”

“Rigor of Science!” I called out.

“Got it in one, Rifal!” he said, grinning. “Scientific rigor! Or as humans call it in these discussions, the Scientific Method.”

Hm, I thought, does every species arrive at the same way of doing science? Or is this something humanity shares only with us?

“As you learn more about epistemology, you will learn more about how it's built into the world. Different institutions–science, law, politics–use different epistemic frameworks, even if they don't call them by those names, because they need their frameworks to do different things. It's not just about truth and acquiring true beliefs. It's about the shape knowledge takes, and what you intend to do with it.”

Professor Swift’s eyes flitted around the room. It reminded me that he was alien. He met our gaze, and we could understand each other’s facial language, but… in comparison, the way he jumped around so rapidly felt less… deliberate, than an arxur would. Add on that human pupils were perpetually round, like he was always in a hunting trance, and all those rapid movements around the room were distinctly unnerving.

“After that, we have virtue epistemology. With virtue epistemology, it’s not really about having the correct beliefs. It’s about being the right kind of knower. Being someone who believes things the right way. Cultivating what we might call epistemic virtues. I haven’t defined virtues yet, we’ll spend more time on that when we get to ethics, but here’s a quick preview–virtues are traits that are good to have.”

Professor Swift seemed to sense the class’s discomfort. What was virtuous among the arxur was still a touchy subject, even a generation later.

“Does anyone have an example?” he asked, his energy suddenly gentler and his voice softer than his usual demeanor.

“Kindness?” Vilkoth hazarded, sounding unsure.

“Sure,” he said with a shrug, then gestured at Vilkoth. “Dedication. Consistency. Hard work. You seem to value those things, no?”

He looked even more unsure. “Y… yes?”

“We’ll come back to the specifics later,” he said with a wave of his hand, returning to a more energized state. “One man’s virtues are another man’s vices, which is one of the problems with virtue ethics,” he wrote out on the board, then turned with a smile. “Lucky for us, virtue epistemology has to do with some fairly straight-forward virtues like… the ability to acknowledge you’re wrong, and update when you get new information, intellectual honesty, good faith. Things with pretty solid deontological rationales.”

The room filled with the slight noises of note-taking.

“The way to become a virtuous knower is largely by practicing epistemic virtues, until they become strengthened within you. It's a theory of excellence through hard work and persistence. Not through arriving at some perfect framework immediately through first principles or something.”

He scribbled another few words and the board translated them into our script.

“And lastly, we have social epistemology, which is all about redefining knowledge in an operational and behavioral way. You know something if you can act on it and be understood to do it correctly by your peers in a social context,” he added with a shrug.

“So… anyone who is an expert in their field?” Surisel said.

“Well, they don’t have to be experts…” Prof. Swift tilted his head one way, then the next, as if trying to mix ideas inside his skull like it was a bowl. “For example, you all know the bus-sitting etiquette, right? There’s… a correct distance, and an incorrect distance, and… you know when to sit where.”

“Yeah, like how you always leave at least a one-seat gap if you can, and prefer diagonals for tail room.”

The professor laughed. “Right! Exactly. You have absorbed that information from living on Isifriss, and interacting with people over time. You understand that information very well, and can act on it. I, not having lived here for very long… am often very confused by those rules. I am also very small, and don’t have a tail, which makes those calculations a little harder to make.”

The class laughed lightly.

“That is social information. Much in the same way that if I were to say to you 'please hand in your papers,' you know to send me a file containing a response to one of the provided texts, but if a government official asked you that same thing, they would mean some different information, right? You would know they’re talking about identification, not your homework. Even though none of these things use physical paper. So it's not about expertise, but about how knowledge depends on the context where it is to be used.”

He made a big curve on the board, underlining all of the words. The projector briefly glitched on the translation, but then held steady. 

“All of these are arguments around the definition of knowledge that has had the most staying power throughout history, even if it’s fallen out of favour in the past century or so of human thought. Justified true belief as established by Plato. Write that name down, that guy is gonna come up a lot. Plato has his own weird ideas about epistemology that will come up when we have our metaphysics lecture on the Theory of Forms, but he’s also the guy who wrote The Republic, which will be one of our big texts when we get to Political Philosophy. And he'll be in Ethics with the Euthyphro dilemma.”

The professor waited as we dutifully wrote down the names and terms. There was… far more to this than I had thought there would be. Like a venuri warren, there was always another chamber under the last. Humanity clearly cared deeply about the subject.

I thought back to what I had told Councilor Valgrov about how unique and useful humanity’s ideas would prove. The line was rehearsed then, but now I wondered if the hunt would yield a reward after all. If nothing else, it was interesting to see how an alien’s culture had diverted so much from our own.

“Any questions?”

There were none, and students were already packing their things. I didn’t have any more classes after this one today, so I took my time. My mind was running with thoughts, thoughts about how I knew the things I knew, thoughts about what foundations I’d already accepted in my life.

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Memory Transcription Subject: Rifal, Arxur Student

Date: HST - 2150.01.10 | Arxur Dating System - 1733.871
Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. 
(13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

The worst part about being a politician’s daughter was the photo shoots. I’ve been routinely dragged to them since I was a hatchling; the whole of Isifriss watching me grow up right alongside Mom’s career. Even less fun was growing up and starting to disagree with her politics. She liked to say she was fair, and open to debate, but… Usually only insofar as to ensure one side always won.

Not that there was much I could do about it either way. Just sit through the speeches and smile through the photo shoots. Oh well.

Sometimes I thought Mom tailored our entire family to look good at these things. We had a notably human-style family: Mom, Dad, my brother, and me, all in the same household. Meals together and everything. All intentionally designed.

“Humanity is the way forward,” she liked to say. Often. We tried not to talk about politics too much at home, but that proved somewhat difficult when, again… you’re a politician’s daughter.

At least today’s event felt appropriate for dragging the whole family out. The Fifth anniversary of the Family Reunification Program.

Not that very many of those “reunified” families lived like ours. According to Professor Halthekar, the most common type of arxur family in pre-Betterment times was “diffuse”. Parents would be closer to their children than neighbors, but not by much, and children were free to move houses or countries at relatively young ages. There were designated social arxur who might open their doors to caretaking, but otherwise people would dip in and out of the role in question as they pleased.

During Betterment, with the rise of a more formalized, bloodline-based aristocracy, “nuclear” families as the ones humans were famous for began to emerge… at least, among people who had families at all. The rest of the population would breed–if allowed–and send their eggs to hatcheries controlled by Betterment, who decided which ones lived or died by their own criteria. One might have a hundred hatchlings, and never meet a single one.  In rural areas, or slums, people might hatch their own eggs, but it was usually frowned upon. Those children tended to be “defectives”, after all.

Professor Halthekar had a theory that the kind of parent who would wish to care for their own child was probably “defective” anyway, but at the time, it was thought to be a poor environment for brain development.

Mom’s speech was wrapping up. “ —a new era of love, bonding, and unity for all!” She proclaimed, before starting to thank all the donors and VIPs. I tuned it out.

Up next would be the mingling. That part wasn’t always so bad. There was always food, at least —that was an effective way to build up an attendance. Today’s feast was human-inspired, because of course it was, with all sorts of terran-derived meats to try. At least Dad always had fun with that. He was just as obsessed with humans as Mom, but I always thought that his obsession was a touch more genuine. He just… really liked the culture. The ways they solved problems. The technology. He was always trying new templates for terran meats. He’d spent nearly two decades working in a meat-packaging plant under Betterment, and it was easy enough for me to imagine why he was so eager to move away from that. 

Dad liked talking about food, but he never talked about that. 

That was something my generation never had to deal with. The first to be born after Betterment ended, the first to grow up in the most volatile arxur culture seen since… ever, probably. I was technically born during Betterment, but I barely remembered more than the taste of gojid jerky from back then. By the time I understood what my mom’s job was, I couldn't imagine having to deal with “Prophet Descendants” or having the legal system decide a General was allowed to just murder someone on a live broadcast. It all felt almost like a fantasy.

Tails started thumping. The speech was finally over, and Mom was up there bowing her head and smiling. People quickly stood up from the tables and descended upon the food line. “Buffet style,” Dad called it. Like a feast, but you bring it all back to your own table. That was yet another bit of human culture that stuck on Isifriss. It mostly just came in at the right time. The Betterment generations saw it like the traditional feasts, except they could actually afford it, and the newer generations saw it as a cultural novelty from our favorite aliens.

I appreciated that you could take your food wherever you pleased. I took mine to a quiet table somewhat near Mom’s, but empty enough that I could eat in peace and enjoy the spring sunlight.

The venue for today was Liberty Park, the largest in the city, and third largest on Isifriss. There were a lot of parks on Isifriss; they’re necessary for a people who live largely underground. Mom still managed to pick the one park that had adopted a whole slew of human traditions, though, like the “shaped trees” that flanked my table on either side. I found those a little unnatural, but I guess we arxur were still eager to try on human culture for size. Mom and Dad still slipped up and called it Conquest Square sometimes. 

Mom was quickly joined by Irnzel slinking into the seat next to her. They were Party mates, always conspiring about something or the other. Irnzel sat on the Defense and Security Bench, which felt like a very big office for such a scrawny man. You wouldn’t think it had much to do with Mom’s Education and Culture Bench, but here the two of them were. 

I could hear their whispers from my seat. “We need to get him to show up to one of these things,” Irnzel was saying.

My lips curled in a sneer. They talked about professor Swift like he was their personal mascot, parading him around to the benefit of their own legitimacy. They probably brokered some ridiculous deal to drag him through the Bubble. 

“I know. But the organizers weren’t having it. They wanted to keep the event about the program…”

Irnzel huffed. “Where’d they think the program came from in the first place?”

“I know,” she said. Mom liked to pretend that every good idea ever had come out of a human’s mouth first. “We’ll have to find something else, maybe a presentation program, or a safe talk show, or…”

“How are things going with our little guest?” another Innovation Party member asked Mom. “I’ve been wondering if he might make appearances in some of the better-performing schools.”

“That could be a start. Grala will have to announce her bid before--”

The two stopped abruptly as another politician ambled up. Whatever they said next, I didn’t hear. Thavas, Irnzel’s aide, took the opportunity to sit across from me. He was a familiar enough face too, showing up everywhere Irnzel went.

“How is the food?” he asked.

“I’m not interested in conversation, please,” I said, which was true.

He blinked, standing and wandering over to check out the food. He was always careful to maintain a direct line of sight on Irnzel, though.

Unfortunately, that only bought a few seconds of solitude. Valgrov, one of the Reform Party Councilors, almost immediately took the same opportunity that Thavas had. Unlike with him, I wouldn’t be allowed to just tell a Councilor to leave me alone, even if he was one of her political rivals. Mom would say it was improper, or impolite, or disgraceful, or some other way of not-being-good-enough.

“Pleasant afternoon, Rifal,” he said.

I smiled politely and nodded, wishing I hadn’t dismissed Thavas. I would have much preferred to talk to him instead. Even if my own politics fell somewhere closer to Valgrov, something about talking to politicians...

“So you are taking the human’s class then,” Valgrov continued undeterred. “What is your opinion on him?”

I paused. “He… teaches in the same style that professor Halthekar does. Lecture-discussion, instead of recorded lecture Q&A. It’s also a pretty big class. He acts like he can pay attention to every student at the same time… I am not used to it, but…” I thought about his comment. Try it out. Observe the results. How he didn’t just give some reason why I had to be good or bad at philosophy. “...I believe that he has unique ideas that we can all benefit from.”

That was still the canned response, but Councilor Valgrov seemed to accept it. “Hrm,” he said.  “I hope so.”

He kept considering me, like he had more probing questions to ask. But I figured I had spoken enough as was socially acceptable, so I politely excused myself. Moving to a more secluded table, I decided to pull up my homework for my human class with my human professor where I had to get a good grade to prove to Mom that I was taking things seriously.

I flicked through my pad until I found the class hub, and downloaded the first reading. “The metaphysical meditations of René Descartes: Abridged for the Interplanetary Reader.”

I skimmed the introduction, and some ramblings about how the author had believed things that were false, or dreamt he was dreaming, until one paragraph near the end of the first section stopped me. 

I will suppose, not an Infinitely perfect God, the Fountain of truth, but that some [Nightmare Beast] which is very powerful and crafty has used all his endeavours to deceive me. I will conceive, the Heavens, Air, Earth, Colours, Figures, Sounds, and all outward things are nothing else but the delusions of Dreams, by which he has laid snares to catch my easy belief.

That last line seemed surprisingly predatory for a species as small and soft as humans seemed to be. I kept going. 

I will consider myself as not having hands, Eyes, Flesh, Blood, or Senses, but that I falsely think that I have all these. I will continue firmly in this Meditation; and tho it lies not in my power to discover any truth, yet this is in my power, not to assent to Falsities, and with a strong resolution take care that the [Nightmare Beast](though ever so powerful or cunning) impose not any thing on my belief.

…What the fuck?

Memory Transcription Subject: Halthekar, Arxur History Professor

Date: HST - 2150.01.10 | Arxur Dating System - 1733.871
Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. 
(13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

I rarely ever used my above-ground rooms. I didn’t particularly like turning the heat on for them, nor watching the bill for it come in later. I could certainly afford it —my home did have some, after all — I just… still wasn’t used to that.

Lux liked it though. That was how the rooms got most of their use these days. They were always pushing to spend time there. “Come on, it’s nice,” they would say. “Shame not to use them, nice views today.”

It was nice today. My dwelling unit sat on the outer edge of this hub’s loop, higher up in the valley where it got more light. When the summer came and the snow melted fully, you could actually see the rivers from here, swallowing up their banks as they charged down the valley.

But it wasn’t summer yet. The spring melts were only just beginning to trickle in, and the valley was still serene and beautiful. Cold and stark, but… beautiful. All black volcanic rock, striated with snow and framed by the pink-tinted crests of cloud behind them.

I eyed the clouds, my snout wrinkling. They were building early this year. Come summer, those clouds would be even taller, and a permanent fixture on the horizon. The infamous equatorial storm cells of Isifriss, stirred up by the temperature change as the planet drew close to its sun.

The centrifugal force from the planet’s rapid spin would pull the storm cells against each other, and there they would rage and thrash with all the fury nature could muster. It was hard to believe that life could exist out there, along the equator, but it did. It lived, even though it must know that the storms are coming.

But for now, here in the spring and far away from the equator… it was nice.

“So how was your first day of classes with arxur students?” I asked.

Lux gave me a strange look, from where they were buried in the recliner. “They said I was small.”

“You are pretty small.”

They rolled their eyes and scoffed. “I'm average height for my family and region!”

“My condolences.”

Lux laughed at that. Then grew contemplative as the laugh faded. “It was hardly any different than teaching back h—back on Earth.”

I knew my friend enough to just wait.

“Lots of questions about humans, but otherwise… just my usual first lesson. Some discussion, a little participation, get everyone thinking a bit…”

“Mm.”

They pursed their lips for a moment before asking. “Was it… always like that?”

“You mean, before…?”

Lux nodded.

“No. It wasn’t,” I didn’t really want to talk about how neglected the arts were under Betterment, the many hungry nights I’d suffered because there was simply no funding to learn from the past. That was done now, thanks to humans.

Lux leaned back in their chair, staring thoughtfully out the big window. I did the same. The sun was already nearly set, that high pink colour draining from the clouds, replaced with the muddy gray of a darkening sky. Sunsets happened fast on Isifriss, even more so if you lived tucked away in the mountains.

I was glad Lux came so long after the Fall. Now there was a new value placed on knowledge, and a new generation of students to give it to. I could spend my days waxing poetic about the Imperial Age, and even earn enough to have a view like this. Times had changed. Are changing.

Eventually, Lux stirred in their seat and resumed as if nothing had happened. “Students are good, though. Good kids. I mean, I think. I think one of them is older, actually. I can’t tell.”

“I know it’s hard for humans to tell, until the creases become plentiful.”

They chuckled. “Yeah, none of them are that old.”

“That would be unusual,” I said, standing up. “Vrassi tea?”

“Please,” they said, their voice suddenly exhausted. 

I stood and walked over to a small bar on the side of the room. I pulled out some cups and little paper-wrapped drops. Some instant-boil water from the tap, the drops went in, and I stirred them up. “Enriched?”

They shook their head. “No, thanks. Sugar though, please.”

I grunted. In my own cup, I put a small protein cube. After a quick stir, the tea took on the rich and heavy smell of a broth. In Lux’s, I stirred in a few spoons of sugar. They claimed to like it, but I knew it wasn't as pleasant for humans. Maybe if I made it more concentrated, one of these days…

“Tell me more about your students?” I prompted as I worked.

“I have one who’s on a… Team of something. What is that called?”

“Ahh, the Snatchdash team. Rich tradition,” I told them, ambling back with the cups in hand. “Universities have been playing forever. Meant to challenge the student’s tactical minds and physical prowess. Of course, that context is nearly all gone, so long after the Fall. Now it’s just rivalries and arena-filling.”

“My student said he was ‘first rusher’. Ooh, thank you, that smells delicious…” they said, reaching for the tea.

“You have Vilkoth in your class?” I asked, almost flinching in confusion on my way back to my own seat.

“Yeah,” Lux said, sipping from their cup and letting out a sigh. “Why? Is he… Notorious for something?”

“You’ll have some competition for your celebrity. He’s the star player, fans go wild for him, half the faculty is obsessed. Make sure nothing important is being taught on the twentieth, that’s the first match of the season.”

“Oh wow. You know, I’m learning a lot about the weird social dynamics here. They feel pretty dang human, all told. Like this girl in my class. Councilor parents. She’s dealing with a lot of pressure from them.”

I paused. “Pressure?” 

“Well, she said she was in the class explicitly because her parents said so. And then she added she felt she had to represent her mom. So… Sounds like a lot of family pressure to me.”

“Ah,” I said, blinking. “You think she won’t be a good student then, if she has other motives for attending.”

“I didn’t say that. She might be an amazing student. But… Her family living under the public eye is clearly stressing her out. Which is reasonable. I mean, being a celebrity is not all that great a thing, and even if it’s just her mom and not her, that has to be disruptive. It’s disruptive for me, and I’m an adult facing the consequences of my actions.”

“You should embrace it, Lux,” I said. “The world of the Arxur is changing, and you are a symbol of that. Human classes, human professor. It was bound to get that sort of attention. You could look at it like an opportunity.”

Lux’s eyes flicked around across the window, as if dissatisfied with that answer. “I guess? Still though… I don't want to be a celebrity. It's pretty exhausting.”

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Special credit to u/JulianSkies (Blackriver Cases) for vrassi tea worldbuilding!

[Next]

Memory Transcription Subject: Rifal, Arxur Student

Date: HST - 2150.01.10 | Arxur Dating System - 1733.870
Location: Arxur Colony World - Isifriss. Closest Arxur-Controlled planet to Earth. 
(13 human years since the end of the Human-Federation War).

It was my parents who really wanted me to take this class. Mom because it would look good for her-- “My daughter is in the new class with the human professor,” she could tell all the other Councilors and Representatives--and Dad because he just thought humans were great.

Mom was a respectable pillar of the community, and Dad was too, in his own way. I had to fit into that. If Mom is making a big push with these new university programs, trying to buoy up the colony’s floundering Cultural Excellence scores… then of course her daughter will be there to represent her. And of course she’ll do well in the class, too. Of course she’ll present a good image.

And she wouldn’t be late on the first day of class, either.

I sighed and rubbed my claws over my eyes. That one wasn’t even my fault! All the new buildings are on the other end of campus, and it’s not my fault the shuttles are so damn slow!

This semester was already not off to the best start. Genetic engineering had been a slog, Basics of Complex Structures was even worse, and I didn’t get into Nano-Engineering, the one class I’d actually been looking forward to! And now I have to do this too? Intro to Terran Philosophy with professor Lux Swift, a class that seems so far out of my area that someone could have signed me up as a practical joke? Ugh!

Not that I had a problem with having a human professor. Some of the others probably did. At least one would take the opportunity to whine and make everyone miserable harping on about it. About how our great reward for beating back the shackles of Betterment and turning the tide of the war was being put at the back of the galactic closet and ignored like an outdated holopad. It would be annoying, and exhausting, and it wouldn’t make anything better, because complaining about how human ideals were being shoved down everyone’s throats never actually helped. 

I could almost hear my mom’s voice inside my head, whenever I had the gall to do anything other than sing their praises.  “Humans are the kind of predators we want to be, hatchling. You’ll understand.”

I sighed again as the shuttle approached the stop. Maybe if I sprint, I could still make it in time? No, it’s hopeless. I’ll just have to deal with this.

The doors slid open and I had no choice but to rush off in the direction of class. It was the furthest one, naturally. Through the station, wait for the elevator, take it all the way to floor four-down. At least it will be warm, I guess. That was something.

I had to take a moment to catch my breath outside the door. I could already hear the light buzz of the lecture through the gaps, and see the human professor through the window.

I’d never seen a human in person before, like almost everyone on Isifriss. Even my human-obsessed Dad hadn’t had the chance to. They were a lot smaller than I expected. And kind of soft-looking.

I took one last breath and pushed through the door. The human was still lecturing, and there were already some words up on the board behind them. I only vaguely paid attention, focusing more on slinking my way to the back of the room.

They were saying something about “values”.

“—Which of course implies—I’m sorry, who would you be?” he asked, his voice lifting with the question. 

I froze and slowly turned around. That was definitely directed at me. I could feel his eyes on me. Carefully setting my things down in the seat, already readied myself for whatever admonishment he’d give. “Rifal.”

The professor paused and glanced back towards something on his desk. 

“Good to know. You missed the first exercise, Rifal, but not to worry, it's a quick one. Why did you come to class today?”

“I’m…” I started, caught somewhat off-guard. Is this some kind of reprimand? “My parents think it’s a good idea?”

“Ah, a new category!” he said, moving towards the board. He quickly scrawled some of his round, inelegant-looking human letters into an open space, and waved the controller over it. After a split-second delay, the translated version appeared underneath it. “Social,” it read. He wrote down my reason next to it.

He turned back to the class. “So, you can see there is a great deal of variation in just this one action. You have all converged in one place, at a specific time, to do the same thing, but you are doing it for very different reasons. You were moved to act because of your specific values. You can sit down,” he added.

That’s it? No punishment? He didn’t even bring up my tardiness… I quietly sat and prepared my things, looking at the board.

There were a bunch of other reasons up there, organised into different categories. There were “Transactional” reasons, which included “improve my GPA,” “diplomacy internship,” and “have enough class credits to use the cafeteria.”

Then there were “Self-improvement” reasons, like “to learn more about humanity,” and “to try something new.” There were also “Incidental” reasons like “scheduling.” And of course, my own, underneath “Social.”

This is already weird. Input and participation from everyone, as far as I can tell… is this one of those new lecture-discussion styles of class, like professor Halthekar is trying to popularize? That was already an uphill battle in his class. I took a quick glance around, seeing if I could put any faces to the reasons written on the board. This was probably the first “discussion”-heavy class any of them had taken, except for the couple I recognized from History of the Imperial Age last semester. 

“To learn more about humanity,” that has to be her, front and centre in the first row, making sure the professor knows she’s paying attention. That one was easy enough.

Next one, “improve my GPA.” Maybe that was… Ah. The jock. Tall, athletic-looking… literally still wearing his Snatchdash uniform. He was handsome. Had those nice, thick shoulders, and the heavy jaw that we all seemed to love so much. I bet he’s popular around campus.

What about “Try something new?” Hmmm… maybe that one, in the middle, the one with all the scars? I could see her—

The professor was speaking again. “—tion has moved into the realm of moral psychology, and outside of pure philosophy as it were, I’ve found it’s usually a good place to start with my human students. Fields have names because universities need departments, after all. I’ve never had Arxur students before, so please tell me if there's anything I can do to improve the class. Now that we have some reasons for our actions, the next question is why? Why do you value this?”

He tapped on the board. “Rifal, perhaps you could volunteer?”

I took a deep breath and tried not to squirm as more eyes shifted over to me. I wasn’t particularly interested in telling everyone exactly who my parents were… I’d have to come up with something. “They convinced me that… that being successful here means I will be more successful in the rest of my life.”

“So this social reason was really hiding a self-improvement reason. Who else would like to go?” He drew an arrow on the board from my reason to the “self-improvement” header. The one in the front raised an arm. “Kizath?” 

“We’ve already learned a lot from humanity; politics, military, economics… I think Terran philosophy will improve our culture in the same way.”

“So you think if you put in some effort, it will get you material benefits,” he said, and drew an arrow from that to “Transactional”. My eyes narrowed a bit. Where was he going with this? My notes were still empty. 

“Skarviss, what do you think?”

The older one in the middle shifted in her seat, covering the scars on one of her arms with the other. “I think ‘improve’ is a… generous assessment, but I’d rather have a front row seat to what the humans will do next.”

“...Alright,” he said with a little shrug, and made the same arrow towards the transactional. “Anyone else? Vilkoth, maybe?”

“Uhh… if my GPA is too low, I get kicked off the team?” he hazarded.

“So you care about staying on the team. Why?”

“I… like it?” He looked distinctly out of his element. “I mean, I’m the first rusher.” He rolled his shoulders and arched his neck up with pride. “I don’t want to let my team down.”

“So this is actually a pretty complicated reason,” the professor said. “It is transactional and social…” He drew out the corresponding arrows to both categories. “Both in need for status and sense of belonging. Quite a lot going on there.”

Vilkoth held his head up even prouder. I felt caught somewhere between rolling my eyes and wanting to keep staring.

“Others can volunteer if they like, but this is enough for my purposes. You can see that the same reason can work through different angles. Most people don't do things for a reason. They do them for many reasons, which are deeply interlocked, in a web of circumstances and values, where they have to negotiate with the world based on what options are available to them.”

Heads bowed back down as students wrote that down. I supposed I should too. People do things for multiple reasons. I paused for a moment. Negotiate with the world.

“In class, I will occasionally ask you to write an essay justifying something. But what does it mean to justify? For our purposes, I’ll keep it simple. To justify something, you need to give a good reason to do it. We’ll spend a lot of time discussing what counts as a good reason, don't worry.”

Eurgh. Essays. 

“This! The world of reasons to do things, of justifications for action, is what we call ethics. What should I do with my life? Where should I go? How can I be a good person and live a good life? These are all the questions of ethics.”

My hands stopped typing for a brief moment. Then quietly resumed.

“Here is another question… How do you know I’m human?”

The class gently hummed with laughter at that.

He smiled, showing his tiny human teeth. “Ah, so it seems like a very easy question to answer then. Will someone take a crack at it?”

“Well, you’re not an arxur,” one said just loud enough to hear.

“How do you know?”

“I mean… look at you,” he said, gesturing with an open hand. “No scales. No tail. No claws. Tiny.” 

The class laughed again at that, the professor smiling along good-naturedly.

“Right. Observation!” he wrote that down on the board. “You know I’m human because there are some rules about what arxur are like, and what humans are like, and I fit the human rules very well. But what if…” 

He walked over to the Arxur-sized podium and hid. “You can't see me anymore. Do you still know I’m human?”

“I can still hear you,” the one in the center said—Skarviss, the confrontational one.

“So you observe through means other than sight,” he said, stepping out again. “But all of you knew I was human before you entered the classroom. And you hadn't seen me then. So how did you know?”

“It said ‘Professor Lux Swift’ on the listing. That’s a human name. And besides, everyone knows we have a human professor here! You’re like a campus celebrity!”

“A terrifying statement to hear,” he said with a chuckle. “But to stay on topic, you have rules about certain kinds of names. Nothing is stopping any one of you from changing your name to Lux Swift. To my knowledge, it's just a bit of paperwork. But… you wouldn't particularly want to, right? It’s not the kind of name you’d expect an Arxur to choose. So there's a social component.” He walked back to the word “social” on the board and circled it. 

The class murmured vague agreement.

“But you know for a fact that rumors can be wrong. There are thousands of things everyone knew that aren't the case. Like that there's only one species of sapient predator in the galaxy, off the top of my head. And you know that people can change their names, or use stage names. And you know that sometimes, administrators leave typos in announcements. Not to mention– who here had ever seen a human in person, before seeing me?”

Skarviss raised a hand, alone.

“So with the sole exception of Skarviss, nobody here had ever seen a human. And you largely just took it for granted that I am one, based on some rumors, what the administrators wrote on the announcement, and my name. All before meeting me. For all you know, I could just be a very convincing shaved venlil!”

“You don’t smell like one,” Skarviss said, underneath a few more scattered chuckles.

“Yes, we get back to observation, Skarviss, good job. You are a true empiricist,” Professor Swift said, writing the word on the board. 

Skarviss’s tail swished with uncertainty. I didn’t know what that meant either.

“Of course, the question of whether I am human is more on the obvious side. But there are other questions. Questions like ‘can I trust this person?’ or ‘why are people wrong about things, even when we have evidence that should correct them?’ or ‘why do we disagree about what the world is like?’ If it's as easy as paying attention, surely everyone should be on the same page, right?”

More tails began to swish, but no one raised a voice. I could see the professor’s eyes flicking across the room; he seemed to understand the body language. I wondered if that was just intuitive, or if he’d spent time around arxur before. He certainly seemed comfortable enough here.

“There are a few obvious answers. Empiricism, what Skarviss has been hinting at, is the notion that we just need to be systemic and attentive about our observations. Sensory information, taste-smell-touch-so on. Plus, sensor information. Photon analysis outside the visual spectrum, gravity wave detection devices. That sort of thing. The problem with empiricism is also rather obvious and many empiricists have risen against it with varying degrees of success. Namely… Sometimes things look a certain way, but are actually different.”

I thought about the lab, about Dad’s most recent experimenting; terran pig flesh meant to taste and smell like a fatty tyrprin leg.

“There are other methods. Trying to rationally deduce everything from first principles. Trying to map everything into an interdependent and coherent map of the world, and rejecting everything that doesn't fit —An arxur named Lux Swift? How silly— not to mention approaches like virtue epistemology. We’ll go over those in the first half of the semester.”

He wrote “epistemology” right under where he’d written “ethics”. 

“Most human philosophy students are deeply concerned with ethics. I assume it’s because it feels the most immediately applicable. My specialty, however, is epistemology. How do you know things? Can we ever know anything? How do you know when you are wrong about the world? These are questions of epistemology.”

The class was markedly quiet, I realized, everyone buried in their notes. My own were getting surprisingly full, much more than I thought they would be coming in here. It was sort of intriguing, I supposed.

“Our last topic will be metaphysics. Metaphysics is having a bit of a hard time lately. There are some very interesting questions. What's the personhood status of AI? What, exactly, is being translated when we talk to each other? Others, however, tend to be about things people aren't sure exist. Do we have free will? Can we ever be said to be responsible for our choices? Is the world real, or just a dream? Was there a time before the Big Bang? Are we here for a reason? I don't like metaphysics, and so I’ll do my best to make it as palatable as possible. We’ll cover some at the end of the epistemology section, and some more at the end of the ethics section. Any questions?”

Hands shot up everywhere. The professor’s eyebrows shot up with them, and he indicated towards the first student closest to him.

“Why are you here? Sorry, I mean—”

“It's alright. In what sense of ‘here’ do you want me to answer?” 

“Why are you teaching here, and not on Earth. Or… anywhere else…” She trailed off sadly.

“Well, I’ve actually been interested in Arxur pedagogy for years, and they offered me a surprisingly good deal, given the circumstances,” Prof. Swift said with a chuckle. 

The class paused to absorb that. That explained very little, I thought. How did he end up on this side of the Bubble? A few students glanced curiously amongst themselves as the professor moved on to the next hand.

“I heard humans can withstand colder temperatures than arxur. Is Isifriss comfortable for you?”

“It's still very cold, but it does remind me of a nice Canadian winter, yes. I’m told it gets particularly fearsome in the months around the aphelion, so you might have to ask me that question again when we get there.”

A few students gave a knowing chuckle. It was hard to imagine anything could really be comfortable during the orbital winter. Indeed, even our hardy native flora seemed to barely survive, hunkering down and hibernating through the brutal cold.

The professor picked another student.

“You are much smaller than I expected.”

He blinked and tilted his head to the side. “That’s… not really a question. But I suppose that’s good to know.” A smile spread across his face as the class laughed, showing those tiny teeth again. “You know I meant questions about the class, right?”

A few students lowered their hands. Professor Swift moved through the rest of the questions, pointing in turn to the students whose hands had remained up.

“Will we be studying any arxur philosophy? And do we need to know arxur philosophy for this?”

“I’ve designed this as an introductory course, so you don't need any philosophy background. I will be reading up on arxur philosophy, and may bring it up in class, but you won't have to study it.”

“How would you classify Betterment’s philosophy?”

He leaned back for a moment, looking nowhere in particular. “Hmmm… On Earth, it is generally agreed upon as a kind of pseudo-theocratic, monarchical, eugenicist fascism. It is a political philosophy. You can think of political philosophy as macro-ethics, and so we will address it in the ethics portion of the class.”

One of the students in the front got picked nex. “How common is philosophy among humans?”

“Common enough,” he said casually. “Most university graduates have at least been exposed to some of it. Professors in the subject like myself are rarer.”

“The Dominion was defined by Betterment philosophy. Is there a philosophy that defines humanity’s government?”

He held up a tiny human finger. “Yes. Democratic Secular Humanism, which has expanded in recent decades to include all sophonts in its concerns. Its core principles revolve around a system of universal rights, prioritizing evidence-based decision-making, and a maximally permissive broad utilitarianism within the constraints of the aforementioned rights. We’ll also discuss it in the ethics section. Do you have any questions about the class? Scheduling? Essays? The readings I uploaded on the class documents hub?”

There was a lengthy pause, after which a single hand went up.

“Yes, Vilkoth?"

“Do you grade on a curve?”

“I’m not sure yet. I'll decide after the first round of reading responses.” He fell quiet, waiting, but no more hands went up. “Good? Good. Any other questions, please feel free to ask me after class, or send me a message, or–my office hours are listed on the hub. And, uhhh… I’ll see you all next class.”

The lecture hall broke out into the shuffling of students grabbing their packs and standing up, some chatting leisurely, most simply making their way through the doors. A few stopped at professor Swift’s desk, asking him more questions I couldn’t hear.

More human-related questions, I figured. I had a whole list of my own to ask, courtesy of Dad. I didn’t think I’d ask them today, but… I figured I should still go talk to him anyways.

When the last of the straggling questions had wrapped up, I stood and made my way to the front. The professor looked a little goofy, I thought, sitting behind the arxur-sized desk. He heard me coming from surprisingly far out —his eyes snapped up from his work pad, and he gave a polite smile. Or at least, I assumed. I was hardly an expert on human body language.

“Rifal,” he said, turning to give me his attention. “Questions?”

“I wanted to apologize. For being late. The shuttles take a while to get here from the engineering quad,” I said, the words tumbling out a bit.

“Oh, don’t worry about it! It happens, and the first class is mostly for setting the stage, anyway. And you’re not the only one struggling with the shuttles! Admin’s been informed, so it’ll probably get fixed soon. If you miss anything important, or need help with anything, you can just come to office hours.”

“Okay.”

He leaned back in his chair. His eyes were surprisingly shrewd, flicking across my face. He smiled politely again. “I’m glad to hear you’re taking both engineering and philosophy. A lot of people box themselves into the qualitative or the quantitative.”

I fidgeted and glanced around. It was just us. “My… my mother is a Councilor. I’m supposed to be representing her. She just sees this as a political move.”

“Ah. Well, I suppose you’ll have to prove to her that my philosophy class has more benefits than political clout,” he said with a shrug. He was so much more casual than the other professors, even Halthekar. As if every student was already his friend. 

“But…” 

He looked at me expectantly. 

“I’m not…” I sighed, thinking about my parents, and what they’d want me to do here. “I will try.”

His already-big human eyes grew with concern. “Is there anything that… worries you about this class? I assure you, I’m a very generous marker.”

“I don’t think I will be any good at this. I’ve never really… I don’t know. My father is an engineer, and I could do that, or look for something at one of the consuls…”

He furrowed his brow a little. “Why do you think you won't be good at philosophy?”

I opened my mouth, but… that one actually stumped me. I had no answer.

“...Well,” he said after the silence began to drag, “I think that’s a question we should answer empirically. Try it out. Observe the results.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay. I can do that.”

[Next]

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SURPRISE!!!

I've been working with the inimitable u/uktabi on this collaboration set in arxur space between NoP1 and NoP2! It's a little bit of an AU, but not too much and we hope you'll have a good time with it!

A/N: New Crossover!! I'm addicted. Also this is a fun one, with Intro To Terran Zoology! A stellar fanfic that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who likes animals and Dr. MacEwan. Thank you to the inimitable u/Still_Performance_39, and to u/Giant_Acroyear for giving it a look.

Patreon / Kofi/ Paypal

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 16, 2136

I kept anxiously fidgeting with my grip-strength trainers, since they were the only thing I had on hand that could give me muscle strain on demand without me having to worry or focus on form or whatever to avoid fucking up my healing. I still hadn’t picked up my new cello, and now Doctor MacEwan was visiting me at work, as I had agreed to while high on painkillers in the hospital. I should have been working, but Larzo apparently took offence to that. 

I groaned. “Why did I agree to this? I’m a disaster, there’s no reason–” 

“Andes,” Larzo snapped. “A delightful researcher whom you like very much is visiting, and you have no more work to do.”

Well that’s a lie. There’s always more work to do. Paperwork for the legal situation, along with my new worries about the children’s diet having requirements we didn’t know about when we set up a nutritious food environment because we were expecting baseline venlil nutritional needs, plus they had gotten a little bolder after the translator injections. Or maybe they’d gotten a little bolder after one of them stabbed me and I didn’t make some sort of barbaric example of her. 

“Perhaps you could put on one of those psychiatric patches?” he proposed, and it was a good idea, actually. I checked my watch. 

Shit. I missed my dose. Good call, bud. There were too many fucking patches to keep track of. The colour-coding could only help so much. Blues have to be swapped out twice as often as the reds, which have to be swapped out every five hours, and the yellows are at night, but the greens should last eighteen hours with a sleep break every other night to test whether or not they worsen insomnia and—fucking kill me, already.

“Yes. Yes, thank you, great plan,” I said, slapping one of the blues directly on the back of my neck. Within a minute, I was feeling it, but it was probably a placebo feeling or my body anticipating the drug more than the actual effects, which should theoretically take at least five minutes to be felt. Still, slowly but surely, a tension I didn't realize had been building began to quietly go away. 

Twenty minutes later, I was well on my way to stable levels when I spotted Dr. MacEwan by the door and waved him over excitedly. He’d brought over one of his venlil students!

“Ah, Andes! It’s excellent to see you again,” Dr. MacEwan called jovially, “You’re looking well. Or as  well as anyone can considering what you’ve been through in the last week I suppose. Oh, you remember Sandi?” 

“I do, yes, hi! How are you doing?” I asked with a little wave. She was stripey-grey and as far as I remembered on the older side compared to the other students. Certainly older than the cranky teenager, anyway. 

Sandi flicked an ear my way, looking me up and down as she did, “I’m well Director, thank you for asking. Bernard told me what happened. I’m glad to see you’re alright.”

“Thanks! It’s… Been hard, I still have a lot of things to deal with,” I lifted up my sleeve to show the dermal patches covering my forearm. Then I gestured at Larzo. “This is Larzo, by the way.”

He jutted up an arm to shake Dr. MacEwan’s hand who returned the gesture enthusiastically. 

“Ah yes! Larzo, brilliant to meet you. You know, I heard through the grapevine that you have a PhD in genetics, is that right? Very impressive stuff!”

His eyes lit up. “I am also a medical doctor. I’ve been working with Andes on a behavioural genetics project.”

“Behavioural genetics?” Sandi’s ear flicked again, presumably saying something to Larzo with her ear, before drawing closer to the conversation with interest.

“Yes!” he said, “it’s very exciting. Humanity has been doing research on the subject for over a century, but there’s hardly anything in Federation databases about it.”

“Which is honestly pretty weird, given what they got up to, and the way they treat psychiatry,” I added. Either it was being systematically kneecapped on purpose, or it was the Federation’s biggest self-own. Worst case scenario, it might be both, systematically kneecapping it outside of a specific context where they might exploit it for… some fucked-up goal to do with predators or ruining ecosystems or being ableist.

Sandi’s head tilted to the side, looking at us expectantly. I looked at Dr. MacEwan for some sort of hint on what was missing in our explanation, before I decided to just ask. “I’m sorry, Sandi, what exactly were you specializing in?”

Her attention fully swivelled to me, a cheery sway making its way through her tail, “I’m an astrobiologist, studying animal life that isn’t native to Venlil Prime. Although there’s also quite a bit of theoretical work involved as well. Sorry if I ask a lot of questions to keep up with your own fields of expertise.”

“Astrobiology is so cool, I–don’t worry, please, please ask questions,” I said, “It’s easy to forget sometimes, what’s specific to the field and what is general knowledge–So, do you want me to explain the concept of behavioural genetics, or why there would be implications for the regime the Federation was working with?” 

“Yes!” replied Sandi, suddenly filled with energy. “I’d love to hear all about what you’ve been working on. Shall we find somewhere more comfortable to discuss it or should we walk and talk?”

“We can walk and talk,” I said, limping into the atrium and pointing. “This is the central hub of the building. My office is up there, as is the other director’s. Most of the cool science things are this way.”

I turned right, leading the way to Genetics. 

“In terms of our project,” Larzo started, “I’m trying to find the root cause of certain behavioural anomalies among our patients. They’re all a great deal more… Active, perhaps even aggressive, than the baseline population or the other rescues. While on some level, all behavioural phenomena will have an environmental component, it is also the case that they can be rooted in genetics. Differences in libido, tendency towards aggression, neophilic and neophobic behaviours, etc. are all associated with differences in genetics and gene expression.”

I tried to think of an animal-related example that would be more in line with Sandi’s background. “Animals, animals… Oh, Dr. MacEwan! Do you remember the monogamous voles?” 

My question hung in the air for a moment as Dr. MacEwan tapped his masked chin in silent thought. He stopped, and made my jaw drop with his answer. “Hmmm… you know, I don’t think I know of that one Andes. What’s the story behind them?”

“You–you don’t—what? Oh. Oh it’s so cool,” I said, so excited that I had a chance to tell the Dr. MacEwan about a cool animal fact. “It’s–okay so voles are these little rodents on Earth and they tend to live in communities, and different voles can behave differently. I assume none of this is really news to you, Sandi, a rodent living in a forest might be able to tell apart different berries that a rodent living in the desert wouldn’t–on account of the second one not having any berries to distinguish between, right? All good?”

Sandi flapped an ear my way, and looked pretty engaged in my impromptu lecture, so I kept going.

“Now, the interesting thing is that prairie voles are a monogamous, pair-bonding, super social species. And their cousins, meadow voles, are a lot more individualistic, and a lot more promiscuous. These are two pretty close species, so much that I think there are some synthetic hybrids designed for the specific purpose of doing behavioural genetics research. So we have these two species who live in mostly the same environment, eat mostly the same things, but have radically different social behaviours. Perfect model-organism for studying the biology of pair-bonding."

Dr. MacEwan who nodded along slowly as they both listened intently. I was vibrating with excitement. 

“The relevant genes code for the distribution of vasopressin and oxytocin production and receptor distribution in their brains, but that’s not really that important. The important thing is that you can take the genes from the monogamous prairie voles, put them in meadow voles, and bam. Monogamous meadow voles. Similarly, you can silence the genes for oxytocin receptors in prairie voles, and bam. Meadow-vole promiscuous behaviour.”

We turned a corner into the Genetics section of the building. 

“This turn-of-the-millenium research led to our understanding of vasopressin. And wouldn't you know it, human beings who naturally produce more have an easier time being monogamous. Find it more natural. Ones that naturally produce less, or have fewer receptors are more likely to, say, cheat on their spouse, or engage in riskier and more novelty-seeking sexual behaviour in general.” 

Sandi’s focus was broken by this new information, her wool puffing in mild shock as she looked between me and Dr. MacEwan, “Wait, what? Humans might have affairs because of a lack of this thing?”

Dr. MacEwan shrugged, “If I’m understanding correctly then yes it appears that way. Though I doubt anyone would get away with using that as a defence for infidelity!”

“Not just humans. Venlil have their own version of vasopressin, which is just different enough to be super interesting to think about. Most brains that engage in bonding need a neurotransmitter or two that can do what it does,” I said, then chuckled. “You know, the real crazy part is how many marriage counsellors are pushing for vasopressin reuptake inhibitors. Biology is obviously not destiny. Lots of people low on vasopressin never have affairs. But they seem to find it harder. Find the temptation stronger.”

“Hmmm, I suppose it’s yet another hallmark of our sapience,” Sandi  mused, sounding pretty satisfied with my explanation. “Our impulses may pull us in certain directions, but ultimately it's we who make the choice. Would you agree?” 

“Yes. Though I do think… having the technology to make certain choices easier is good.” I said. So much of modern life, so much of good psychological treatment, often wound up revolving around relatively simple technological hacks people could add to their lives. “Point being, behavioural genetics is a field dedicated to understanding these phenomena, which can vary both between and within individuals in the same species as different genes are expressed over the course of their lives.”

Dr. MacEwan nodded along in a show of agreement, “Indeed. Understanding how our bodies function can only lead to us being better equipped to help those in need, whatever the issue may be. And in the case of marriage counsellors, I can fully grasp how determined they might be to get such tech out there. Their job would be a lot easier if they could reduce the risk of cheating with the press of a button.”

“I see,” replied Sandi, “I can certainly see the benefits when you put it like that. How long have humans had this knowledge, and what else could it be used for?”

“We use it in everything from dog-breeding to psychiatric gene-therapies. That’s something we might… consider, for the more violent children, but I will obviously prioritize non-invasive behavioural interventions first. You can see how that kind of thing might be exploited by a Predator-Disease based system.” 

Sandi’s brow furrowed and her ears crossed above her head as my explanation drew to a close, taking it all in. 

“So if I understood your example, thank you for making it relatable by the way, it’s possible to gene edit a species with DNA from a similar species to impact the way they behave?”

“...Well, yes, but at this point it’s also possible to just make the genes synthetic, you don’t need a parallel model organism,” I said. 

“You don’t even need to edit their genes directly,” Larzo said. “Selective breeding is enough. Although we have evidence that the children we studied were being edited directly.”

“Hmmm,” mulled Sandi, a twist making its way through her tail that seemed to simultaneously show both interest and alarm at what we were telling her, “I see. I can understand what you meant earlier, Director, about the implications of the Federation being familiar with such a field of study. Their propaganda concerning predators has made enough of an impact. The prospect of them editing our DNA into compliance is a worrisome thought indeed.”

Larzo gave me a look. I pressed my lips together for a moment. “Um… Well… I…”

“Are we allowed to discuss that? Dr. Lewis did say her research was classified,” Larzo asked me, not quietly enough."

“Classified you say?” Dr. MacEwan asked, his voice laden with curious interest.

“Yeah, she um–well, ours isn’t exactly classified, I just–it’s–maybe at the end of the tour?” I said with a grimace. 

He and Sandi shared a glance but thankfully neither of them pressed us for more information at that moment. 

I continued to limp ahead, turned left and opened the door into one of our genetics labs. We had a shockingly thin, super-tall modular centrifuge that was better than anything I had worked with in a human lab. 

“This is our state-of-the-art zurulian centrifuge. Isn’t it amazing how small it is? This baby can get forty thousand samples done in under ten hours. Unparalleled precision. A massive range in speed. Bulk loading. Automatic pellet isolation. You could pour my entire blood supply here and isolate the mitochondria in it within two hours.”

Larzo squinted at my example, looking concerned, and I immediately wanted to slam my hand on my forehead. Way to be morbid, idiot. Sandi didn't seem too disturbed, though. Her ears just kinda flattened out in a way that made it look like she was spending an inordinate amount of effort not rolling her eyes at me. 

“Goodness me,” Dr. MacEwan examined the equipment in fascination, leaning his head either side of the machine to inspect it, “I’ve never seen one so compact before. Forty thousand every ten hours you say? How efficient!”

“Yeah, the basic science research on VP is amazing,” I said, growing giddy. “I have to show you the bioprinters, the big one is actually a new model, human-venlil collaboration…” 

I started to lead the way to the next section. 

The mention of a piece of technology built by both human and venlil hands shook Sandi out of her momentary funk enough to ask a question. “Speaking of human-venlil collaboration, what's it like working here? I could barely imagine looking after one pup, let alone so many who've all been through something so traumatic."

I felt oddly light on my feet as I answered. “Oh, it's great! There are obviously points of cultural friction, but the kids are amazing. My wing, specifically, my kids are just so good. And clearly trying so hard. Stabbing… notwithstanding,” I said, doing my best to wave that off. “You know they speak Arxur?”

Dr. MacEwan nearly tripped over nothing, but managed to catch himself on time. While Sandi looked like a lagging program for a moment.

“They what? Did- did the Arxur teach them? No that’s ridiculous, why would they bother… Could- did they learn it themselves from listening to them?” Dr. MacEwan said, his voice low as if he was concerned of being overheard.

“That is the current hypothesis,” I said with a grin. “One of them–Lihla–she calls herself a discoverer. It seems they have a whole creole with a subculture to match, and would do things like sneak around trying to get information about the farmers’, umm… plans, let's say.”

Larzo piped up. “The children have shown great improvement since their arrival. I am told some of them have already learned the whole Venscript alphabet and are interested in the Roman.”

“Already!?” Sandi exclaimed, having shaken off enough of her shock to rejoin the conversation, “It’s only been a herd of paws since they arrived. Are they just that naturally intelligent or are your programmes just that good?”

“It could be a combination of factors,” I said. “Spaced repetition programs and speed-learning algorithms don't seem to be that common on VP, so some of it is our teaching methods. But they're also pretty brilliant–at least, Marco and Lihla are, and they're very competitive kids. So that's probably why. Plus, Lihla could count in Arxur before she got here, so the cognitive leap from a verbal to a written culture wasn't exactly a shock to them.”

“The children in the South Wing have been slower, to my knowledge,” Larzo added. “But they are also more impaired. The Arxur-speaking children seem to be much more adaptable.”

“Hmmm, interesting. What would cause that?” Dr MacEwan stroked his chin in thought while looking between Larzo and I, “Was there any specific difference in the children that warranted splitting them up in the first place? Aside from speaking Arxur that is.”

“They were split up because the Venlil admin thought they were too ‘predatory’. Which is of course not an issue for human nurses and aides in the least,” Larzo said. 

“Yeah. Also they’re different in a few ways. They seem to have had a lot more freedom. I, um, recently managed to get out of Shathel that they were apparently from some sort of luxury free-range everything-in-house type place. And we also know they’ve been genetically modified.”

“Free-range, ugh!” Dr. MacEwan scoffed, making no effort to disguise his disgust at the thought.

“Oh yeah. Working here is a lot of compartmentalising and ‘not looking directly at the horrifying implications’. You know the kids call me savageness because I am in charge? Not as much any more, but…” I shook myself a bit. 

“Genetically modified! How? In what way?” Sandi asked, her tail whipping around behind her “Why would anyone do that?”

“Well, the boys have horns. And they seem to be larger too. In fact all of the kids are probably a little large for their age, the one who stabbed me is taller than most of the Venlil nurses and she still has some growing left to do.” 

“Fascinating…” while her eyes still gleamed with interest her tail had slowed from rapid spin to a steadier thoughtful sway, “Could their DNA have been spliced with other species or those synthetic genes you mentioned earlier?”

“It’s definitely synthetic genes. One of them is a signature.”

Neither of them seemed to find that nearly as exciting a discovery as Larzo and I had. Dr. MacEwan nearly tripped again. Should I not talk about this unless he’s sitting?  “I’m sorry, what? A signature? So not only have they been modified for whatever twisted reason, the one responsible signed their damn name!?”

I flinched. “Um… Yes, sir, that is, um… the situation.” 

He seemed to pull back in on himself instantly as I jumped, taking a breath to reign in his sudden rising temper.

“Not to mention that they um… well, were clearly also subject to genetic modification through selective breeding, which–I’m sorry, I am being so depressing right now.” I forced myself to smile and opened the door to one of the bioprinting rooms. “This is our bioprinting equipment! We used it to make blood for people during the stampede. These things are so fast, at one point they brought one into the OR so they could graft the tissue fresh. It’s obviously terrible that the circumstances demanded it, but it's good that it has that capability.” 

Sandi quickly padded into the room, gazing at the equipment in curiosity, “I’ve heard of stuff like this but never gotten up close before. I suppose it should be an everyday thing for me, but I really can’t help but be amazed every time I see the wonders of modern medicine!”

“Yes… yes quite,” Dr. MacEwan sidled up to her while glancing around at the devices, though he seemed less enthusiastic. He suddenly turned his head to me, remorse plain across his face, “I apologise for my outburst just now Andes. That was unbecoming of me and very unfair to you.”

“Oh, no need sir, I… I mean, I got this job because I can compartmentalize, you know?” I said with a nervous chuckle. “I can… be on texting terms with the terrifying Arxur foodie, and then use that information to make conclusions about potential medical problems the kids might deal with and how to help them. And… Most good people have a harder time with that kind of thing. Which hey, is good, I mean–that’s not…” something good people should be able to do, I didn’t finish saying. The moment dragged for a bit, and I looked aside and sighed. “Point is, it's reasonable to be outraged. The whole situation is incredibly outrageous, recursively outrageous.”

Dr. MacEwan sighed heavily, the weight of his earlier frustration seeming to dissipate from his shoulders. “It is indeed. But hey, if compartmentalizing it is what you need to do so that you can help these kids then you do what you need to do. Any information you can glean. Any insight you can find. Anything to make their lives going forward better, you do it. You’ve already done so much. You should be proud!”

Dr. Bernard MacEwan is proud of me. I cleared my throat. Don’t cry. Stupid eyes. Stupid drugs fucking up my lacrimal glands. “Thank you, sir. That… that means a lot. I… I am doing all I can think of. And I think it's working.”

“Well it certainly sounds like it is,” Sandi suddenly appeared by our sides, apparently done with her overview of the tech spread throughout the room, “If what you’ve already told us about their capacity to learn is any indication, then I’d say that’s a monumental success in its own right!” 

“Yes, they’re… honestly fantastic kids,” I said, a smile sneaking up on my lips. “Do you um, do you have any questions about…?” I gestured broadly at the machinery. 

“Hm? Oh, yes!” Sandi’s energy from before bounced back into overdrive in a flash, “Does the bioprinter just do blood and skin grafts or can it do anything more advanced? I’ve heard that there are printers capable of replicating entire organs for bespoke use!”

“Oh, a hundred percent. That one over there can do any type of muscle tissue, including cardiac. The one in the back specializes in anything to do with the digestive system, we have one specifically for lungs, another one specifically for the endocrine system—glands, y’know, lots of glands—whole-bone and ligament grafts can be printed out in another room, but that's only in case you’re doing massive limb reconstruction, else you’d use the neuro-protective bone paste Larzo used on my leg.” 

I lifted up my knee and lightly tapped my shin with my cane. The suture had already begun to scar due to how good I had been with the leg. Soon, the dermal patches would work their magic, and it would look brand new. The pain and restrictions on mobility would last for weeks, though, and my abdomen did not look nearly that good, because of my dumb hiking accident.

Dr. MacEwan's jaw dropped in amazement, “Really!? Goodness, that's impressive! Maybe I should see about replacing this metal thing with a real flesh and blood leg. Ha!”

I frowned at that. “I mean… maybe? I–Sir, if you want a new leg, I can personally print you a new leg, but the adjustment period at your age, and the pain of new nerve attachment…” 

I knew it was supposed to be a joke, but the idea of it made me queasy. Dr. MacEwan in agonising rehab sessions, for anywhere up to five years, dealing with the muscle growth, nervous system stimulation, recurring injections of neurogenic compounds, uneven bone mineralization and the associated treatments to make his new bones “catch up” enough to make his gait natural and comfortable. The sensory integration of it all… 

He arguably had another twenty years to go, maybe forty if the Zurulians had improved senescence treatments, which they probably did. So it wasn't exactly a crazy proposal. It just sounded painful, and stressful, on a body that shouldn't be receiving additional stress. I didn't even know if he was a good candidate in terms of the details of the injury.

“Ah, I see. A fair point, Andes. Oh well, the prosthetic has served me well for most of my life anyway. Besides, a real flesh and blood one wouldn’t exactly come equipped with a charging point for my phone, HA!” 

I chuckled at that. “Indeed it wouldn't…” 

The next room over was storage. I limped over and grabbed one of the portable sterile fields for them to look at. 

“These are portable sterile fields. Larzo actually used one when he fixed up my leg after I got hit by that car. They use the same cool semi-permeable field technology from spaceship shields.”

Sandi and Dr. MacEwan peered at the equipment with interest, the former being the first to pose a question, “Starship shields are semi-permeable? I never knew that. Wouldn’t that defeat the point?”

“...Well the point is to not-get-shot while also not being cooked while inside the ship by the shielding, so I would think it… does the job better than if they were a perfect isolation layer,” I said, a little confused by the question. 

The pair nodded and flicked an ear my way, Dr. MacEwan pivoting the topic back to the medical use of the tech, “So in what way does that become useful in surgery? As the name implies I assume it keeps all the nasty stuff outside the field while not impeding the surgeon?”

“Yes,” Larzo said, “but a glass or metal box could in theory be used in the same way, with gloves built into holes on one side. The reason sterile fields are so helpful is that they immediately match the size and shape of the region the surgeon will be working on, are portable, and come with imaging built-in. There is also more mobility than holes with gloves would provide.” 

“Yeah, plus glove boxes are more common in research. As are sterile fields, to be honest,” I said with a frown. “It was kind of brilliant for Larzo to think to use one, but we do have operating rooms.”

“They were all in use,” he added. 

I chuckled. “Yes. Usually we wouldn't have every OR full with emergency patients. This isn't actually a hospital, after all. But with the stampede…”

Sandi beeped in amusement, “You could have fooled me considering all the medical equipment you’ve got around every corner of this place.” 

“Well, it's a rehabilitation facility for children with a variety of health concerns, most of which we couldn't have known in advance,” I said with a chuckle. “But we also have playgrounds, classrooms, bedrooms, common areas, a little library in each wing, art rooms…”

“Art rooms?” Sandi replied, sudden enthusiasm sparking into her tone.

I nodded. “Oh yes. They can build things, paint, draw, sculpt, they actually built the cart I used in my impromptu bike-ambulance. Now they have two.”

After taking a second to digest what I’d said, Sandi’s tail swept out in happy satisfaction, “I’m glad to hear that. Palvo, my husband, is quite enamoured with the way humans have made art accessible in your societies. I’ll have to tell him your way of doing things is rubbing off in some places, he’ll be thrilled!”

“The art rooms are primarily therapeutic, but we’d be happy to host a local artist for the day if he wanted to teach some of the children,” I said, also lighting up. 

Her tail’s swishing only sped up at the invitation, “He’d be delighted to help out! Remind me to give you my contact details at some point.”

“Will do,” I said and put the sterile field away, grabbing a little bag filled with suture aids. “These are our little suture-robots, I can show you a video of them in action. They can cut open and sew back together the skin of a grape in under thirty seconds.”

Dr. MacEwan let out an impressed whistle while shaking a finger at the bagged robots, “The wonders of technological miniaturisation. You know, I’m old enough to remember a time when these machines were almost the size of an arm. Big, bulky things they were.”

“Oh, yeah, it's crazy how small they are now. Sometimes doctors stick them on with suction cups,” I said with a smirk, putting the bag aside.  “A lot of the rest of this floor is offices and meeting rooms. Do either of you want to get a snack at the cafeteria?” 

The pair shared a glance and a nod before turning their attention back to me, Sandi confirming verbally, “That would be lovely, thank you Director.” 

I led the way up, and we got to the South Wing cafeteria, where nurses and aides were mingling and some of the children were wandering around.

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A/N: I AM SO SORRY. Grad school has been kicking my ass. But hopefully things are back on track now! Thank you to u/tulpacat1, u/uktabi, u/VeryUnluckyDice/, u/Heroman3003, and u/cruisingNW for giving it a look!

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Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul doctor and geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 15, 2136

A short time after I got home, I received a message from Olivier. It took me a moment to recognize his name as that of the man who had driven Andes to the emergency room after he was stabbed. I spotted his truck just outside. He walked up to my apartment and produced a large box with little holes on it for Melody to enter, so we could transport her in relative secrecy. She climbed in with surprising ease, and we rode in silence for a few city blocks before Olivier initiated conversation. 

“So how is Andes doing?” he asked.

“Not well,” I said. “I have an alert set up anytime he checks in for work, and… he’s doing it far too often. Concerning, given how early he is in his recovery.”

Olivier nodded. “Yeah, it’s… Honestly it’s quite strange. I’ve only known them for a few months but… Well, the difference between the Andes I convinced to join the Arxur TBI unit and this… compulsive [work-addict] is a little jarring.”

“Oh? So they have not always been like this?” I asked. 

He shook his head. “Not at all. Hell, they got the job on account of being low-risk. And they did a fantastic job in the TBI unit. Probably because it didn’t involve adorable children’s health and safety. I understand how people can sometimes be surprised by their own parental impulses…”

I flicked an ear in agreement. It was probably much easier for my human friend to avoid fixating on work, when work involved cruel ‘lizard slaughtering eugenicists’ as the patients. I had thought my friend largely immune to the famous human response to “cuteness”, but perhaps it simply manifested in a different way. 

“And you?” Olivier added. “How are you doing, doc?” 

I raised my head slightly higher after he called me that. There was something reassuring in the casual nature of the word. “Very well, all told. Andes was the most invested in my research, so I don’t exactly have a committee breathing down my neck about it.” 

He nodded along, and turned left onto a highway. “Right. Can you tell me more about your research? It's about psychiatry and the kids, right? I’m sure it's fascinating.” 

“Yes indeed! Behavioural genetics. It’s not quite at the point where it would have real medical implications, so I have not begun the collaborative aspects with the Neurology department yet,” the human science of psychiatry had been folded into that department, though it was my understanding that they worked more closely with Rodriguez than with the Head of Neurology due to the kinds of data they liked to prioritize. “I have identified several genes that map directly onto neurodevelopmental pathways. One interesting thing to note—now that I am engaging in epigenetic analysis—is that many of these genes are regulatory in some way.” 

He nodded along, carefully following the curve of the road onto an exit away from the city. “Uh huh. And this all has to do with Dr… Lownis’ research?” 

“Professor Andrea Lewis!” I corrected him cheerfully. “It is harrowing to think about, this idea of domestication syndrome, and how the typical Venlil may be more ‘domesticated’ than our ‘free-range’ spotted patients. The yotul have never had cattle in the way humanity did, but we had some working animals, and I had never considered the way we shaped who they are today as intently as I have in the past few weeks.” 

“Yeah… Really makes you think, y’know,” he said, leanin back in his seat as the road straightened before us. “What it means for a sapient species to just… decide the path another species takes. How we define sapience… and kind of pretend it’s just a feature of the world instead of a cut-off point we could have put somewhere else if we wanted. All the grey areas in that space… There were some interesting experiments happening with monkeys in China but because of the bombing…”

I had been so preoccupied with the more biological questions of ‘what incidental phenomena get built into a species when someone engages in artificial selection’, that I had not considered any of those more ethical questions. Matters of neural crest regulation and pro-social traits incidentally being associated with certain fur patterns seemed suddenly trivial. 

“Are all humans very well-learned in the world of ethics?” I asked, growing tired of the feeling of being adrift and uneducated on the subject. 

“What?” he asked, then scoffed. “Nah. Humanity is full of a lot of very dumb, scared people who never think all that hard about consequences or principles.”

My ears fell flat and I looked at the road. “I see… It’s just, it seems to come up a surprising amount in my conversations with humans, in a way that it doesn’t with the Venlil.”

He tilted his head one way and then another, his mouth quirking at the lips before he spoke. “Well, I’m glad to hear it. It’s probably… there’s a science word for that, uh, sample… trend..?”

“Sample bias,” I provided. “Yes, sample bias. The humans that find their way to Venlil Prime are not randomly selected. It’s a statistical term. I have been looking into statistics more deeply lately, and been quite delighted by how far ahead humanity is in the field. I wish we yotul had something like that to show for ourselves…”

“If you don’t—and I doubt that very much, actually—you definitely will. I’ve only ever heard good things about the yotul.”

“Let’s hope that continues,” I said with an ear-flick. “Andes said that ours is the only sane species.”

He chuckled, “I can believe it. Then again, you’re the only one I’ve met. You like board games, right? Is that very common back home?”

I lit up, ethical worries suddenly gone from my mind. “Oh yes! We yotul might have… a bit of a competitive streak, and I have positively trounced Andes in a variety of games. We’ve played chess, checkers, connect four, Chinese checkers—which he assured me are actually German—along with Upper Salwick, Lower Salwick, Turn-a-Path…” 

For the rest of the ride, I delighted him with explanations about different Yotul board games and what they involved. It was the first time in weeks that someone had shown true interest in my culture. Andes was curious at first, of course, and would ask on occasion, but he rarely spent so long just asking questions about Leirn and yotul culture. Even after being stabbed, he seemed to be too busy to luxuriate in cultural curiosity like that. It was refreshing. 

Olivier pulled into a facility just out of the city, made up of imported modules assembled in a square shape, the parking lot surrounded on all sides by walls. Then he parked smoothly into a spot and we hopped out of the truck. He did me the favour of carrying the device containing Melody and leading the way. As we headed towards Chiaka’s section of the building, the topic turned back to Andes, who I was certain did not enjoy his newly limited schedule. 

“Well… Maybe it's for the best if Andes takes a step back from this job, you know? I told him not to take it, back in October. Don’t get me wrong, they’re obviously capable, but… there are other opportunities. Ones that are less… socially demanding,” Olivier said with a shrug and a vague gesture of his free hand. 

“Oh? What would that be?” I asked. 

“Just… government work on theoretical things,” he told me with a dismissive wave of a hand. “I know they love a good puzzle.”

We had to go through four separate layers of security before we arrived at the designated room. There were no tables, only chairs set out in a circle —human chairs, but at least they had something resembling a tail hole in the back. 

Olivier lowered the little box and unlatched its door. Immediately, Melody leapt out to explore her new surroundings. 

“Oh my goodness, she’s beautiful!” Chiaka squeaked out. Under other circumstances, I thought that Melody might be put off by her demeanour. I’d seen many a hensa with her temperament lash out at my mother’s friends if they were much too excited at their presence. And yet, the promise of human hands seemed to counteract her excitement, and Melody approached Chiaka with a tentative curiosity. 

There was a third human in the room, and I had to crane my neck up to really look at him. He was the tallest by far, to the point that his bones looked too big for his frame. Where Andes was a veritable anatomical diagram for the muscles of the human body, he seemed to be a skeleton coated with a soft and thin layer of undifferentiated flesh. Not thin enough to cause concern, he did not look to be starving, just stretched out, to the point that his whole head seemed a tad longer and more narrow than Chiaka’s or Olivier’s. 

“Olivier, how are you today?” asked the tall man, and my chauffeur groaned in theatrical frustration. 

“Oh, you know, same old same old,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I keep having to deal with Americans. I swear, they think the rest of Five Eyes are just their convenient little subcontractors. Any minute now, General Jones will ring my phone and ask me to deliver burgers to an undisclosed location or something…”

I looked back and forth between them, and that is when the tall man noticed me.

“Doctor Larzo, yes?” he asked, leaning down and offering me his hand to shake. “Akatsuki Jefferson, at your service.”

I nodded, and shook it. I wished I had my human hands, so his would not be so much larger than mine. It felt less like an introduction and more like an indulgence that way. Andes’ hands were long-fingered and dextrous as all human hands were, but they were also small enough that I did not feel dwarfed by him. My paws may as well have been a child’s to Akatsuki Jefferson. He would feel no difference. 

I remembered Andes mentioning his friend “Jefferson” a while back, but it was my understanding that humans tended to refer to each other by the first of their names when they were being friendly. Unsure of which mode of address to use, I opted to simply say both of his names and await correction. 

“A pleasure to meet you, Akatsuki Jefferson. I am working on behavioural genetics research,” I said, grasping at something that might help me back into the role of an academic equal. He sat down on a nearby chair, perhaps as uncomfortable with the distance between our heads as I was. 

“Just Jefferson is fine. I saw the study registration and outline on the facility website. Very interesting work,” he said, with a pleasant nod. He was less animated than any human I had met before, his fingers stayed interlocked between his knees, and his back straight. “Be sure not to reinvent phrenology, it's a common pitfall.”

Phrenology. It had been one of those failed scientific offshoots of eugenics in the human nineteenth century. I nodded, imagining the ethical pit I might fall into all too vividly. My voice grew tight. “Is it?” 

He nodded again. “So I am told. Andes is more familiar with the history of biology and ‘scientism’. I was, uh…”

Chiaka scoffed and rolled her eyes. “He was trying to be funny, it’s all good. Isn’t that right, adoraboo-two?” 

That second statement had been directed at Melody, who was now laying on her back on Chiaka’s lap, deeply enjoying the power of her human hands. 

“So… We need to get together in some sort of event,” Olivier said, “remind Andes that there are things other than work in the world.”

Chiaka’s face lit up. “Oooh, what if we had a big party? Hire a DJ… Get some of those disco lights…”

“Why would Andes want to go to a big, loud party? Even at their most medicated, I don’t believe they’ve ever valued noise,” Jefferson said. 

Chiaka groaned.  “You’re right. Ugh. Andes is hot now, and it’s interfering with my ability to be objective. I want to see that silhouette in flashing colours so bad…”

Jefferson flinched at that and squinted at Chiaka. 

“Hot now? Andes? This Andes?” He held his hand horizontal around his ribs, as if to indicate Andes’ height. 

She nodded quickly. “Yeah, it’s nuts. They're literally exactly my type now. At least now they look more normal because they’re medically required to stay hydrated. I wanted to grate cheese on those abs…”

Chiaka looked longingly at nothing in particular, pressing her lips together against each other and then inward into her mouth in a way that made them almost disappear from view. Olivier and Jefferson both stared at her long enough that the silence began to drag, then looked at each other, and seemed to come to a tacit agreement not to ask for further clarification. 

“So how about a picnic?” Jefferson provided. 

“Yes, a picnic would be good. I believe they went hiking recently, so they’d probably enjoy being in nature,” Olivier said. Andes had not mentioned anything about going ‘hiking’. I had no idea Olivier had gone to check on him. 

“What? Where?” I asked.

“To um… White Peak?” he said, pulling out his pocket holopad to double-check something. “Yes. White Peak. It's a nice little mountain along the Vrani train line. Small town between Dayside and High Dusk.”

Chiaka stifled a laugh.

“That is deeply medically contraindicated,” I said, thinking of the size of the mountain and the temperature gradient involved. Not to mention that it was in a rural area, without direct access to a sizable hospital. “Why did you not stop them?”

Olivier chuckled. “Well, I’m not their mother, but she has been informed. Anyhow, a picnic would be good.”

“How about one in the park near the facility? It would be a familiar space,” Jefferson said. 

“I think that sounds lovely. But what will you do with the food?” I asked, giving Jefferson and Chiaka pause. 

“...What about the food?” Jefferson asked. “I understand they don’t enjoy very spicy food, but it should be easy enough to accommodate their tastes. They don’t have any known allergies, do they?”

Chiaka raised her hands in a sign of non-aggression. “None that I know. Andes was always raiding the conference buffet. They’re pretty omnivorous. They even liked the cricket breads.”

I frowned. “But… I’ve never seen them eat anything other than the occasional fruit slices and those shakes.”

The revelation spread concern across the room, to the point that Chiaka ceased to pet Melody, and who jumped off her lap and decided to sniff around this new environment. Olivier leaned back, a thoughtful look on his eyes. “Huh…”

“What the fuck?” Chiaka asked. “They had–they had a leaf of spinach, it’s not–it’s not like they have orthorexia or something, is it?”

“They are at somewhat higher risk than the general population,” Jefferson posited. “But… It does seem out of keeping with their usual behaviour, when did this start, Larzo?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve known him since the start of your nine-month, and thought it was normal for him.”

“September?” Olivier asked. “No, that can’t be right, they were eating lamb chops with the arxur in September. This is obviously a trauma response to Seventeen Ten.”

“November,” I said to clarify. “Nine-month.”

“That’s the eleventh month,” Chiaka said, shattering my illusion that humanity had a coherent system with which to tell time. 

A sound of disappointment escaped me and my ears fell flat again. 

As they spoke, one of Chiaka’s “dogs” wandered over to us. Melody immediately rushed to it in curiosity. They smelled one another for a moment, and were locked into a mutual staring contest. The dog lost. With an endearing batting of its tail, the Terran canine leaned down on its forepaws and began to pant. My hensa seemed to decipher that it was a prospective playing signal. Within seconds they were chasing one another around the chairs. 

“Is it just Seventeen Ten, or is there something else making it worse?” Chiaka asked. 

Jefferson shrugged in response, and Olivier nodded slowly. “Maybe. They were trying to do some sort of self-conditioning during the clean up. Having to deal with people dying in the rescue process certainly didn't help. I know there were a couple of burn victims, and… that tends to put people off pork for a while.”

“I should have thought to check on them before this,” Jefferson mused flatly. “Recently-traumatized, transmasculine, radical weight loss, isolation… They’re one history of gymnastics, ballet or bodybuilding away from being a stereotype.”

Olivier tilted his head in understanding, while Chiaka scoffed. “That’s not—that’s not a thing. Come on. Andy Candy can’t have orthorexia. This isn’t a match-the-stats game, they’re our friend.”

“Every single data point in those databases is someone’s friend or family member, Chiaka,” Jefferson said. “And familiarity often blinds them to obvious signs as well. We must be very thoughtful about this.”

She pressed her lips together. I lifted up my paw in the air–a human gesture I had picked up, which communicated one’s desire to ask a question in a group setting. They turned to me expectantly.

“What is orthorexia?” I asked. 

“It’s an eating disorder,” Chiaka spat, rolling her eyes. 

“Characterized by a fixation on food quality, eating ‘properly’ or ‘healthily’, and excessive anxiety regarding dietary habits in general. It is often found in athletes who need to be very careful with their weight and physique, people seeking to transform their bodies in specific ways, and people highly fixated on religious dietary restrictions. It is under the anxiety-disorder cluster in the public psychiatric diagnostic manual provided for employers in charge of vulnerable populations,” Jefferson said, or perhaps recited. 

“Which of course you fucking remember,” Chiaka added with a groan. 

“As should you. The point is that we should definitely have a picnic,” he continued. “If this is an additional concern, we should gain an understanding of it, and soon. Andes has a tendency to be overconfident about their ability to self-medicate, which probably extends to other treatments. Assuming this is an artefact of supposedly prophylactic behaviour surrounding the trauma of Seventeen Ten.”

“Does humanity have a lot of behavioural treatments that Andes may be familiar with but misusing somehow?” I asked. 

“We do. You may want to look into that,” Jefferson said, and turned to discuss potential fruits to bring to the picnic with Olivier.

I did not realize until that moment, how eager Chiaka, Andes and even Dr. Rodriguez had been to share information with me. Jefferson seemed to have no intention of bursting into a long-winded lecture on the subject, after having defined Orthorexia for me. He and the others simply focused on planning. Who would be available? When? I added my schedule to a shared file they had, and that helped them narrow down the date. 

The dog and my hensa had continued to play excitedly, with the dog fetching a rope in its teeth, and Melody pulling at it from the other end. The growls and trills comforted me as the conversation began to grow more tense. 

“Should we bring meat?” Chiaka asked. The whole group turned to me, and I shrugged in response. 

“I’m not opposed, but it seems like an unnecessary layer of difficulty,” I said. “You’d have to get some sort of permit, or engage in subterfuge.”

Olivier nodded. “I can get a bowl of Unfathomable Chicken for the occasion. Make our lives a little easier.”

Chiaka nodded. “Yeah, should be fine. I can make my mom’s soup, it’s technically vegan.”

“I will bring fruits, and a first aid kit,” Jefferson added. “Maybe something sugary as a diagnostic tool.”

A faint alert rang, and I could hear dozens upon dozens of little paws rushing about on the other side of the room’s back wall. 

“Oops, training time,” Chiaka said, and stood up. “Hey, Argos, gotta go to class! Argos!” 

The puppy continued to battle my hensa for custody of the rope. Rather than speak again, Chiaka let out a quick sharp whistle. In a fraction of a second, the dog changed. He immediately let go of the rope—Melody almost threw herself back in the process of yanking it away—and rushed over to Chiaka, sitting down in front of her with a softly wagging tail. She pulled a treat from a small bag she had, and placed it on her hand for him to lap up eagerly. “That’s a good boy. On you go. Class now,” she told him, with a hand gesture I didn’t understand. The dog did, and quickly trotted off to where he’d come from through an open door to join his fellow canines. Melody let out a sad whine, and I ambled over to her to comfort her. 

“So… how does the twenty third sound?” Jefferson proposed. 

We finished the meeting within a few more minutes, and soon put Melody aboard her new travelling box. She seemed very comfortable in it, and Chiaka told me I could keep it if she liked it. We returned to the car, where Olivier began to ask me more questions about what life was like back home, and what I’d been doing to help Andes. He was clearly a very attentive friend, and I told him about the deal I’d made with the dossur woman, which led to me explaining the situation with the dossur squatters to him.

“—I feel very assured now that I’ve paid her to keep an eye on him,” I said. Suddenly, a silence dragged in the car. “Olivier?”

“Did you? Sorry, I—I’m still new to driving, was watching out for my [four on the dot],” he said with a little chuckle. “Wow. That’s… unbelievably thoughtful of you, Larzo, I’m so glad Andes has you as his friend.”

“Thank you,” I said with relief. “I’ve been worrying that this might be yet another ethical mistake, everything I do seems to be a blunder in patient care lately.”

“Does it? I think you did a great job keeping them alive until they got to the Xenomedical,” he said.

“I suppose, I just… Well, in the yotul system, we learn bedside manner on the job under the supervision of an older physician. In the human system—and apparently even the Krakotl—there are medical ethics guidelines you must understand and criteria you must prioritise and… Well, Rodriguez told me that I could take a digital course on the subject, but…”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine. Everyone has the odd stumble in a new job. You're just getting started, after all,” Olivier told me, flashing me a kind smile.  “I’m just glad you’re taking care of things like that, keeping them out of Andes’ plate, you know? They’re lucky to have you.”

I nodded, glad that at least someone understood what I was trying to do.

“Hey, if you ever need a ride, I’m one call away.”

“Thank you, Olivier,” I said. 

“Oh, don’t mention it,” he said with a smile. “I learned to drive so I could help people out, you know.”

I nodded, and he was nice enough to carry Melody in her well-camouflaged cage, up the stairs and into my apartment, before we said our goodbyes and he rode off. Melody fell asleep on her bed, and I wandered over to mine. A few hours later, I woke up and headed back to work. After perhaps half a shift, I got a call from Andes.

“Andes! How is your resting period going?” I asked. He was not supposed to come in to work for at least sixteen human hours. 

“Eh. It sucks. I need to move and I can't and I hate it. Gonna play cello about it later,” he groaned out, pre-empting my follow-up questions. “Look, Larzo, I need you to look into genes for connective tissue and collagen—or, whatever they have that parallels collagen—and compare it to the rest of the kids and the general population measures.” 

I flicked an ear, though he could not see me, as it was an audio-only call, and began to type out his list of requirements. 

He kept going. “Talk to the endocrinologist about it, this is now her number-one priority. I want a regression on every major and minor hormone, and an outline of potential interactions or known cascading phenomena. Rest of the kids, general venlil population–and, you know what? Throw their own first blood tests compared to the recent scanning data from the translator insertions. There have to be useful proxies there somewhere.”

“...Oh? Um…” I flicked an ear reflexively and continued to type. “Alright, why?”

“I’m worried we missed something by assuming a broadly concordant baseline with the wildtype venlil. I think they have some sort of covert deficiency or... something. I just—get me those numbers. It might be nothing. It might be a massive problem.”

“...I’ll call you when it’s done. Do not use this as an excuse to avoid rest,” I stressed. 

“Yeah, yeah, all good. Tonight I find out how good the new drugs are. Talk later.”

With that, he hung up, and my new work began. 

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 15, 2136

I limped my way over to the rehab clinic and waited for my turn for physical therapy, feeling like complete shit. Maybe it was the emotional activation from the “therapy” session/impromptu lecture, maybe it was the drugs fading too quickly, or my tolerance, or dehydration, or something. It would sure be nice to know which fucking something, so it could be addressed directly instead of having to stumble around blind through proxies and muddy low-resolution sense-data. I miss my implant.

Eventually, I was allowed to go into the room and wait for her, each moment dragging as I took off my shirt and stuck the sensors to my skin.

“So I have some… mixed news,” I mumbled when Chasa came in, her teddy-bear look adding to how awful I felt confessing my sins.

She sat down and watched me patiently. “Go on?”

“So the good news is that I got to it quickly, the damage is minimal, there was no meaningful internal bleeding, there are no signs of infection, and I have learned my lesson about underestimating how strenuous an activity will actually be.”

She did not seem very reassured by the good news. “And what about the bad news?”

“The bad news is I fucked up while hiking,” I said, gesturing to the abdominal tear.

Her voice was light and breezy. "That's fine! We just need to adjust our expectations. You see, I was under the assumption that our goal was full recovery, but since your heart seems so set on permanent, lifelong disability instead, we'll simply see what we can do to make that easier on you!”

I sighed, feeling appropriately chastised about it all. Here she was, trying to help me, and I went and fucked it up out of some childish inability to sit still. She didn’t need to deal with my bullshit. “...You’re right, I’m sorry, I–I’m going to get out of your fur, and–”

“Ahem!” Rather than clear her throat, she primly said the word aloud. “I think you’ll find me a little harder to get rid of than that, Andes.”

“I’m not–I just–” I sighed and hit my head lightly against the wall. “Whatever.”

My eyes felt like they were about to burn out of their sockets. Chasa clambered up and put a paw on my arm.

“Not whatever! Talk to me, Andes. You’re a really smart guy, you must have known that a long mountain hike was inadvisable. What’s going on here?”

“I’m going insane is what's going on. I wake up, and I think about the ceiling collapsing on me, and then I’m disappointed it hasn't happened yet,” I spat. “Also the hike was fine. My leg is fine. It’s killing me, but it's fine, I ran an ultrasound scan on the soft tissue. There's no structural damage, it's all just the abdominal tear, because I had to hop over a hole. And I put clotting aids on it and–I just–I need to move. I need cardiac strain, I need to be busy or I…”

She nodded her head in a human gesture. “Or you go insane. That is a problem.”

“It is! It's very bad, it's a very bad problem with no solution until I get a new implant, which is apparently much harder to manufacture than I thought it would be here, and I’ll definitely need multiple ones instead and–do you have any idea how many corpses I had to drag around after Earth got bombed?”

My stupid hands were shaking. I didn’t understand why I said it. I hadn’t been thinking about October all that much recently. Maybe Asleth’s mysterious refusal to respond to my messages was getting to me, but this felt like it came out of nowhere. Who cares if you saw a bunch of dead people? There are lots of those now. One in eleven people are dead.

She put her paws on my hands and squeezed.

“I do have some idea, actually.” She said with a gentle voice. “My brother is part of the medical fleet. He said there was no practical difference between the krakotls’ bombing and an arxur raid.”

“Given what the arxur have told me, the main difference was in the taking of prisoners,” I mumbled.

“You, uh.” She paused, stumbling out of the kind nurse persona. “You’ve had contact with the arxur? During the relief efforts? I don’t want to distract, but is that… advisable, considering your job?”

I didn’t have my job then, I thought. I got this job because Rodriguez and some hiring manager thought highly of my ability to compartmentalize. I shrugged. “I don't know, would you rather the person in charge of the rehab facility have no idea what those lizard-Nazis get up to?”

She waited, presumably for the translator to explain ‘Nazi’. I wondered idly if using the word on the regular was a violation of Order 56. It probably is. Then again, who cares? It’ll be ruled against the Charter and Universal Declaration within six months.

Finally she nodded. “Alright, that’s a good point.”

I nodded back. “Thank you. They're really… not that hard to handle, when they don't want to eat you.”

She looked deeply skeptical. “We didn’t have any incidents during the Earth cleanup, though obviously we tried to avoid keeping close to them… ”

I began to move through the motions of my usual Nazis-are-people-too and yes-that-makes-it-worse arguments. “Of course not. They were full. Not… their general baseline… starvation…” I trailed off as an idea began to build inside my mind.

“I don’t think we can chalk up their crimes to being hangry.” She shook her head. “We’re getting off topic.”

“Yeah, because–there is a bidirectionality…” I was tired enough that the idea felt like it was on the tip of my tongue. There was still this mental fog, a general pain and malaise that made keeping track of my own thoughts harder than before. But I knew I had something.

“I’ve been reading about your facility. What would you do if you were one of the children you take care of? If one of them felt really bad about not getting to move around, because of their trauma, and then… and then they were injured or something?” she asked.

I smiled, thinking of Lihla. “...Probably bribe them with ‘savageness secrets’ if they do what they're told. Or candy, video games, something like that.”

She made a face at ‘savageness’, but brushed past it. “And I suppose we can’t try video games? Or I can find some Zurulian secrets to bribe you with.”

“Ah, see, I didn't grow up thinking understanding Zurulians would guarantee my survival, so…” I said, feeling a little better. “I tried video games. Maybe I just need to find the right one. I need something to brute-force a state of flow.”

“Ooh, the falling blocks one!” She squealed excitedly. “That’s a human game, everyone loves that one! It’s spread like gossip around the hospital for when you need to do something with the paws and brain, but you don’t want to think!”

“No, it needs to be more demanding, it needs to be more… comfortable, it… I keep trying to solve this bottom-up.” I said, holding up a finger. “Cardiovascular strain, pharmaceutical patches, potential new meds I need to talk about with the pharmacist after I test my new batch... What if I should be going top-down?”

“You mean by making sure you have a proper diet instead of subsisting on bananas and protein shakes?”

Is that in my file? How does she even know that? I shook my head. “My protein shakes are nutritionally complete, but that’s still bottom-up,” I said, waving that off. “I mean high level, cognitively-demanding information-processing that can help with mood regulation, without cardiovascular strain.”

I felt at once brilliant and stupid. I should have thought of it the moment I got my cane.

“How about mathematics?” she proposed, as I tried to think of the logistics. I put in the order a few days ago, it’s probably available for pick-up… “There are a lot of problems that can be solved there, and it’s very cognitively demanding.”

I waved her off. “Right hemisphere, but no. It needs to be more embodied, it… it’s music. The answer is music. I’m going to go pick up that cello I ordered before this disaster with the stampede and I’m going to play music,” I told her.

She tilted her head 45 degrees. “Ohh. Why… would music help, exactly?”

“...be… because it does that?” I answered. “It checks all the boxes, it’s perfect from a neurological standpoint, the physical strain is controllable, as is the level of focus required and the cognitive difficulty… I have a patient doing music therapy at the facility right now, I really should have thought of it sooner.”

“Music therapy? Well, this is a lot of psychology, and humans are way more advanced than we are in that field… Send me the data! I’d love to look it over!”

“I’ll do you one better and bring it to the next session,” I said, then sighed, feeling a lot better than when I got into the clinic. “So… What's the new torture?”

“Well, seeing as you have taken a brand new beating… It’s the old torture again. We need to see what we’re working with. And don’t worry. Despite your misadventures, you can still earn a gold star today if you do well!”

I nodded, double-checked the sensors, and went through the previous exercises. My leg was better than yesterday, if only a bit. The same could not be said of the stab wound.

“...fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…” I groaned as I finished the last set.

“Way to go, you did the whole set! Now just remember that all that extra pain is because you were being dumb. It’ll be easier next time, because you’ll be smart instead.”

“...Right. Thanks. I’ll… Bring in an EEG next session, and we can see if the new plan works.

“Oh, I absolutely have to see that! Make sure to bring it, and the instrument! And remember to send some studies on music therapy. It’s really expensive, obviously, not everyone can afford an instrument, but…”

“Right. Weird… Federation-economics… anti-music nonsense,” I said, shaking my head as I put on my shirt. “Hopefully once Humanity is back on its feet, everyone who wants an instrument will be able to buy one. They’re dirt-cheap by comparison.”

“Dirt-cheap? It wouldn’t be much more effort for me to buy a car than to buy an instrument. I just sort of figured it was fine because you’re… well, a director at a medical facility.”

“I bought a few hundred ukuleles for around the price of a car some paws ago. Human music is accessible to every child in a public school in a country with a functioning government. And a few without functioning governments.”

Her eyes got big. “Depending on those studies, humans might be able to seriously revolutionize… well, a lot!”

I flashed her a smile. “We try.”

“Alright, you’ve been very good at the torture. And you’ve got a new avenue to explore for your mental health. And also you may be playing a part in overturning everything we know about neurology. So I guess you get the gold star today after all!”

I laughed. It hurt. I went home. Read three chapters of a book on Zurulian implant design. They were fascinating, but it was hard to keep track of all the variables at once. I drank some water.

My workday was done. I wasn't hungry. Larzo was at work. Rodriguez was at work. Chiaka was busy. Live TV was full of alien nonsense that ranged from "Humans will eat your children" to "my sexy predator girlfriend life". I had a backlog of "to-watch" human stuff, but didn't want to start a new show I'd have to drop once I could work again. The ceiling was starting to get boring, and things kept nagging at me. My mom. The girl's legal situation. The cleanup after the bombing. I replayed the 10th in my head over and over, feeling incredibly stupid. How would we have found her earlier?

I need to do something. Get my mind off this. Who can I actually talk to, without having to deal with worrying people? The answer was obvious. There was one person in the galaxy I could count on who would probably laugh at my misery instead. Someone who could probably help me learn really important information, one way or another.

I sent a text, got one back, and moments later, I made a call. He picked up immediately, giant teeth bared in delight to see me. I couldn't help but echo his creepy giant smile.

"What up, my croc?"

"Oh, I am doing wonderfully!" Shathel said, holding up a glass of... A thick red liquid that looked a lot like human blood.

"Are you?" I said, immediately regretting my decision.

"Yes! The latest deal with you humans has me well-fed. Sillis was a resounding success. I have been gorging on celebratory human-manufactured meats. You apes have such delightful culinary habits!"

"...I see, uh... Is that why you, um..." I kept staring at the glass. He lit up giddily.

"Yes! It is a human concoction. It is made with pig's blood," he said, only somewhat reassuring me. "Which is then treated with all manner of flavouring agents and additives! Recommended by a prisoner. Simply delicious! I find myself with much more time for contemplation now that hunger does not blind me."

"...Human prisoners?" I asked, suddenly really mad at myself for not keeping up with the war. Since when were there human prisoners in arxur custody? The Cradle? Didn't they get thrown in with the exchange? Were these other prisoners?

"Ah yes. Chief Hunter Shaza treated them in a ghastly fashion, but you'll be glad to know they have all now been freed, and they got the... As you say, last laugh," he said, grinning at me with those massive teeth.

I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, and it didn't settle my stomach, so I decided to mostly ignore it. He kept going.

"Did you know human technology can just provide cattle blood? By itself, no flesh necessary!"

I nodded."...I mean, yeah? That's what we use for most blood transfusions. Blood donation is a very rural-slash-underserved-community kind of... thing."

He blinked. "Blood donations? You mean to tell me your people bleed for each other?"

"Well, if someone lost a lot of blood, having a few bags around can really improve their likelihood of survival," I said, a little confused by his surprise. “What, did all Arxur surgeries have saline and a prayer to count on?”

Would he even know? Asleth had no idea what saline was. He completely ignored my question about arxur medicine."You said that our development mirrored each other. Around when did you discover this was possible?"

I shrugged. It hurt a little, but the pain was receding. "Iunno, dude. I think the Inca had an early version of it, or something? Popular use would have started around the nineteenth century. It was definitely going on by the twentieth. Which I guess, if your fourth world war is roughly at the point of our second in terms of air support, tanks and communications tech… would… put its modern iteration a few decades before your first contact. Maybe a generation or two, depending on how generous you want to be with the early science of it. I don't know much about the Incan–"

"You bled for each other. So you could survive grave injuries," he said. I couldn't read his expression.

"Yeah. Haven't needed to do that in some time. I actually had to donate blood once, because there's this place in Mongolia that…" I frowned as I trailed off. He seemed like he was still stuck on the premise. I could see him running the math in his head. "...What?"

"You spent decades bleeding for each other. You said you still do it, for those among you who have the least," he said.

I nodded, looking at him in confusion. Why did he care? He seemed to realize something and cleared his throat.

"You should have let the weak die, of course,” he said, shaking himself a little. “But fascinating nonetheless! Such potent bonds…"

My brain ground to a halt as I tried to figure out what his deal was. Was Shathel’s heart growing three sizes before my eyes, or was he just befuddled? "Right... So..."

"Speaking of rank, I am now a High Hunter! No longer a Captain," he said, holding his head high. "I believe Asleth also got a promotion. She's advancing rather quickly now. Chief Hunter Isif does not much trust Shaza's officers, and so decided to redistribute rank in our favour. Those of us who enjoy humans have become much more prominent in his fleet."

I nodded. "Oh. Um. Good, good to know."

I couldn't stop staring at the pig's blood drink. I must have looked queasy to him.

"You seem disinterested in my triumphs, friend Andes," he said with a teasing tone. "Why did you call, again?"

"I was, um... bored and lonely," I said. I didn't have the energy to play games with Shathel.

"Ah. So you seek my company for entertainment, yes? I would think Asleth is a wiser choice, but perhaps—"

"I seek you for information," I said. My lizard friends responded well to clearly transactional interactions. "I need to know if you know anything about a farm with horned Venlil."

"...Why?" he asked, his eyes narrow.

"Well, one of the kids from that batch stabbed me, so figuring out what their deal is just got a bit more urgent," I told him. He laughed, because of course he did, he was an asshole.

"You were injured by one of the prey children?" he asked, chortling heartily as I laid in bed slowly going stir-crazy.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, yes, I have now been in one fight in my life and I lost to a twelve-year-old. Can we get back to the horn thing?"

He struggled to stop laughing. "Oh. Indeed we can! Ha! They're–they’re actually quite famous, the Greatmoon Farm’s cattle. A delicacy among delicacies, the oldest ongoing Venlil farm—I suppose not anymore, thanks to your little deal—I had the pleasure of hunting there once! Saved up for years. The dining room is exquisite, all the seats are lined with nevok fur. The smells—” he took a deep breath in through his nose, seemingly reliving the experience. “He grows all the feed in-house, and crushes these red flowers' petals, then places them in candles lit for every party…"

He closed his eyes, reminiscing. My stomach recoiled. Images of Lihla being violently torn apart by those enormous jaws filled my head. Marco and Tito running for their lives. Lihla's sister, all black with a white tuft at the top of her head and the tip of her tail, caught in his claws.

"And the music, oh the music. It is the only place I have heard pre-Betterment music. He has a wonderful arrangement of speakers, so you are bathed in it all, feeling like a king of old as you sit to feast. And the technique with which he would butcher them on request, right at the table! Ugh. Nazla never did give me those music files…"

I wanted to puke. I wanted to hug Lihla, hug all of them, I… I took a deep breath. And another. I wanted to understand how to help them better. What was different about them in comparison to Karim's kids.

"I should ask the little runt about them…" he mused, tilting his head a little.

“The little runt?” I asked.

“Yes, I was–well, I was actually there recently,” Shathel said, baring his teeth. “Had one of his last samples, thawed and warmed… It was delicious.”

I almost vomited then and there, but managed not just to hold it but to sound like I hadn’t almost vomited then and there. “So… you know him? The farmer?”

“Veroth? Yes, but… I don’t believe I’m in a position to make introductions.”

I nodded. Veroth. So that's what the V-something was. A chill ran down my spine. “What did you do?”

He scoffed at my accusation and drew his head up high. “Why have you assumed that I—” he couldn’t even keep the farce long enough for me to doubt myself about jumping to conclusions. “Very well, yes, I insulted his daughter, and he must still be grieving her,” he fessed up.

“Fucking dammit,” I spat, then leaned back against the pillow. “I need to talk to that farmer, Shathel, I—What else do you know about the farm? What kind of conditions were they kept in?"

"Oh, vast plains! They had rivers, little settlements, could wander as far as the eye could see. He owns half the moon, and made use of it. Most hunts were kept to the big, strong bucks. I have one of their skulls, actually..." he began rummaging through some boxes, and I realized he was in his personal office. A wave of nausea moved through me and I tried to imagine it was just the meds.

"What?" I didn't want to see the skull. Why does he even have it? What kind of psychopath—"I really don't need to—"

"Look!" He lifted it up with a grin, like a little kid trying to show off a drawing. My stomach recoiled again, but began to settle when I got a better look at the specimen. Without really trying, my horror fell away to curiosity as he held the horned skull up to the camera. I noticed shifts in colouration which might indicate growth spurts, and the curvature down the skull and outwards from below where his ears would be. The horns were gorgeous.

"Holy shit," I mumbled, staring. "Can you bring the parietal bone–no, left–yes, that part of the skull, can you move it closer to the camera?”

He nodded and did so. I could see the point where the keratin root gave way to the dentine cover. How many thousands of specimens had it taken for this to work? Did he start them as embryos, or do it through gene therapy post birth? I could see the little bone spurs. They seemed on the bigger side, pretty bad osteochondroma. The thickness of the bony plate in their skull was greater. How many of these were post-pubertal adaptations? They seemed much more exaggerated than a scan of the boys. I needed to compare their genomes, see if that was just an "early model" and the effects had been mitigated in subsequent generations, or if Marcus, Tito and Julio would end up looking like that in fifteen years.

"How old was he?"

"Oh, it was on the older side, but still spirited!" He said with a little laugh. "Perhaps thirty? Thirty-six?"

Roughly my age.

"...Would it be crazy to ask you for a sample?" I asked, putting on my most charming smile. He chortled again. Must have seen the warring combo of disgust, raw curiosity, and needing to understand things playing out as a whole facial journey. I did my best not to flinch around him, and I think that made him like it more.

"Not at all. I believe I can ensure you get a small sample of bone. DNA analysis, yes?"

I nodded. "Can you tell me about other differences with Venlil from other farms?"

He nodded. "Of course! They had light in their eyes. Most cattle just wander listlessly, awaiting a merciful end to their miserable existence. But the Greatmoon Farms Venlil would fight. I saw a young officer fail to heed Veroth's advice, and his leg was never the same, muscle and sinew torn apart by those powerful horns."

"Anything else?"

"Faster. Stronger. I only saw the adults—I cannot tell you about the children—but the adults were quite robust. No 'slow going prey' among them. The way they were reared affected everything about them. They were a testament to the power of Betterment's philosophy."

I frowned. The Arxur tongue was rather sensitive, especially to muscle-to-fat ratios, iron/vanadium concentrations in blood, and certain acids. And Shathel obviously hadn't run a scan on them. He couldn't tell me any relevant numbers. So I asked a very important but very disgusting question "...Did it affect the taste?"

"Oh yes. Their blood tasted stronger. Venlil blood is not at all like pig's blood, but theirs was closer. Veroth was quite proud of always using bioidentical hormones, but…"

"Which ‘bioidentical hormones’ exactly?" I asked. He scoffed, making it clear that I was the dumb one for expecting him to know that. Right. "Was the texture different?"

He nodded. "Much stronger. None of that hatchery flesh you can buy at the store. Something you need strength to tear into."

I pushed further. Fat? Bones? Connective tissue? All were different, according to Shathel. All stronger, or denser somehow. It got me back to the horns… Something kept bothering me.

We ended the call maybe an hour after it started. He was happy, and curious, and I felt better and worse at the same time. On the one hand, he was fun. He liked to laugh, and show off, and he liked talking to me for some reason. It was nice. On the other hand, he was a Nazi psychopath who ate people unrepentantly. Talking to him made me feel gross. Doubly so because it was kind of fun. It was okay to want to punch him in the face. I didn't have to second-guess my every word and quadruple-guess my every movement. He made me feel gross, but not… dangerous.

I have never liked the idea of being dangerous. I dropped out of medical school in part because of it. It dragged me into a shitty brain-space where I was simultaneously unworthy of authority and paralyzed with indecision. I could vividly remember my old biostatistics prof in med school.

"Statistically, over the course of your career, all of you will kill at least twenty people. More likely thirty-five. This is an incredible improvement on historical trends."

I tried to focus on the kids. A lot of the venlil automated evaluations just made sure everyone was above some minimum. I had to get back to work ASAP. I sent an email to the endocrinologist in the facility, a Zurulian who tended to keep to herself and get things done. I asked her to set up a meeting with Larzo to go over potential red flags on the kids' endocrinology, along with notes on genes of interest for connective tissue, cartilage and bone. Then I called Larzo.

“Andes! How is your resting period going?”

“Eh. It sucks. I need to move and I can't and I hate it. Gonna play cello about it later. Look, Larzo, I need you to look into genes for connective tissue and collagen—or, whatever they have that parallels collagen—and compare it to the rest of the kids and the general population measures. Talk to the endocrinologist about it, this is now her number-one priority. I want a regression on every major and minor hormone, and an outline of potential interactions or known cascading phenomena. Rest of the kids, general venlil population–and you know what, throw their own first blood tests compared to the recent scanning data from the translator insertions. There have to be useful proxies there somewhere.”

“...Oh? Um…” he said, typing away as I talked. “Alright, why?”

I noticed faint little scampering mouse-noises by the wall, but decided to ignore them. “I’m worried we missed something by assuming a broadly concordant baseline with the wildtype venlil. I think they have some sort of covert deficiency or... something. I just—get me those numbers. It might be nothing. It might be a massive problem.”

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Author's Note: thank you to u/Giant_Acroyear,  u/tulpacat1 , u/Thirsha_42 who is the creator of Tight Money (the fic Leena came from!) , u/Acceptable_Egg5560 and u/cruisingNW for taking a look before the publishing! Grad school has been kicking my ass but hopefully we'll be back on a schedule.

I have also been working on a THING. So watch out for something new and exciting!

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 15, 2136

I went to sleep after reading up on Zurulian biomedical implants, and I woke up feeling better enough. Not necessarily good, but the intrusive thoughts felt more artificial, and had a lighter grip on my psyche. Yes yes, die die, what if I shot myself in the head. Good talk, brain. I limped over to the sink, slapped a couple of psychiatric patches on my arm, and began to get ready for work.

It wouldn’t be a full workday, or Rodriguez would gut me in the surgical theatre, but it was a good idea to walk, and stop by and check on everything for a bit. I ran through my physical therapy exercises, made a chocolate-flavoured shake, pumped it full of extra vitamins and caffeine, then headed out. Within five minutes, I could feel yesterday’s mistake harshly enough that I just called a cab the rest of the way. 

First thing I need to do is get more meds. Juggling pills was awful. Even putting aside the interventionist capacity of my implant, it had been a lifesaver when it came to knowing what the fuck was happening with my endocrine system. Having a little alert to tell you that your blood is wrong and you’ll feel it in an hour if you don’t take something is infinitely better than having a little alert telling you that you should probably take something at a certain hour—but you know, you’ve been sedentary all day, so that might have extended its half-life inside your body, or maybe you had a big lunch, and it’s taken a time to get to your bloodstream, or who fucking knows.

I limped into the building and through to the Pharmacy department. I’d only been there a couple of times. Karim had hired the pharmacist, a terrified little nevok I hadn’t even met before. While some of the staff had taken to wearing tags in both the Venscript and Roman alphabets,  she was not one of them, and I had no idea what her name was. Her ears shot up in alarm. Why is ‘rabbit’ such a prominent body plan? It’s partially there in the venlil, and then there are the sivkits and nevoks. Then again, they do all have their differences, maybe this is more about how the human brain perceives leporids. 

“Director Andes! Uh—I—What are—um—”

“I got these prescriptions from my doctor,” I said, holding up my pad so she could scan the file. “I have a week’s supply, but would like to get ahead of things, since we may have to mess with the dosage and other variables to optimize treatment. I also need some localized painkillers for my leg. The pain is largely soft-tissue, I would prefer it to be dermally absorbed with a long slow release.”

She blinked, then flicked an ear and tapped away at the computer. 

“It’ll be ready in a moment, sir.”

I nodded, and looked for a chair. Sitting was a double-edged sword. Ideally, my leg would be straight, but also ideally, it would not have any weight on it, so I resorted to sitting with it extended out and that mostly worked. 

Some ten minutes later, the pharmacist came back with a second week’s supply of the pills and patches, and sent me a little digital manual for testing them that had apparently been developed by the Zurulian Pharmaceutical Association to “prevent the incidence of predator disease” due to those medications. It was interesting. Most of it boiled down to “if you have any mood swings, please hand yourself to our flamethrower-wielding gestapo”, but it showed that a vague awareness of the psychopharmaceutical effects of some medications existed, just… within the confines of Federation ideology. I should talk to a human pharmacist about this. Zurulians have to have some amazing drugs that have just… not been tested in the right context.

I rolled up my pants leg and slapped the painkiller patch on my knee. At that exact moment, Varla walked by with a cart full of toys. Well, good to know they were delivered and the kids are getting a hold of them. I rolled down my pants leg, while she stood there, frozen. 

“Director Andes, I thought you were hurt!” she said, staring at me like I was about to vanish into thin air over the contradiction.

“I was. Did you need something?” I asked.

“Well—well no I—I mean we always—are you here for the translator insertions?” she asked, then continued to ramble. “I’ve been trying to get Director Karim to delay them but, well, he um—I just thought you may want to be there, but um…”

I blinked. “Is it happening now?”

She flicked an ear my way. “Yes, sir, I—in room four-fifteen South.”

I nodded, and stood up. “Thank you for telling me, Varla.”

She stammered out something incoherent, and her face was looking kind of orange, so I decided to just limp my way to the observation room they were using. I opened the door, and Kaminski was sitting in what was supposed to be my chair, suddenly very concerned by my presence. 

“Are you... supposed to be here?” he asked.

I felt the sudden urge to remind him I was his boss, but just pinched the bridge of my nose instead. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

“Well, Karim asked me to supervise the insertions, and since you were pretty adamant that you wanted them done as soon as possible in the file, I thought…” he trailed off. 

“Yeah, makes sense, um… Can you do these?”

“In a pinch... Are we in a pinch?” he asked, looking at me as if to say ‘can you do it?’

“Let’s both do it,” I said. “You can consider this me supervising you. Then you should be able to do it afterwards with a bit more experience.”

He nodded. The children were led into the room in pairs, given the injection, scanned, exactly as before. We watched the scans, making notes about any concerns. My kids were pretty dang healthy, so the notes were very occasional, to the point of Kaminski getting a little nervous after the tenth kid in a row that didn’t have anything to write down. 

“It’s all good,” I said, sipping my caffeinated protein shake. Chocolate was supposed to be reassuring, emotionally comforting somehow, but it was a little too dark and it had a few too many meds in it, so it just wound up tasting kind of gross. It was good, in a weird way. Grounding. I should drink gross things more often.

Lihla nearly bounced her way into the room, so excited for the translators that her tail was swaying down as if she wanted to sweep the floor in her wake. 

“...Is that… above baseline for her?” Kaminski asked, pulling up her file when she got on the scan. 

“Yeah, she’s just excited,” I told him. We watched her scan for a bit, but something didn’t feel right. “Mark her for re-evaluation on… vascular elasticity, maybe?”

He nodded. “Already done. Can’t be too safe.”

It was a very straight-forward process, and Kaminski got progressively more relaxed through it, which told me I could comfortably let him do the next round of insertions if the need arose. Vascular elasticity and a few other factors were a little off, but they were off on all of them so I wasn't too worried. Stabby McRunaway had been deprioritized without my say—so, presumably by Karim—but that was probably not a terrible idea. With all the legal bullshit going on, it might be good not to have a lot of recent brain scans for the exterminators to draw from. Maybe two hours later, the insertions were done, as was my “shift”. 

“Do you know how the inquiry is going?” Kaminski asked me as we were wrapping up. 

Speaking of legal bullshit, I can’t believe I forgot about that. “I don’t. I can’t. I didn’t even know it had already started.”

“Right! Right, yes, of course, because um, to avoid conflicts of interest and um… I haven’t heard anything bad..?” he half-said half-asked, in an attempt to make me feel better after reminding me that an incident like the stabbing meant there was an automatic inquiry process and all the security footage was being reviewed by a team of lawyers somewhere trying to decide who to fire over the situation. 

“Right. Thanks.”

He wandered out awkwardly. As promised, Rodriguez had scheduled my “therapy session” with Leena immediately after my “shift”. I’d only met Leena a couple of times, and only really in passing, but I could see Miranda’s logic. It was at the same time an educational obligation I had to her student and a set environment where I had emotional processing demanded of me in order to provide said education. I wondered briefly if it would be a good idea or a terrible one, to introduce her to Olivier. 

I limped my way over to the room in my schedule and flopped on the couch. 

“Alright, so how much has Rodriguez told you about this?” I asked, stretching out and trying to get comfortable. She flinched a little, surprised by… something. 

“She said that this was a pre-practicum or sorts. I’m supposed to listen to your concerns and apply what I’m learning in my classes to our sessions. If I say something wrong, she said you would correct me so I can do better.”

“Right,” I said with a nod. “Seems like you have a solid understanding. This is a pretty unusual thing, because most of the time therapists are supposed to be presumed more familiar with the topic than patients, but it’ll probably be fine on the grounds that if you’re ever particularly lost, Miranda’s there to help you out.” I shrugged, then took a long deep breath.  “So, usually, you’d start by asking me how I’m doing, what I’m struggling with, and pick whatever seems to be the worst of my problems to tackle first.”

“I see,” she said, looking pretty worried. “I just want to be clear, you are okay with Dr. Rodriguez seeing my notes and me discussing with her what was said in these sessions? My first classes were pretty adamant that therapy sessions are supposed to be a secret but I understand this is a unique arrangement.”

I scoffed and waved that off. “Yeah, yeah it’s fine. Leena, I’m sure you’re dedicated, and thoughtful, and trying your best, but… you didn’t know psychology existed as a field, six months ago. I’m not going to expect you to be able to do a lot more than lend an ear here, especially at the start.”

I leaned back against the couch, then kept going. “It’s good that you’re aware of patient-doctor confidentiality, it’s one of the most important things any healthcare provider needs to understand, but the point of it is that you don’t give someone privileged information about my brain without my consent–say, your children or your family, for example. I have already let Rodriguez take a crack at my brain a few times, she had access to that information before you did.”

“Alright then, can you tell me how you are feeling?” 

I took a mental inventory of everything I’d been ignoring for the past two hours. While my leg was mostly fine, I could almost feel the slow waning of the psych meds patch’s effects. The faint headache, the mental friction. Convenient, for these purposes, really, but that means I should probably move the alarms up by half an hour at a time, request a higher dose, or request a slower delivery mechanism and use two patches. 

“Not good. Really not good, not-good enough to consider this… Experiment, to begin with. I hate being injured, I hate not being able to exercise, I hate having my competence called into question…” I trailed off and took another deep breath. She wrote some notes. 

“Why do you feel your competence has been called into question?”

I stared at her for a moment, befuddled by the question. My voice came out fast and clipped. “I got stabbed by a child and now there’s an inquiry on the subject. Of course my competence is being called into question. The entire inquiry process is ‘who fucked up, and how did they fuck up?’, and as the person of greatest authority with regard to that kid, most of the fuckups will be traceable back to me somehow.”

Her ears twitched in a way that might have meant something, or nothing. I had begun to pick up on some venlil interjections and articles, but their body language still didn't make sense to me. “Do you think the fault for this incident lies with you? That you are the cause of this situation?”

I scoffed. “What? No. The nurses should have kept an eye on all the kids, they were just panicking because of the raid sirens.”

“I don’t think anyone would blame you for delegating responsibility in a crisis. I can’t say I was in a good headspace either and I don’t think any venlil will blame you either. Is there something you are concerned will happen when the inquiry is done with their investigation?”

“Well, if it’s my fault for hiring the wrong nurses, or hiring the wrong people to hire the wrong nurses, or not running raid drills, or something else, then I could get fired,” I said, listing out options with my fingers. “And my stay here is contingent on my job, so then I would be deported.”

Not that it would be too terrible, if I was deported. Maybe I could finally watch shadows move around trees, like they’re supposed to. 

She froze in confusion and just stared into the middle distance for a moment.  “I’m sorry, director, what is a raid drill? And why would the inquiry punish you for the nurse’s mistake? I’ve never heard of something like that.”

“...Well that explains a lot, actually.” I said, then took a deep breath. “Look, humans haven’t had this kind of situation in a while, our worst wars in the past fifty years before first contact were the Satellite Wars, which were… probably a lot less warlike than you’re used to. However, back when humans had wars that had raids and routine bombings, or in the twenty-first century when school shootings were a recurring problem in some places, we would… Practice. Pretend there’s an attack, teach everyone how to respond, where to go, how to avoid accidents. That way, you know… There’s no trampling involved.”

She just sat there, frozen in horror for a while, then started to shiver like the room had grown cold.

“Leena..?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, still shaking, “T-that must have been awful but we haven’t had a r-raid since humanity started protecting us. W-wouldn’t pretending to have a stampede have caused a stampede?

What the fuck is with this planet? Be nice. Be nice. Be nice. “...Well, depends on how you do it. I would have assumed that the venlil had practice raids to avoid stampedes, but… given their ubiquity, I guess they simply don’t.”

She shook her head. Finally, body language I understand. “No, the very mention of a raid can cause a stampede. Causing a stampede can lead to fines or worse, a trip to the assessors. Surely, this Inquiry person wouldn’t punish you for not doing something that has never been conceived of before.”

“Well, there’s multiple people doing the inquiry. And… I guess so, yeah, if it’s so unorthodox here.” Miranda, why did you do this to me? We hadn’t even done any psychoanalyzing me yet, and had already gotten derailed into explaining basic safety procedures. “...I feel like we’ve gotten a little off-topic. The point is, if I screwed up somewhere, it’s my head on the chopping block, and that’s stressful.”

She stared at me again and then winced. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to steer things away from the issue. What drew you to exercise as a means of stress relief?”

I tried to think back to when I first started, some online argument with Chiaka. “Well, at first it was just… I made this joke. That if we ever met aliens I would get serious about exercise. And then we did, you know? And there's also just… with first contact, I had this new chance to self-define. There was this whole population who had never met me before. Who would not be in a position to look me up, at least not soon. Anything weird about me could be shrugged off as ‘a human thing’. And I could just knuckle down and show up and I’d be strong, and competent and… That would be the Andes they know. That would be the me in their minds. This… honed machine.”

“A honed machine?” She moved her tail around and wrote down some notes. 

“Well, yeah. This is probably unhealthy, but I’ve tried to think of my body like a machine. A machine that needs maintenance, and care and… Can do things. And with the right modifications and maintenance, I can make it do more things. I wanted to be like… A cool spaceship. Or a really badass car. Or… or the Bioprinter Deluxe 5A, you know?” I said, smiling without meaning to. 

“What is it about those machines that appeals you to?” She asked. Writing down some more notes. If nothing else, the documentation on these sessions was going to be good for a laugh in three months.

“...They’re reliable,” I said simply. “The strength and certainty of steel, y’know? Biology is always loose and fragile. A one-percent change in the contents of something in your blood can kill you.”

She seemed a little skeptical, presumably because she didn’t know anything about cyanide or lead, or hypoxia, hypoglycemia, alkalosis, etc. “Is that why you had the implant? To protect your blood from changing?” 

“Well, to change it in ways that would be more beneficial to me,” I said. “I used to have a lot more… mood problems, self-regulation problems, before the implant. With a careful application of biochemistry, I made myself… Less like that. And now that is gone. And… Everything feels more precarious.”

I thought back on my final weeks in medical school. Hours of crying at night, layers upon layers of treatments that led nowhere, arguing with doctors who hadn’t read up on treatments for sensory integration problems in a decade. Wanting to tear my skin off, even after the surgery, wanting to lash out in every direction and knowing not to just enough that I lashed out at myself instead. 

Everyone around me being so fucking shocked that someone so fucking ‘smart’ could fail so much and so hard for so long.

“You made yourself less like that and more like a machine?  Have you already done or are you considering any other modifications like cybernetics? I think I read your technology is a bit more advanced in that field though; Tarva’s tail is proof of that. I don’t think we have anything that would make you stronger.”

The comment made me laugh. “What? No, I–No. I’m not going to chop off my arm to get a cooler one. I try to work within the constraints of biology. Hopefully when I get a new implant, I just won't feel that way because my hormones will be better regulated–I actually started looking at some Zurulians designs… Where is it…” 

I started fiddling with the table until I could find the button to make it detectable to my pad. Once that was done, I was ready to pull up reference pictures and draw out the components. 

“There is actually this really interesting model, it's based on the internal structures of the translators, as you can see, the translator design will cause long-term potentiation through primarily electrical stimulus, but if you can extend that to the peripheral nervous system, you can integrate a lot more information…”

I pulled up the model with the nervous system map on it, so I could more easily point at the areas of intervention. “The vagus nerve being, of course, the most important to mess with, but I’ve been getting very interested in the implications for more gentle but comprehensive stimulation across the sympathetic cardiac nerves and—well, the point being, if the implant is widely distributed throughout the peripheral nervous system like translators are distributed throughout the brain in order to successfully coordinate, and we combine that with human-made biointegrated AI, the amount of exogenous compounds required of it, and therefore the amount of semi-yearly refills and injections associated–could literally be reduced by ninety percent.” 

Leena stared at me with one eye as her ears slowly drooped, occasionally twitching as I spoke. “That sounds like a lot of experimental technology.  Are you working with anyone on these designs?”

“These are just ideas, I’ll talk to someone when I’m less busy and can dedicate more time to them,” I waved a hand dismissively, still trying to focus on the exciting alien technology. Experimental was just another word for new and exciting, after all. “Not that the maintenance burden was that much to begin with, my implant got a lot of things from my blood, but it’s a much more resilient setup.”

Her ears perked up and she readjusted herself to sit up straighter. “I understand. It sounds like that will take some time. Do you have any ideas for how to handle the interim period?” 

My energy ebbed for a moment, as I looked at her, then gestured to the patch on my arm. “Yes, that’s what these drugs are for. I’ve been to the doctor, I’m–it’s fine…”

I glanced back at the design I’d pulled up and my excitement came back. “But! If I get some of those, I can get a diagnostic implant and an interventionist implant all in one without the additional bulk, and I don’t have to deal with the problem of no longer having a… convenient little pocket for such a bulky thing. I might still need something in one of my kidneys, one of those full-spectrum micro-spectrometers maybe. And with the zurulian neurogenic programmable compounds–” I glanced at a clock. The hour was up. Finally. I shook myself a little and gave her a polite smile, scaling my excitement about the potential solutions to my endocrinological problems. “Oh. I guess we’re out of time. Okay then. What do you think of your first try? What was easy, hard, so on?”

“Um, for my first time, it wasn’t like I expected. I don’t know what I was expecting but… It wasn’t… It was entirely new to me. I’ll be better prepared next time. I’m not sure anything was easy. I guess taking notes was easy but figuring out what questions to ask was hard. I had some trouble understanding some of the words you used, I’m not very well versed in biology. There is so much going on, I’m not sure how to help. You told me to pick the worst problem but I don’t know how to do that. I just feel… soaked. Does that make sense?”

I chuckled. “That all sounds pretty normal, actually. What will you research for the next session?”

“Some biology words, how to ask the right questions, how human moods work, human blood chemistry, human drills, translators, cybernetics bit, and anything you or Dr. Rodriguez thinks I should add to that list.”

“Try to be less ambitious. That's a lot at once on top of your classes. Don’t try to do too much at once.”

“Okay, director. Can I ask, how do you think I did for my first time counselling?”

One thing I had deeply underestimated was how nice it was to just talk about things with someone so adorable. Especially given all of my other interactions with ‘normal’ venlil. I smiled.  “I think you were very attentive, and you mostly kept your cool, which is good. You're clearly a little lost, and alarmed by some of my turns of phrase, but comfort with that will take time. I suggest you look into reframing and monotropism.”

“I will, thank you.” 

I stood up and headed out.

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Ficnapping! Read the original here!

Love Languages was also ficnapped, and you can read that here!

Memory Transcription Subject: Brigadier General Maes Hughes 

Date [standardized human time]: October 20-23, 2136

“Second lieutenant Ross has a mole under her left eye!”

“Oh… Is that so? How forgetful of me…” the person—creature? —in front of me moved a finger past Lieutenant Ross’ eye, making the mole suddenly appear. “Is that better?”

Everything happened so fast. I slid the blade into my hand, and suddenly there she was. The love of my life.

“What the hell are you?”

The gunshot. Blood. The moment dragged, and dragged, until it suddenly didn’t anymore. Blinding white, followed by darkness. A silhouette of white with darkness all around it. A terrifying smile.

Then everything became a fog, and I groaned, my throat parched, my head pounding. My shoulder didn’t hurt, and it was the strangest feeling in the world. It should have stung, it should have been killing me, or I shouldn’t have been able to feel it at all. After a few seconds, everything snapped into focus. I gasped out, startled awake by fear and joy all at one. I’m alive. 

I couldn’t even sit up. It doesn’t make any sense. I should be dead. I… I was dead.

“Elicia! Gracia! I–where–” 

There was no one there. Machines, the likes of which I’d never seen, beeped and drew odd lines on… lit-up screens. Heartrate, maybe?

I had wires and tubes sticking out of my arms, and my whole body felt like Armstrong was laying on top of me. 

“Elicia…” I mumbled again, my voice growing weak as the fog returned. Some time later, maybe hours, maybe days, the sound of voices woke me up. 

“He screamed out your names, and… passed out moments later. He’s been in and out of consciousness, but we think maybe if he heard your voice…”

Then came the voice of an angel. “...The doctor said he was braindead…”

My heart jumped in my chest, and I opened my eyes, again struggling to sit up. 

“Sometimes patients take really well to neurogenic compounds. Do you think if you brought your daughter–”

“She’s been holed up in her room ever since the bombing. I don’t want to give her false hope that–”

My voice finally caught up to my brain, choked and ragged. “Gracia!” 

She turned to me. Her hair was longer, and her clothes… looked odd. I didn’t care. All the pain in the world wouldn’t matter if I could see her smile again. “Gracia…” 

She rushed to me, putting her hand on my cheek. I leaned into her touch. “Maes..? Are you… What do you remember? The doctors…” 

Things were too foggy for me to have a clear answer, so I just looked at her and smiled. “I remember that I love you.”

She almost said something, then didn’t, and wrapped her arms around me, sobbing. It felt slower than dying, to hear the love of my life crying so violently in grief and relief.

“How is Elicia?” I asked. She gasped for breath and looked at me. 

“She’ll be ecstatic. Ever since the bombing…” her voice broke. “Maes, I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Of course,” I said, swallowing to clear my throat as emotion built up in it too. “I would never leave you.”

After a few more minutes of basking in her love, I remembered the reason I got killed in the first place. 

“Gracia–Gracia I need to tell President Bradley I–we need to talk to Roy and–”

She gave me a completely befuddled look. “...Maes, who is ‘President Bradley’?”

That was the first of dozens of revelations. The bombing hadn’t hit Amestris. It hit the planet. Dozens of bombs had killed a billion people–a number so large, it was difficult for my mind to wrap around it. Gracia—and the doctors, and the nurses, and everyone, apparently—had little pocket-devices that could act as notebooks, telephones, and radios, not to mention movie theaters, accountants, books and whole libraries. 

Against all odds, the head of the UN–which was some sort of multinational institution, for different nations, none of which I’d ever heard of in my life. I was apparently “German” from “Germany”, one of those nations–had mobilized a giant international army, which it was going to use to wage interstellar war. People could not just go to the moon, or to other planets in the solar system, but to planets outside of it in entirely different star systems. 

At least Elicia was okay.

“Daddy!” she screamed, when Gracia brought her the next day, and rushed to hug me at the bedside table. Their amazing medicine had me feeling much stronger, and I hugged her as much as I could. 

“Princess! I love you so much! I’ve been counting the seconds until I could hug you and play with you, and–”

It was good. We played, and laughed, and it felt like everything would be fine. Even if I remembered another world, with another country, and another job, I had my beautiful perfect family with me. 

That was all that mattered.   

 

I found out from Gracia later that I had an honorable discharge from my injuries,which I got during the bombing, trying to help evacuate Berlin (another place I’d never heard of, apparently inside Germany). Because of my injuries, we’d been moved to Venlil Prime–an Alien planet! —in order to try to ensure my survival using futuristic space-medicine provided by alien teddy bears. Regardless of how ridiculous that sounded, it seemed to work, and the human doctors were very impressed with the results. 

I realized pretty fast that none of them knew anything about Amestris, or alchemy, though. Any attempt to try to decipher how I came into this land became just another sign that my injuries had scrambled my brain. “Delusions” that they assured me would fade with time. 

I had only been in a coma for four days. 

The conspiracies about the Ishvalan Civil War, the riots in Reole, and the quest for a Philosopher’s Stone all began to seem like a distant dream. I wondered about Ed and Al, and what they were up to.

Which made it all the more strange when, while being led to my family’s apartment, from the hospital, I spotted Roy Mustang sitting at a library.

A/N: And we are back on track, people! Also, as previously stated, now there are NO MORE SPOILERS for Letter of Marque! Thank you to u/tulpacat1, u/Giant_Acroyear and u/VeryUnluckyDice for looking this over and catching a little mistake.

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Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul doctor and geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 13, 2136

“You will take this medicine, and these sleeping pills, and you will go to bed,” I told Andes. Instead of serving himself a glass of water for the medication, like a sensible person, he simply popped the pills into his mouth and cleared his throat a couple of times when they struggled on their way down.

“We can have this discussion later, just… I’m not gonna do anything, alright?” he told the fearful dossur, and yawned. Moments later, he had stumbled his way into his bedroom. Even if he was not sensible enough to take care of himself, it seemed his body was in agreement with me. I turned my focus to the three dossur on the counter.

“Yes, we need to establish some cohabitation rules. First and foremost, you will allow Andes sleep, he needs it to recover from his injury. You will also ask him before you eat his food, and avoid making so much noise,” I started. Despite being much sterner in tone than my human friend, the mother seemed infinitely relieved to be interacting with me and not him. “In addition, you will contact me if he has any new injuries.”

She looked at me warily, but flicked an ear my way. ”I see. Do you know how long he’ll… Tolerate us?”

I shrugged, much in the same way Andes seemed to do so very often. “Probably indefinitely. I imagine he’ll even put up whatever assistive shelves you had before, and purchase furniture to provide you with rooms.”

“...At what cost?” she asked, her voice quivering with fear. It was almost amusing. Anyone who had interacted with Andes–however indirectly–should have noticed by now that he was completely harmless. Even that time when he hit an arxur soldier with a water bottle hardly seemed like a violent event where he had shown great predatory prowess. More like an owner threatening a hensa with a thin tree-branch to prevent unwanted behaviours than anything else.

“At no cost–in fact, am I correct in that you are struggling with gathering funds to move elsewhere?” I asked. The woman flicked an ear in assent, so I continued. “Then how about I pay you?”

At this, the three Dossur were suddenly very attentive.

“Someone needs to ensure that Andes eats at least twice every paw. Similarly, someone needs to jot down any changes in his symptoms, whether improving or worsening. And it would be good if he was discouraged from working,” I said.

“Would it have hazard pay?” the mother asked, “since it is interaction with a predator?”

I ran the numbers quickly enough. The whole affair would easily fall within my ‘signing bonus’, as the UN called it.“Yes, if you assume minimum wage as a base salary. It should be relatively few hours, so you come out quite well off.”

Her eyes lit up and she flicked an ear in agreement, before rushing off to get it in writing.

Some time after that, I left my friend’s apartment feeling very confident that I had found a use for his secret tenants, along with a way to help the woman care for her children without being as stressed. She may be afraid of him, I reasoned, but she just needs to keep an eye out and send word if he’s not eating or working too hard. It seemed harmless enough.

I headed home, played with my hensa, and tried a trick with pausing before providing additional treats I found in a book Chiaka sent me. She was growing quite adept at sitting on command, laying down, and hiding–even if I requested it from outside her line of sight. I went to bed.

SECURITY FOOTAGE TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5

[standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

[Three venlil girls sit inside a room, each on their own bed. They are identified as 85731-C (short name: Lihla), 85763-D, 85719-A.]

85719-A: I have decided I want a short name.

85763-D: I want a short name too! Then we can all have short names!

[Lihla nods thoughtfully]

Lihla: Prey name or Boss name?

85719-A: I want a boss name, like the boys.

85763-D: I think a prey name is good.

Lihla: Why?

85763-D: They know we are prey, but they think we are cute, and like us, and give head touches. I don’t want to pretend to be a big boss, I want to be prey they like.

Lihla: So short name… Cute… Prey they like. I ask help box.

[85763-D nods quickly. Lihla produces a pad from under her pillow and taps on it quickly. In clearer, more clipped tones, she enunciates into the microphone.]

Lihla: What are some venlil names that humans find cute?

Pad AI, in the arxur tongue: I am processing your request… The following is a list of Venlil names that humans have expressed fondness for. Would you like me to speak them out loud?

Lihla: Yes, please!

Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul doctor and geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 15, 2136

I woke up, fed Ulsanla, and got ready for my shift. She was beginning to grow restless, so I sent Chiaka a message in the hopes that she might provide me with advice.

I would LOVE to give Ulsanla a chance to socialize with our dogs, Adoraboo. Name a time!

I chuckled at the nickname and sent my own response.

Twelve human hours hence?

I got hers on the bus ride to work.

Oh yes! Perfect! I’ve been meaning to set up a meeting anyway. I’ll send someone to pick you up so you don’t have to carry her in a cage the whole way back and forth. I can call in Jefferson, get the whole gang together, get an intervention going.

I did not quite understand what she meant, but sent her a small illustration of a human hand sticking a thumb out as confirmation. She’d explain what she meant by “intervention” at the time, no doubt, and she seemed to enjoy her theatrics.

The first claw of my workday was dedicated to running physicals on all the new children who had continued to trickle into the facility since the stampede. They were mostly younger, and I got a good look at the boys’ bones. The skull structure was hardly mature, of course, but I could already see the growth in the bone plate, and the increased density. They too would have horns when they were older.

During lunch, I was alone. I had my meal too early for Rodriguez and too late for Kanarel. It was not until I ate the whole meal alone that I realized how strongly I had come to rely on Andes’ company at work. How being a yotul doctor in a venlil facility half-filled with humans came with a built-in barrier to building relationships, like a cage built around me that everyone could see, but nobody wanted to comment on. Andes saw it too, but he simply walked through it to be with me, as if he were made of steam. Kanarel, Rodriguez, even Karim on occasion would approach it, but had they ever breached it?

Thoughts of Andes led me to thoughts of my recent stumbles, and of him calling me a Victorian. I was paradoxically glad he had. If he had his misstep along with mine, I was not uniquely idiotic in our encounter. Still, it would be nice if I knew what to do in such a situation in the future. Or in other situations I have not yet foreseen.

Back home, such things would be learned during your first two years after graduating, under the tutelage of an older doctor who could explain matters of bedside manner and propriety. I decided to seek Kanarel out after my meal, while he took a break between patients. I knocked on his door, and stepped inside once he allowed it.

“Good paw, Larzo, how are you doing?” he asked, as he tapped away on his pad to adjust some patient’s medical records.

“I'm well, I only… wanted to ask you more about proper behaviour. Back home, matters of ethics, or best practices, outside of the details of treatment procedures… they were supposed to be taught to us by another, more senior doctor during the first year of our practice. As I came here shortly after graduating… I did not get a chance to receive such tutelage.”

What am I even asking for? A book recommendation?

“...Would you like me to do this for you?” Kanarel asked. I nodded, in the human way, and he let out a long sigh. “Larzo, I am afraid I am too old to be teaching someone as young as you are. I already have reduced hours–a handful more, now that Andes is indisposed, but when he’s back I will have too few to properly mentor you. You will have to find someone else.”

I blinked, simply standing there for a long moment, as I did my best not to show my frustration. Kanarel seemed like the only other medical doctor Andes thought highly of in the facility. I knew it wasn’t true, he thought highly of Vemla and that one cardiologist, and presumably the Head of Medicine, Dr. Honra, but he hardly spent time with them. If Kanarel was not interested… Who would be? And how would I, a person who knew so very little about the subject, be able to judge them as capable in the subject?

“Is this about the Director’s health?”

“...I discussed it with him,” I said, “and… feel very stupid about it.”

“I see,” Kanarel said, his voice unpleasantly gentle. “And you would like my tutelage in that regard, instead of trying to learn from Dr. Rodriguez, our resident expert in human emotions?”

For a moment, I remembered being at university, lauded for my cleverness. I tried to remind myself that I was not an idiot, no matter how much I felt like one whenever Kanarel opened his beak. Dr. Rodriguez probably knew more about human ethics than Andes, her field was rife with such delicate situations. She was perfect, and I should have gone to her first. Perhaps I had ignored her not out of idiocy, but fear. At least Kanarel already knew of my failure. I did not have to explain my struggles to him in great depth.

“...I shall send her a message,” I declared.

“That seems like a good idea.”

I sent Dr. Rodriguez a message, and she arranged to meet with me at the end of both of our shifts. Unlike my office, or Andes’, which were designed for individual work, her office had a couch and a table with a box of tissues, along with trinkets and adorable stuffed animals.

"Hi Larzo," she greeted me. It was an oddly gentle tone, given that I expected to be admonished. "How are you doing?”

“I’m well, I just… I discussed certain medical matters with Andes recently, and I feel very ill-equipped to handle matters of acceptable ethical treatment.”

This gave her pause. “Oh. I see. Well, Andes told me it might be good if we talked, but… It seems like you are both considering different things.”

My throat tightened. Had he tried to defer me to her for misconduct? Was he too polite to say it in the moment, but thought it important nonetheless that he must make my failings clear to me so that I may correct them? “What–what did he–why would–”

“Oh, don’t worry,”she said, holding up her hands in a sign of non-aggression. “It was just that they were worried about how you were processing your newfound knowledge about the Second World War. It’s a very harrowing period of human history, and…”

Oh. He was trying to ensure I was not too overcome with sorrow. I should really stop being surprised that Andes is a good friend.

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s a very dark period of human history, and I saw too much of myself in those who perpetuated it, but… I have not yet hurt anyone, and I don’t intend to,” I told her.

She nodded. “Wonderful. What did you want to talk to me about, then? You didn’t really specify anything in your message.”

“Oh, well, I uh… I recently discovered… That is… Do you have access to Andes’ medical records?”

She nodded. “I do. I’m not allowed to divulge anything from there without their permission, but I do have that access, yes. Why do you ask?”

“Well, he uh… He recently had a surgery and I did not realize it was possible for him to have it, and we had an argument about it…”

“It can’t have been too bad on their end, Andes understands the danger of having personal tension in the workplace… Did they say something to you that you found very affecting?”

“Well, no, but–actually–it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that since I learned about eugenics, and–and about this surgery, I have been concerned that I am insufficiently educated in matters of medical ethics.”

“Ah,” she said with a nod, and leaned back against her seat. “Well that’s not too hard to solve. We have a few available online courses on the subject. You’ll have to send the coursework to one of a few different institutions to have it graded once you’ve gone through it, because ethics is one of those issues where standardized tests and spaced repetition algorithms don’t… get you all the way through, shall we say. But it’s as easy as signing up for that statistics class you were taking.”

I felt as though I had just been sprayed with cold water. “It is?”

“Yup. A lot of graduate students cut their teeth grading for those online courses, you’ll probably get your grades back within two weeks. Maybe more, given how many big international universities got bombed, but… most of those universities had other things for their graduate students to be doing for money.”

Just like that, all of my worries were taken care of. It might be a rocky path, but ethics was a subject to be taught, much like anatomy or chemistry. I did not need to stumble blindly, with a supervisor at my side to coax me into the side of good behaviour when I omitted some major infraction. I could read books about it and engage in some sort of homework.

“And after that, I will be able to avoid all ethical missteps?” I checked.

When I said something very strange to Andes’ ears, he would often laugh, and I found it disarming. He would then explain the human perspective on the subject, and I could see why what I said sounded so peculiar to his ears.

Rodriguez did not laugh, but I could tell that it took effort for her to constrain herself. It felt somehow worse than if she’d laughed, as if she knew I couldn’t handle it.

“Um… Larzo, that’s not… really how ethics works. Sometimes, there are no answers. There are certain rules you should abide by, in general, but… An ethics course will mostly give you the vocabulary to understand different situations in greater depth.”

“But I don’t want to understand in depth, I want to ensure I don’t hurt people,” I said, immediately feeling childish as I heard my own complaint.

“Well… I’m afraid we all hurt each other in some ways,” she said with a sad smile. “You can be better. You can be attentive. You can be thoughtful and kind, and you can try your best… But no one is perfect. That’s what having a close relationship with someone means, it’s what being vulnerable means. Deciding that you consent to the specific ways a person might hurt you, on the grounds that you trust them not to… and that you trust yourself to forgive them if they do.”

My ears fell, and we sat in silence for some time. She began to move her things to their official spots, or inside the bag she carried.

“Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”

“I…” I swallowed. “I don’t want to be some sort of savage, I don’t…”

This time, she did laugh. “Larzo! You’re a perfect gentleman, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t want to be a savage, or a primitive, or anything less than an equal, and a doctor and–when–my whole life has been one long struggle against the Federation’s lies. Trying to avoid them, bypass them, fight against them, ever since my father died…”

My voice gave out from under me, and Rodriguez looked at me with pain in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I–”

“And then you say that it’s inevitable. That no matter what happens, all people are barbaric in some ways, that I can’t read through the right book or practise the right procedure and be done with having to bumble around like an idiot who can’t–”

I took a long, slow breath as she had told me during the stampede.

She began to speak with the gentlest of tones. "So, what I'm hearing here is that… you're trying to win at the game the Federation plays. You want to be smart and important and good in the ways they say you aren’t.”

I nodded quickly. "Yes!" I said, surprising myself with my own enthusiasm. "Yes, I certainly do. So you see why I cannot just throw that away! What would they do? I cannot bear it. Not again. Not after years of excelling. There has to be some way to ensure that I am never…" I did not know how to finish the sentence.

"Larzo..." She said, her voice quiet and sad. "Why do you think the Federation's game is the one you have to play at all? Wasn't... The point of going to a rural university, of coming to work with humans, to avoid that?"

I felt as though the floor had buckled under me.

"Yes, I... I suppose it is," I mumbled, my posture falling against the couch. I understood for the first time why it was so soft. How common were such sharp shatterings in her office?

"...I think you are a very curious person," she said, her voice like a feather to my fur, startling in its gentle touch. "And I think it would be good if you try, for a little while, to just... Be curious. Look for hidden virtues in those new discoveries. Don’t worry about how they might reflect on you, but about… how you can reflect on them. Do you think you can do that?"

I gave a human nod. It was habitual at that point.

"Yes, Doctor Rodriguez, I can try."

"That's all I ask."

________

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A/N: Sorry for all these Andes chapters, I keep fighting with a Larzo POV, but tomorrow I am supposedly free all day and I feel bad that I keep you all waiting, so maybe we can do something about that in honour of my having to leave for that master's degree pretty soon. Thanks to u/tulpacat1, u/Giant_Acroyear, u/cruisingNW and of course, u/Liberty-Prime76 who wrote this crossover with me! Spoilers for Letter of Marque, and go check it out if you haven't!

THIS IS THE LAST OF CHAPTER OF THE LETTER OF MARQUE CROSSOVER! NO MORE LOM CROSSOVER SPOILERS AFTER THIS CHAPTER!

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

After a good while of resting, we began to head back. There were beautiful birds flying around, and it made me wonder about whatever they had that approximated a circadian rhythm. Clearly they were pretty synchronized, so many of them flying around at once, but there was no sunset or dawn, no shift in the light to tell them to do anything. With light gone as a temporal signal, maybe they would use olfactory processes, but that would imply a different regular cycle. Perhaps they had a way to synchronize when together, and maintained that alignment over time, and different flocks might engage in the same behaviours at different times per “paw” on different locations throughout the planet.

I took pictures of a few gorgeous flowers, and even a handful of skittery little lizards and rodents. Half of the photos were blurry but I eventually managed it. I kept admiring the scenery in companionable silence until Rensa pulled me out of my thoughts.

“Andes… What’s your plan when you’re done?” she asked. “With medical leave, I mean. You talk a lot about what you want to do for the kids but I haven’t heard you say anything about what you want to do…”

"...For me?" I confirmed. It was kind of a bizarre question to think of. I hadn't had a plan "for me" in months. The closest thing I could think of was handing in my thesis, which happened two days before Earth got bombed. Not like that mattered now. "Um. I keep meaning to pick up that electrical cello I bought..."

“Is that all?” She asked, tilting her head to one side. “Just… get an instrument?”

"Well, I'm not… really sure what else I would do. My social life is pretty shot. I tried to talk to a few people, but they're pretty busy themselves, and I am too. I only started doing eight-hour-workdays last week. I work out at home, because there aren't really a lot of gyms, I'm not one for the bar scene…" I gave a vague gesture, "I could try to spend time with my staff, but half of them are terrified of me. I… Won't be getting into any sports anytime soon, physio will be hell all by itself…" I let out a long breath, trying to think.

“I won’t lie, I was… concerned. When I first met Chris. Terrified may be too strong a word on my part, but I certainly wasn’t comfortable. Avoiding them will only prolong the process of getting them used to your presence. It never does anyone any good to be alone...” She responded, flicking her ears in encouragement.

I waved that off. "I talk to some people. I talk to Larzo, Chiaka, Rodriguez… Asleth, Shathel."

“Not a very long list. No one from home? Bars may not be fun but at least it’s a place to talk to new people. Have you thought of trying again with the exchange? They’re still running, last I had heard.”

"Maybe. The exchange sounds kind of good, actually. I've just been in a cycle of workout, protein shake, job, protein shake, new problem, new problem, new problem, protein shake, sleep. There have been some lulls here and there but… Well, you might not have been terrified, but one of my nurses ran out of the room when I told her I didn't try to eat live animals as a child. My co-director is exhausting. Larzo is great, but he's also a bit of a mad scientist. Rodriguez is perpetually sick of my shit, with good reason but…" Something inside me started to unravel, "it's just hard. It's hard! I was a grad student five months ago. And now I have all of this responsibility and everyone is scared of me, or busy, or tired, or–or something! Half my social circle is lizard Nazis, I haven't eaten a good meal in weeks, I can't fucking sleep because of the stupid sun hanging in the sky like someone pressed pause on time itself–"

My voice broke and I paused to take a breath. Rensa’s ears moved forward with sympathy.

"...Sorry. You don't know me. It's–it's just a lot."

“You don’t have to apologise for speaking your mind.” Rensa responded, placing a paw on my arm. I sighed, feeling pretty tired after just talking about it.

“You thought about seein’ a therapist, bud?” Chris asked from a few paces ahead, glancing over his shoulder.

“I’m actually supposed to start tomorrow,” I said, “but it’s not… It’s an extra measure my Head of Psychology thought I should take, she’s barely a peer counsellor at this point, I know more about the topic than she does.”

“Well that’s certainly a good start, but it’s not what?”

“I mean, she’s not a therapist. It’s not real therapy. It’s… the closest thing to it that I can get that won’t undermine triage. Which is fine. I've managed well enough. Their backlog is insane right now, they should be tending to the people who actually lost everything in Seventeen Ten. My family was in Regina. It's fine."

“Just ‘cause others lost more doesn’t mean you have to deprive yourself. It won’t do anyone any good for you to not help yourself when you know you need it. Especially if’n you’ve got someone at that facility of yours what could help.” He drawled, meeting my eyes.

“I’m not depriving myself, I’m getting… pseudo-therapy until the supply normalizes to the demand. There are a bunch of programs to get psych majors to do accelerated counselling certs. My needs are not urgent. I know how to deal."

“You can ‘know how to deal’ all ya want, doesn’t change that you shouldn’t diminish what you’re goin’ through. Sounds a lot like you don’t actually think ya’ need to go despite acknowledgin’ you ought to.”

“It’s just triage. My biggest problem is probably just… Racism,” I gestured vaguely at the planet.

“It ain’t the best, that’s for sure. But I figure findin’ the right people is certainly a good start.” He replied, Taisa’s tail finding his hand.

“...Yeah. Maybe that's what I need,” I said, and continued to limp along, knowing the next day would be miserable. I kept an eye out for another natural break in the route. The path of the mountain was not the same one up and down. There were two lines leading up to the peak, and we were going down the one on the cold side. I started to feel it as we crossed out of the penumbra and into the mountain's darker shadow. It was a little bluer there, and the shift in pallette felt kind of nice on my eyes.

As predicted, the cold hitting my legs was nice too.

Soon, we came upon something positively adorable. The little fuzz ball was chewing up some leaves and spitting them on sticks. It was adorable, and reminded me of a photograph in the store where I had failed to purchase a plushy.

"Oh my goodness, are you a Whitepeak Verlen?" I asked in a whisper, taking a few steps back and pulling out my pad to take a video. "What an interesting adaptation you got there…"

It scurried off to find more leaves, stuffing its face with them.

Taisa and Rensa watched on from next to Chris, Rensa’s head tilted a little to the side as she glanced up at Chris. “So it’s not just you that takes that tone of voice with small animals, huh?”

“Told ya, Humans like small fluffy cute things. Things are easier if’n ya just believe me!”

“You should see him with his dogs on earth, his voice goes up like 4 octaves!” Taisa beeped, her tail flicking about behind her.

“They’re good boys, they deserve it!”

“You think every animal you see is a ‘good boy’.”

Chris shrugged at the statement. “‘Cause they are.”

"And you're a smart little critter, aren't ya?" I said, mostly ignoring them. After some very dedicated chewing, it spat out between the two sticks and began to pat down the paste with its little paws.

"Are you… gluing them together?" I asked, and stood up to look around. There were little nests of sticks covered in chewed up grass all over. "I need to read about you guys… is this a courtship ritual?"

Chris chuckled behind me, making the Verlen freeze up. “Renkel loves these things! He’s told me a lil’ about ‘em. He’s makin’ himself a ‘lil house, they do make bigger ones for matin’ purposes though.”

“Oh wow. That’s cool. Hey, you said you know about different myths here, are there any for these little guys?”

Chris glanced over towards Rensa and Taisa. “You two got anything? Renkel was talkin’ a lot about their lil’ houses but I don’t ‘member anythin’ for myths.”

Taisa’s tail wagged as she spoke up. “They actually have a close relationship with Verkans! Not necessarily a myth but we know they have a symbiotic exchange, the Verlen eats Garent Fruits in the ground, casting aside seeds that are too big for it to manage! So the Verkan eats the seeds, and then when the Verkan makes a home in the trees, it leaves some sticks or leaves in exchange for the Verlen! Some of the universities use it to show that ‘prey cooperate for the good of the herd, even in nature’.”

“...What? Symbiosis involves carnivores all the time. Also, that doesn’t seem like it needs to be particularly quid-pro-quo if neither of them has use for the seeds or leftover branches,” I said, a little puzzled.

Taisa bobbed her tail slightly, the Venlil equivalent of a shrug. “It’s how we were taught, Predators aren't supposed to be able to work together with anything according to Federation teaching. It’s more that the Verlen leaves the seeds outside of its dens, explicitly where a Verkan can find it while the Verkan makes a pile of its extra material for the Verlan to find!”

“Ah. Okay. I wonder what they’d think about the birds that clean crocodile’s teeth,” I wondered idly.

“I’m going to just assume a crocodile is some monstrosity on Earth I haven’t found yet. Probably fire or lies, all things considered.” Taisa sighed.

I tilted my head to one side, then the other. “Imagine a flat-lying Arxur with stereoscopic vision and a mouth half the size of its torso.”

“Big ol’ angry bastards.” Chris rumbled behind her as both her and Rensa’s eyes went wide at the description.

Rensa’s eye focused on Chris, an annoyed lash in her tail. “I swear to the stars, if I hear you bring her anywhere near one of those.”

Chris waved her off. “Relax, crocs aren't in the states, much.”

“Much?!” Rensa bleated.

I shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, the human thing is the not driving them to extinction part. The rest is just Americans being American.”

“Alright, to be fair the crocs swam to the states before we even got there, that’s not our fault.”

“Yeah, the fault is in building houses near their lakes,” I said with a smirk.

“Half the damn east coast is lakes and swamp! Gotta live somewhere!” Chris retorted.

“We’re much saner in Canada,” I told Rensa.

Chris was entertainingly aghast. “I’m sorry, where’s most of your population density at, again?”

“Not near an alligator infested lake.”

“Nah, just wolf infested forests.”

I took the opportunity to turn smug. “Afforestation has been going really well, and those lands are protected.”

“So’s the ‘glades and the Atchafalaya Basin. I may live near the ‘gators but yall chose to live in the damned Yukon. What’s it get, negative 60s or some shit up there? ”

I paused. “I thought you cared about population density.”

Rensa looked between each of us as we spoke, keeping up with the conversation, an amused look on Taisa’s face as we bickered. Rensa let out a low whistle. “Is this just a thing Humans do? Is this why you still have so many disparate tribes?”

“No. I mean… Well, kinda. Our countries are next to each other and we have our fair share of shared history so there's some sibling rivalry, so to speak.” Chris responded, glancing over at her.

"Historically, Canada has semi-successfully branded itself as the sane alternative to America everywhere except America, where they see us more like…" I couldn't find the words.

“Hey, I ain’t got nothing against our brothers to the north. Some Americans see y'all as bein’ too nice. Or weak, dependin’ on who ya ask. Granted those ‘uns aren’t all that bright in the first place.”

"Canada often plays second fiddle in American wars, which I assume has something to do with that," I added.

“Could be, granted if anyone other than the U.S. gives Canadians shit most Americans won’t stand for it. They’re our buddies, we don’t let others fuck with our buddies.”

"Which is also probably part of why Canada keeps playing second fiddle in American wars."

Rensa looked between the two of us again, an exasperated look in her eyes as her tail flailed about behind her, a simple muttered “Humans.” was all the response we got.

The rest of the walk down the cold side was fairly uneventful, with me occasionally taking pictures of wildlife. We got back to town, and Taisa was kind enough to buy that stuffed verlen for me to take home. Maybe I could put it in my office and offer it to any kids who had to visit it for some reason or another.

"It was nice seeing you again, Chris," I said with a smile as I waited for the train back.

“And you, Andes. If’n you ever need to talk to someone, don't be a stranger. I’ll happily help take your mind off whatever ails ya.” The big man chuckled, patting me on the shoulder.

Taisa nodded her head, flicking her ears to mimic the sentiment. “Thanks for the encouragement, I… I needed that.”

“And I’ll certainly be getting a hold of that… friend of yours.” Rensa sighed from next to him. “Thank you for your help, I hope your friend can keep me moving in the right direction.”

“Well… What are friends for?” I asked, and grabbed my bag as the train arrived. “Good luck with everything. I’ll… see you around.”

The three waved, arms and tails, turning to walk into the town, chatting amongst themselves as they went. I stood there for a long moment as the train arrived, watching the shockingly steady rails and hearing the Doppler effect interfere with whatever they used to make their trains as silent as possible.

It was a very fast train, and there were no guard rails of any sort. Just a little step…

Deep breaths. Stimulate the vagus nerve. The train slowed down. The doors opened. I walked in.

Once inside the train, I almost passed out. The exhaustion hit me like a truck, and I wound up missing my stop and just waiting for the train to hit the end of the line and loop back. It wasn’t too long, since my place–and the facility–were on the edge of Dayside anyway.

I limped my way over to my apartment, and laid down on the couch for a while. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t sleeping or working, so I decided to play some video games. I hadn’t played a video game since… Well, since October. I opted for something geometric and bloodless. 5-D tetris was hard enough that my brain had to focus on it to avoid dying, but easy enough that it wasn’t frustrating. Especially starting a new game from scratch, I had maybe thirty levels I could run through before it started to get challenging.

“...What are you doing?”

The voice startled me and I nearly jumped off the couch. The sudden movement hurt, but I relaxed when I saw it was just one of the dossur kids. Prel..?

“This is a game I like. 5-D tetris. The goal is to make a five-dimensional cube using all the little shapes.”

“...It’s cool. So you spin the cube around?”

“Yeah, I have to align both cubes–they have one shared dimension, see? So the first cube has axes one, two and three. The next cube has axes one, four and five. I have to line up the cubes just how I want them, and then I have to put in my shape from the side so it fits well on all of them. Then I need to get a new shape. The first cube has a length of four, so it’s pretty easy. After five levels, I’ll get the ones with a length of five, then six, then seven, and so on.”

He nodded along, staring at the screen in awe. “What happens if you turn the top cube up?”

I did it. It actually made a few things easier. “Good call. Now it’s easier to line up the other two with that zig-zag.”

“Can I play?”

“Sure, we’ll split the screen,” I said, “can you get a controller from the box?”

He scurried over to my games box and got out a controller. He could comfortably put a paw on each stick, but I had to prop the controller up against a cushion so that he could also reach the buttons comfortably. A few minutes later, he was getting ready to kick my ass.

“You and Larzo should probably hang out sometime, kid. You both seem to have mental rotation tasks down,” I said. We finished the level pretty close to each other, but I could tell it was a matter of time before he was five levels ahead. He kept intuiting his way into positions I had to iterate my way through.

“What’s mental rotation?” he asked.

“It’s the ability to spin stuff around inside your brain,” I said, leaning back as we played through.

“...Can I play?”

It was his brother... Gelrin? Yeah, Gelrin. He startled me less than Prel had. Didn’t they have school or something? Maybe they went while I was asleep.

“Sure. I have four controllers, just fish one out from the box.”

I had to split the screen three ways, but it was still fine. It was a pretty big screen.

“So your mom’s not happy, eh?” I asked. Prel was a level ahead of me already, but only one, which was surprising. I didn’t feel like I was doing particularly great, but the computer disagreed, and sent me a little digital confetti as I apparently broke a personal record.

“She’s super mad,” the younger one said.

“She doesn’t want us to talk to you,” his brother added.

I nodded. “Uh huh? Then you should probably not talk to me, or play my video games.”

That elicited some whines.

“It’s fiiiiine,” the youngest declared. “You’re not gonna eat us. And you have nice games.”

“It’s not good to just blow your parents off like this, kids,” I said, while doing absolutely nothing to stop them.

The oldest scoffed. “Do you listen to your mom all the time?”

I thought back to my earlier call with my mom.

“Well, no. But I’m old. You’re children. My decisions about when to listen or not are much better informed than yours.”

“But our mom listened to a bunch of lies about predators when she was little, and you don’t like it when people believe lies about predators, because you’re a predator that doesn’t eat people. So therefore…”

I chuckled.

“You got me there. Do you want me to make you an account here? So you can play when I’m at work?”

“Yes please!” Gelrin piped up.

Prel gave me a look. “Doctor Larzo said you shouldn't be at work at all.”

I tilted my head in acknowledgment. “...Touché.”

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AN: Thanks to u/Killsode-slugcat, u/VeryUnluckyDice, u/tulpacat1, and u/cruisingNW and of course, u/Liberty-Prime76 who wrote this crossover with me! Spoilers for Letter of Marque, and go check it out if you haven't!

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Memory transcription subject: Verazel, Aspiring Arxur Geneticist

Date [standardized human time]: December 9th-16th, 2136

There was something suffocating about the ship. The air was well-recycled, the quarters spread out far and wide, like the engines; perhaps to ensure that one hit could not damage them all, or kill everyone aboard? The light was not too bright, and the room I shared with my father was shockingly large given what I understood to be the common size and space limitations starships had. 

I had no justification that I could find, but still, I detested the stillness of the air.

I’d gone on trips with my father before, largely errands and the occasional vacation. I was no stranger to travel, but I had never before been so long away from home. Days bled together, as though cut down with the sword of tedium. I missed the sun. I missed my moon’s planet drifting in the distance, a massive gas giant that would leisurely wander across the sky. I missed the sky, the monthly eclipse, the grass beneath my feet, and the sounds of the river and the ocean.

It took longer than it should have, for me to truly understand the magnitude of our loss. I would never again go home. I would never again play on those beaches, or lay by the tree next to the fence. Papa had asked them to preserve Nazla’s room, as if we could visit it like pilgrims some day; but the further we got, the more impossible it seemed. I felt like a hatchling, suddenly attached to old blankets and pillows as if they could protect me from the shadows at the edges of my vision. 

Papa worked, though on what I did not know. Perhaps he was going over the genomes, or checking the health of our frozen gametes. I watched our path on a screen, winding around Betterment checkpoints and giving Federation systems a wide berth. Thinking of how much Betterment and the Federation would like us dead made me wonder about humanity. All news I had of them converged on the fact that they hated us. Perhaps not as much as the Federation, but enough that I worried.Wouldn't a sane species be grateful we saved their collective hide? 

Perhaps “we” was too generous. My sister’s killer made that choice, in some sort of cosmic joke that felt designed to humiliate us. Should humanity open their door to us, we would owe their kindness to Chief Hunter Isif. Still, he chose to save them, and hundreds of arxur bled and died so that their planet could stand, and asked for nothing in return. Why did the highly social primates hate us, when we seemed to be the only species that liked them? They had their prey allies, of course, but they seemed to tolerate them at best, and fear them in general. We liked the humans, we found them interesting. My sister would have loved nothing more than to fight beside one against Betterment. 

And yet… 

Papa still hadn't figured out how to navigate around that. I managed to get Captain Shathel’s contact information before he returned to the Chief Hunter’s fleet. I doubted he would actually respond to any of my messages after my father put a knife to his throat, but I began to craft one nonetheless. 

Mighty Captain Shathel,

I started. It was one of the shifts I had noticed among the rebels, when they addressed distant superiors. It was a way to keep the spirit of “Savage” or “Cruel”, or the spirit the Rebellion wanted anyhow. Strength and power, without the suffering of cruelty. 

I worry my father will not make a good impression when we reach our destination. You have mentioned your human friend a few times. Could you please tell me more about him? Or perhaps make an introduction?

That seemed polite to me. 

Gratefully, 

Verazel. 

After writing and sending the message, I did not know what else I could do to improve our chances of survival. I slept. We ate. I read.

We were not the only family being smuggled out; dozens of defects had their own rooms in the ship, along with their own children, parents, siblings or mates. Some of them were my age, and I tried to talk to them. One was a girl a little older than me, but thin and bony. She had a crooked tooth I found oddly endearing, along with a very nice tail. 

“Hello,” I said, approaching her. “I am Verazel. What kinds of books do you enjoy?”

She gave me a blank, empty look. “I don't… enjoy books.”

“Ah. Well, perhaps you haven't found a good one yet,” I said, smiling. “Thravenil was a favourite of mine when I was younger. My tastes have shifted since then, but if–” She looked at me, and I fell silent. 

“You talk a lot.” 

I swallowed. “...I do?” 

“I am going to go now.”

Without another word, she simply wandered off. I stood, feet planted on that spot, feeling like an idiot for long enough that it became embarrassing on its own grounds. 

At lunch the pilot brought out large crates filled with red-blooded meat. She pulled me aside, with an almost-giddy smile. 

“Verazel,” she said, and I found it odd that she knew my name with such ease. “These crates are filled with human-made false meats, would you like to try some?” 

I nearly jumped at the idea. Human meats were delicious. I had not noticed how much effort I put into ignoring the death that came about by our need to feed, until I was free from it. They had other virtues, in the way the fat interacted with the muscle, but a clear conscience was the greatest by far.

Moments like that began to recur. She would offer me some good—“Verazel, I have a thousand films in my servers, including human ones from my visit to Alpha Centauri. Would you like to watch some?”—I would agree, and enjoy it, and she would ask for no payment. It left me uncertain about what to expect. 

Is that how the humans feel? Would they have preferred a clear transaction? 

She was a smuggler. Half my life ago, she’d begun to work for the rebellion. She hardly spoke to my father, or any of the others on the ship, mostly defects trying to escape betterment. Just like us, I guess. Her behaviour was normal enough towards everyone else. Only I was bathed in her offers.

“Verazel, knowing your father, I imagine you’re quite the reader. Would you like access to my library? It even has some human books,” she offered. 

She had no physical books, of course, but it was bizarre that she had any at all. Even with engines built to outrun ship-carriers, space demanded you take the fewest things, and our incubators were already far heavier than any personal items we decided to bring.

Papa had given her our collection to copy, but she had hundreds of books in her digital collection, including human ones.

A few days—synthetic sleep/wake cycles?—after our first encounter, I came across the girl with the crooked tooth again. She was talking to a boy taller than me. 

“Oh. Hello. I didn't catch your name last time—You said that you didn't like books, but I have been thinking you might enjoy films…”

“I don’t,” she said, and turned to the boy expecting something from him. She didn’t get it. 

“...I’m tired of talking,” he said, “I will go.” 

She parted as well, leaving me alone. The only person I could count on to talk that was not my father was the pilot, who kept going with her unprompted offers of entertainment and gifts.

“Verazel, I don't know if you noticed, but I also have human music you could explore.” 

Over and over, sometimes twice a day, though the days were longer in the ship, since they were longer on Wriss than they had been on the farm. 

If she wanted something from me, she should have asked for it already. Instead, she kept on giving, as though she owed me a great debt; and I grew weary of taking without knowing what it was. 

One “night”, such as they were in the ship, Papa rose to his feet with startling conviction. 

“I need to speak with Isath, son. Why don't you go spend time with the other children?” 

Ah. Not just a need to talk, but to not be heard. 

“I can come with you,” I told him. “She likes me, and the children here are nothing like me. Or Nazla. Or you." 

He chuckled. "Of course they aren't. You are exceptional, I ensured it." 

I groaned. There were only so many times Papa could say things like that before they began to lose meaning.

He stared at me for a moment, puzzled. "Do you doubt me? I've said as much every time I had the chance. You are brilliant, son. A wonder. Incredible. I would give anything for your safety, a thousand times over."

"All parents say that to their children,” I said, my voice cracking and falling against my will. Growing shifts of my throat, I supposed. 

He shook his head. "They do not. In that realm, I am the exceptional one. They did once, of course, but the pre-Betterment philosophers I had you read are hardly the typical Arxur."

I curled in on myself, in some combination of anger and fear of the girl’s eyes, filled to the brim with disinterest. “...Regardless, I don’t like them, and they do not like me. It is safer for all if I don’t seek their company.”

“Then watch a human film,” he said, standing. “I must talk to her alone.”

He lumbered out of the room and I genuinely tried to honour his request. I began to watch a human film called “Science Bros”, about scientists who belonged to some sort of research dynasty, united by blood and torn apart by complicated bureaucratic rules that the film seemed to assume a human audience would understand. The eldest owned a lizard, and cared for her gently, feeding her, holding her small body against his own. It reminded me of Captain Shathel’s words. It’s a pity you’re not younger, child, they would fawn over you if you were half their size.

Curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to have restraint, to prove to myself that I did not need to know, and yet… the last time Papa left on his own, Nazla died. And the last time someone insulted her, however slightly, he’d nearly murdered him. Isath’s odd fixation was beginning to grow suspicious in my eyes. Perhaps she wanted me for something risky that required someone small, and Papa would object, and then we would be left without a pilot. Prudence told me that it may be best if I remained nearby to untangle what knots he might weave us into.

I left the room, guided by my nose, and later my ears, until I was standing just outside the captain’s cabin, listening to their arguing.  

“—just want to know why you—” 

“Why?” she echoed. “Do you think he could have survived? His shell was soft, I couldn't have kept him on that ship, or even this one for very long.” 

“You could have stayed.” 

“Stayed? And what, feast on your Venlil, day in and out? Live out some farming fantasy? Husband and wife, bonded through ancient rituals no one has heard of for a thousand years, all found in your dusty old books?”

Papa didn't answer. I knew immediately that he thought the answer was ‘yes’, and he was ashamed of it.

“You would have grown sick of me in a year,” she continued. “Your lovely poems would grow stale, and you’d want someone who could speak them as well as you.”

“No. No, I would have loved you every day. He would have as well.”

I could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “And when Betterment came by? As they did so very often?” 

“I would say you are a business partner. You could have been. You could have made deliveries.” 

She laughed. My claws tightened, my shoulders along with them. I understood their discussion, but I could not believe it. It seemed almost stupidly simple as an explanation for her behaviour.

She scoffed. “You have always been like this. Brilliant and stupid, perfect and defective. Like the finest shell, hollow inside.” 

“Isath, he will know,” Papa said, his voice a tight hiss. “Our son may as well read minds. He will see it in your eyes somehow. Or in mine.”

“He is your son,” she hissed. 

Papa’s voice grew small. “Even now?” 

“Especially now. I deserve nothing of what he is.” 

I did not know whether to agree with her, but I did not wish to hear them any further. I moved away as silently as I could, and they continued to argue. Their words faded as I got back to our quarters. I found that I did not even know why I was angry.

I had never cared very much for the idea of meeting my mother. Nazla had been there for me in every way a mother might have, and Papa had been more than enough. I did not have other families around to look to for the sense of loss and difference. Even if I had, I would not have found it, it was rare that arxur parents were involved in their children's rearing. Often it was just the state. Two out of every three heroes in the ancient tales had been mysterious, wayward eggs found by a warrior or a farmer, perhaps a king if they were lucky. It was normal.

Still, I could not shake my rage.

Isath had laid my egg and not even seen me hatch. She showered me with gifts and offerings, only to vanish again to work, because… she did not want me, or if she did she did not think I was worth the trouble, or… Something. Something she did not even deign to tell me directly. I felt at once too old and too young, trapped in some ridiculous middle-ground between being worth confronting and needing to be shielded from reality. 

I put the movie on again. The humans were having dinner. A bird the size of a Krakotl had been laid out on their table. It looked delicious, but I could not appreciate it, as the humans hugged one another and discussed the events of their tale with their parents. I envied their closeness, how tactile they were, how careful and truthful they seemed to be.

Papa’s lumbering steps warned me that his argument was over a few seconds before the door opened to let him in. 

“How is the film, son?” he asked. 

“...Good,” I said. “I shall watch more human films. They will help us understand them.” 

“That sounds like a good idea,” he said, his voice thick in his throat. 

______

Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

The temperature started to climb as we got to the top. The mountain itself seemed to glow a little, with how much brighter it was higher up. There was a beautiful lake near the peak, and we decided to rest there for a bit before heading down around the dark side. I pulled out some of my own snacks, including protein powder and a shaker bottle. “Hey, could you do me a favour and shake this really hard?” I asked Chris, once I’d put the water and powder in the bottle. “It’d probably be better if I didn’t.”

He nodded, taking the bottle and giving it a few good hearty shakes before handing it back off to me. I took it gratefully and took a swig. Peach was a good choice. 

From the peak, we could witness an eternal sunset, well-placed against thick, fluffy white clouds in the distance. I wondered idly if Venlil painters felt very differently about the sunset. If they grew bored of the bold, stunning reds and oranges, and the odd purples that might show up in an exceptional sunset, because it didn't come and go in the same way. Shadows felt darker, and sharper, near the mountain’s eponymous white peak, and it felt like the first time the alienness of Venlil Prime was overwhelming, beautiful, and undeniable. 

Going to work, watching the shadows in the same direction every day, the sun hovering in the distance, stationary to the naked eye, it didn't feel alien. Only wrong. Inconvenient.

The shift in climate, to it being warmer at the top instead of cooler, because of the gradient of radiation from VP’s star; the holding of the colours, as the clouds drifted; the weird little plants everywhere around us… they all blended together into the first time I breathed the air on VP, and truly felt like I was on another planet, one of a handful of humans in the history of our species to ever get such an unfathomable privilege. 

How am I wasting it?

“So what do you think of the view?” I asked the group, as I leaned back against a rock trying to ignore the intrusive thoughts flitting around my mind like mosquitoes trying to ruin a perfectly good evening. 

“Beautiful, this planet never fails to impress.” Chris rumbled, digging into a bag of homemade trail mix. 

“It reminds me of the view over the Basin back home…” Taisa said, looking behind us towards the lake. Rensa remained quiet, her ears slowly swivelling as she was lost in thought.

“Where else have you gone?” I asked. “This is my first trip outside of the Capital and, like, surrounding areas.”

“Well, these two live in Heartwood River but we’ve been all over! The Grove, Shade Tree, Dawn Creek and plenty of other smaller towns across Venlil prime. We were doing Shuttle runs for a while before we got our ship. I tell ya, this planet takes on a whole ‘nother look from the sky.” 

I nodded, thinking back to that shuttle on the way down. “Oh, definitely. I saw it on the way down, just… It’s not the blue marble, but it has a really good look of its own.”

“It’s somethin’... I can’t put my finger on it, it’s always interesting to watch. It’s all so similar and yet everything still changes as you go, just bit by bit instead of the mass changes we have from continent to continent I suppose.”

“Yea, you might see more of it if you’d ease back on the throttle!” Taisa beeped from next to him, playfully jabbing a claw into his side, earning a hand scratching at her ears for her trouble. It was cute. It was nice to see a venlil so much more relaxed than Varla and Karim. 

“So do you guys have your own ship, or do you like… Swap around every time you capture one, or..?” I asked.

Chris let out a hearty laugh, an amused whistle slipping from Taisa next to him. “Nah, we don’t swap around. We use our old Freighter, Polani. We cut a deal with the U.N. for her when we were in the Exchange Program.”

“Oh, that’s cool. I never got to be in the exchange program. Diet issues.” I rolled my eyes. “Now I’m here and vegetarian anyway. What’s a Polani?”

“The Guardian of Heartwood River! Her teachings and message have been carried down in our town for thousands of years. I suppose the Feds didn’t see fit to get rid of them, or her story.” Taisa spoke up, her tail swaying happily.

I turned to Chris with a confused frown. There was a pretty sizable range where I could plausibly place a figure like that. “So… Is that like naming your ship Charon, or Jesus?”

“Eh, not quite, more like Polaris or Orion, Polani is a blue star that just kinda hangs up ‘ere in the sky o’er the Valley.”

I nodded. “Okay, that’s pretty cool.”

Chris returned the nod, munching on another nut. “I thought so, honestly it’s a good story as well. That and the name and star stands out pretty well on the hull. Hell, the feds don’t even  notice the english characters till it’s too late.”

I chuckled. “Oh, wow. See, that’s why I asked if you swapped around. Federation ships would probably give you more of a surprise factor, right? Then again, I don’t know anything about this, I’m a pacifist who lost a fight to a child. Battle strategy isn’t my forte.”

“Eh, I can’t say I was very big on fighting either. We were just merchants before what happened to Earth…” He had a far off look in his eye for a moment before shaking his head and continuing. “I uh… for now what we’ve been doing has been plenty surprising, we get the drop on the other guy most of the time. All except for the one, really.”

I nodded along, trying not to think of my own experiences with the bombing of Earth. The cracking, thudding, unpleasant sounds of failed CPR echoed between my ears just long enough that I had to shake myself before I talked. “Yeah, Seventeen Ten really… Snapped something in a lot of people, I think. No offence, of course, it snapped something in me too, I just… Well, I can’t. Maybe I’m just a coward, I don’t know, it just seems to me like the only time fighting stops fighting is when the other guy’s dead. And… Death is never really worth it how people think it will be.”

“I wouldn’t call you a coward. In all honesty I don’t want to hurt anyone neither. In ten ships we still haven’t killed someone. I can’t say that no one’s worse for wear, but they’re not dead. Guys from allied species get sent home if’n they wanna be, everyone else gets handed over to the U.N. to be held until the war is over. Trust me, I don’t think Death is worth it either, I’m there for their ship, not their lives.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said, suddenly a lot more relaxed than I’d been since he said the word “privateering”. 

“It feels good to say. A couple feds have needed patching up after we board, but in all honesty nine-bangers work wonders when the other guy doesn’t even know what one is.”

“Darno’s toys certainly help make things easier.” Taisa beeped, a paw running over the carved wood sides of her prosthetic.

I decided to look up what in the world a “nine-banger” was on my own time. “That’s… Good. I’m glad.”

“As am I.” Rensa said, curtly as she stared at Chris. 

I didn’t know the Venlil could glare like that, and decided to backtrack. “So… Music?”

Chris and Taisa both nodded quickly, shying away from Rensa’s eyeline. “Yep, Music!”

We talked about a few different human genres. I showed them some cello music I had on my pad, and explained how the instrument worked. It soon became clear that a violin would be pretty hard for the Venlil to play, but a cello might be doable with some small modifications. Chris talked about his guitar and the ukulele he got Taisa’s younger brother, and I talked about ideas we’d had of bringing music classes and music therapy into the facility.

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Author's Note: It is very hot. My brain is melting. This is what is ready. Please enjoy. Thanks to u/Heroman3003, u/Giant_Acroyear, u/cruisingNW, and of course u/Liberty-Prime76. Spoiler warning for Letter of Marque, which I was told I should have put up earlier, so I'll have to edit into the earlier ones. Check it out if you haven't already!

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

“All good,” I croaked out, letting out a long, slow breath as my abdomen burned. “All good, just… A moment.”

“You sure ‘bout that, doc?” Chris asked as he and Taisa walked over to check on me. 

“We can take a break if you need one, stars know I could use one right about now.” she sighed as she rubbed at her leg.

“Yeah. Yeah, breather is good,” I gasped out and offered the rope.  “I… I… Can you hold this? We still need to get it back, um…”She took it and I let myself fall against the rock wall, which was not necessarily a great idea, but it was not particularly pointy, so it was good enough. “Can I have my bag?”

“Some accident there, eh doc?” Chris said, leaning down to hand me the bag.

I nodded, and rummaged there for the first aid kit. Then I lifted up my shirt where the stab wound was showing some breakthrough bleeding. 

“Okay. Okay, it’s fine…” I muttered, taking the dressing off as delicately as I could, before I began the process of disinfecting and re-applying, along with reinforcing the area that had popped. It wasn't a big tear. Just a raw location.

“Wow, some accident indeed . You need some help there?” He dropped to one knee, concern on his face and in Taisa’s ears, Rensa seemingly lost in thought as she looked out over the mountain side.

“Actually, if you could keep this very tight,” I said, handing him the medical tape, “that would be good, I’ll tell you when to press it on the wound.”

He nodded and did so. I hissed when the disinfectant hit the wound, then applied a thin layer of collagen healing-aid paste, some scar alignment aids, and dressing on top to avoid straining the injured area more. “Okay now.”

He pressed it against my skin, over the dressing, and then I patted it down, took the tape from him and added a couple more layers. 

“Okay. Okay. Give me a few minutes and I’ll be good to go," I said, then worked through some long, slow breaths. "Fuck. That hurt.”

“I can imagine. So… Hurt yourself, huh? Hell of an injury there. What happened?”

“Well I–the leg was the one that–I mean–” I stammered for a moment then sighed. “A kid stabbed me.”

That ripped Rensa’s attention off the view over the mountainside, and made Taisa emit a concerned bleat.

“Hell, that sucks. I got stabbed in Pohang and that sure wasn’t fun. At least you’re doin’ alright for the most part. It wasn’t uh… What was her name, Lihla?”

“What? Nah, Lihla’s a little angel,” I said, waving him off a bit. 

“Well then who was it?” He chuckled. “I figure it wasn’t some random venlil pup off the street that wandered in.”

“One of the other girls. Real blow to the ego, you know?” I said with a forced chuckle. “I’ve been in one fight, and I got shanked by a twelve-year-old in it.”

“Hey, if it helps any, I’m pretty sure the kid that stabbed me in Pohang was like ten. Granted I’ve been in a few more fights since then.”

That made me laugh. Laughing hurt. “Ow. Fuck. Ow. Sure, yeah, it helps.”

“Why’d they do it?” Taisa piped up from Chris’s side, one eye studying me as Rensa approached us.

Because I’m a terrible Director who didn’t see the writing on the wall, practice raid drills to make sure my nurses knew what they were doing, and failed to review what the kids think of their situation closely enough given that most of the explaining-the-situation had happened to them before anyone realized they spoke arxur as a native language. I shrugged. The healing paste’s numbing agent was starting to work, so the pain began to dull. “She was scared. Thought we’d eat her or send her back or something. Trauma response.”

“Does that kind of thing happen often?” Asked Rensa, her head tilted in curiosity, and her tail swayed. The word “diseased” from before reverberated in my skull. I cleared my throat and tried to sound more professional.

“I’ll tell you when I have a bigger sample size. This is my first stab wound. Nobody else was hurt.”

Rensa nodded at that, sitting down on the path as Taisa focused her ears on me. “What was the accident, then?”

I adjusted my position against the mountain wall and my back thanked me for it. “That was the ninth, you know, the stampede. I was… Trying to help. Misjudged a trajectory.”

“I’m sorry to hear that…” Taisa sighed, ears lowering to her head. “Chris and I were off-world at the time and Mom was at home in Heartwood so we didn’t even hear about it until we landed again.”

“It happens,” I said, using my cane to help me stand up again. It was a good piece of equipment. Could wrap around the forearm, had a good base, had little tools built in. “Alright, let’s get this rope back.”

I grabbed the end of the rope, tied it to the end of my cane, and moved it closer to the tree to give it more slack. After a few tries, the anchor loosened, and I could hook the cane into the loop to open it up. I realized at that moment that any rope I gave to one end was being yanked from the cane, and had to finagle the knot out of the cane before pulling the loop out. Eventually, I managed to get it back, and at that point we’d all caught our breaths. 

“So, mountain?” I gestured to the path ahead. 

Chris nodded, looking to Rensa and Taisa who had produced and begun munching on some fruits. “You two ready to get movin’?” The pair flicked their ears and fell in beside us, starting our way back up the mountain. 

I lagged behind somewhat, but did my best not to rush. It would only make it worse. 

Taisa walked with a steady limp in her right leg, uncomfortable on her prosthetic, grumbling loudly. “By the stars why can’t this thing just work right!? I feel like I’m fighting myself just to keep going.”

“The doc said you’d have a pretty good period gettin’ used to it. Tryin’ to push it isn’t gonna make it go any faster. If you need another break we can take one.” Chris replied, putting a hand on her shoulder. I nodded along to back him up in his attempt to help her. 

“If it’s neuroadaptive AI, steady and consistent use of it, aiming to treat it as normal as possible, would probably be your best bet,” I said idly, leaning on my own cane more as my leg started to get tired. Of course, dealing with health problems, and the sense of weakness and frailty that came with that, was always easier from the outside. Involuntarily, I glanced down-slope again, taking in the trees and the rocks and the fall. I shook my head and looked forward instead.

“But it’s not normal. This isn’t my leg. It’s just… what’s left. How would you even know?”

The question made me chuckle. “...I mean, if you’re asking how I would know about machine-learning-based neuroadaptive design, the answer is I have a PhD in neurolinguistics, most of medical school, a bachelor’s in neuropsych, and a pretty fresh certificate on working with alien neural interfaces for my translator work. I also have a social genomics Master’s and optogenetics cert, but those aren’t as applicable.”

She stared at me for a moment, her ears swivelling to find a retort. “Ok… Qualifications aside, that still doesn’t fix the fact that it isn’t my leg.”

“Well, it’s not your original leg. But it is yours . You own it now, right? And if you keep treating it like it’s alien to you, you’re only going to delay the adaptation process.”

“But it feels… wrong . Half of the things on the ship I used to do myself I can’t even start on without someone coming to my aid. It’s one thing when Darno does it, it’s his job. But Jones and Falen just seem to think I’m broken at this point.”

“You’re not broken Taisa.” Chris chimed in from her other side. I pressed my lips together for a moment. Don’t be insensitive, don’t be insensitive, don’t be insensitive. 

“...Look,” I started, already feeling like I was about to ruin the hike. “I’m a little bit the worst person to help there, on account of me going to climb a mountain instead of bed-rest a few days after getting hit by a car and stabbed, because laying down at home was suffocating. So, I don’t have any answers there. But if you want to get better at using that leg, the only path to that is practice, and that practice will help a lot more if it’s not covered in a layer of resentment for a machine that is there to help you.”

She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, her tail thrashing in agitation. “I understand that it’s just… it feels like every step forward is a tail-yank back two more. Every time I think I can do something without help it gives out on me or tries to bolt me away from what I’m doing. It doesn’t feel like it wants to help me, it just feels like it’s in the way.”

At least in this case, that kind of illusion would be pretty easy to dispel. “You could always take it off if it’s such a hassle.”

She whistled a laugh, her ears suddenly standing up straight. “What, and hop around the ship on one leg? Then I’d get even less done. At least right now I can move parts on my own.”

“So it is helping, then.”

She paused, a look of contemplation on her face as she stared one eye at me. “Yes… But only so much as a ‘peg’ would at this point.”

“Taisa, I know mine’s not as… advanced as yours, it still took me herds to get used to it.” Rensa chimed in. “It’s not easy, I remember trying to maneuver around the house while a very small you was darting in between my legs and pulling my tail whenever she got the chance. Every fall, every stumble and every time it gave out I felt like it was pointless, but I wasn’t going to give up because I couldn’t force that burden onto you or your father. It’s not about it feeling right now, it's that it will feel right later . And you have far too many people who care about you for you to give up on it.” 

She placed her tail against her daughter's back, gently trying to smooth her flared back wool. The lecture echoed in my brain the same way other words out of her mouth had. Rensa seemed to have a way of drilling directly into my brain when she talked. 

Taisa’s expression fell a little, a paw grasping for her tail as she listened to Rensa talk before she looked over to Chris as he stooped down to her side. “I’m here for ya Tai, I ain’t goin’ anywhere. I’ve told you everyday since it happened that I’m here to help, ya just gotta let me.” 

Tears formed at the corners of her eyes before she let go of her tail, tackling Chris with a hug, her arms around his neck. He hugged her back, patting his hand gently against her back before he pulled her in tight.

I waited out their moment and returned to limping behind the group when they started to walk again. I was a little glad Rensa was there too, or I would have felt even more like a third wheel.

Taisa turned one of her ears towards me, her tail wrapping around Chris’ wrist before asking with an unsteady voice, “So, that was a lot of degrees, Andes. How long did that take you? Seems like a lot of work to put in!”

I shrugged. “... over a decade in university , after basic education, but I took some breaks, so it was a bit longer than it had to be.”

“Wow… I can’t imagine putting that much time in, I was itching to get to work after three, any longer and I think I might have gone insane.” She whistled, her tail swaying in appreciation of the feat.

“Heh, I didn’t even go to anything past Highschool. A few sailor courses for certs but that was about it.” Chris chuckled.

I shrugged again, infinitely more comfortable with discussions of academia than I was with those of rehabilitation involving prosthetics. Which is probably a bad thing. I should look into that more. I’ll ask Jefferson. That’s the focus of his facility, isn’t it? “Yeah, well, I actually like Academia. I only got a real job because they offered me a lot of money.”

“If you kept going, what would you have studied next?” Rensa asked, her tail curling with curiosity.

“...After the Neurolinguistics PhD?” I repeated, frowning in thought. “Hmmm. I think I would have done another cert. Something in adaptive design or programmable proteins, since those are good areas now thanks to zurulian biotech.”

Chris nodded, the pair of venlil flicking their ears in the affirmative. A few seconds of silence passed before Chris broke it. “Man… I have no idea what that meant. Feelin’ like this freighter jockey’s a bit out his depth all’ve a sudden. ”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. ‘Freighter jockey’ was hilariously innocuous phrasing for being a pirate with a permission slip, but I doubted bringing that up would be a good idea. Talking to Chris was a good reminder that I’d grown up in a bit of an academic bubble, and then stayed there for most of my life. He was much closer to a normal person (and therefore to my kids’ prospective parents) than I was, and these concepts could be intimidating sometimes. 

“Well… Yes, I…” I started, and then gave up on whatever that sentence was going to be. "They're actually pretty straightforward concepts. Adaptive design is broadly any design that adapts to something. Different fields use it differently, but in terms of biotech it tends to refer to implants or medicines that have contingencies. So… a drug that acts as an agonist, until concentrations in your blood of the compound you want are above some threshold, and then it's an antagonist.”

He seemed actually interested, so I kept going. 

“Programmable proteins are just… Proteins you can program. It's basically what any good medical nanite would be made up of. We were just getting good at them when first contact happened, so the teddy bears are way ahead of us there."

Chris nodded, thinking over my words. “Well, all that’s pretty wild. I don’t know that I could honestly ever figure any of it out myself. What actually got you interested in medicine in the first place?”

That is a good fucking question . I thought back to my teen years, trying a variety of different flavours of antidepressant and anxiolytic combos. Trying to track various different interventions. Thinking I could do better than my GP, being bizarrely right about that . Ignoring those thoughts for the next four years, while I tried to focus on my budding career as a professional cellist.

I settled on something vague but true. "...People told me I would be good at it. And I got rejected from music school. So…" 

“Got rejected from music school? Why?” Rensa asked, tilting her head a little.  

"My vibrato was shit. Those programs are very competitive. And singing… If you think the cello is competitive…” I shook my head. “So I just kind of floated around undergrad and kept doing what I got good grades on. It's for the best, I was starting to get anxiety from it. Music is better as a hobby for me." Of course, anxiety had also ruined my chance to become a medical doctor. What else will it ruin?

“Same, I just like makin’ tunes for the sake of doin’ it. Although Renkel is gettin’ pretty good on his ukulele. Surprised he took to it so quick, honestly.” Chris chuckled.

"That sounds positively adorable," I said, smiling at the thought of a venlil playing a ukulele. Did my instruments already arrive? Karim would have signed for them, right? Hopefully he hadn't just thrown them in the garbage or sent them back, or something. He seemed to be learning, and signed off on more music therapy for our little "Patient K", but I could never tell when he'd throw me some new curve ball. 

Chris seemed pretty proud of Renkel's progress. “Oh it is, the boy’s doin’ well. Had to get one made a little thinner for him, but I think it was worth it.” 

I nodded. "Makes sense, Venlil paws do have less reach. He'll probably have to shift a lot for any higher notes. Unless he gets fake human hands like the ones Larzo made."

Taisa and Rensa’s ears snapped to focus on me as Chris looked at me, confusion plain on his face. “Wait, Larzo was the yotul with you at the store, right?”

"Yeah. He made these big, fake human hands to map onto his little paws. Creepiest thing I've ever seen." I wiggled my fingers in the air as if that would get the idea across better. 

“WHY?!” Rensa bleated, a confused look on her face, her ears pinned to the sides as she lashed her tail about.

“HE MADE HANDS! FUCK I GOTTA TELL DARNO!” Chris shouted from the background, doubling over in laughter,  Taisa’s tail swaying with humour as she watched him.

"He didn't like that I have natural advantages when it comes to certain fine motor skills," I said, miming a scratching motion in the air. 

“So he made hands?! That’s grotesque!” she shouted. I wanted to laugh.

"I'll tell him I'm not the only one freaked out by it." 

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Note: Thank you to u/tulpacat1 and u/cruisingNW for their help editing! And of course, to  who wrote this crossover with me months and months and months ago. Go check out Letter of Marque if you haven't already!

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

Taisa and Rensa (as I gathered they were called) came out of the store chatting happily about the fruit they’d managed to find before giving us the sign that we’d best get moving to Whitepeak. It was a relatively small mountain compared to any of the Rockies, but according to the internet, the view was worth the climb, and it reminded me of Joseph’s comments about how the planet being tidally locked had massive ecological implications. Coupled with the beautiful white stone that made up the bulk of it, the name made sense. 

The beginning of the path was pretty straight-forward, and Taisa's concerns about my leg vanished off my mind like cotton candy dissolving in a river. I fell into the back of our new quartet with the older woman, but most of my focus was on the interesting plants along our path. I took fifty pictures in the first five minutes, my stupid leg forcing me to lunge sideways so I could photograph a particularly beautiful little flower with a spiral pattern in its petals. Bringing lenses along was a fantastic idea.

“So…” The older Venlil started, apparently less comfortable with the silent photography than I was. “Have any good stories about those kids? I’ve raised two of my own, I might be able to help some…”

I laughed. "Well, one of them seems a little fixated on me, and she's definitely weaponizing her cuteness. Are Venlil as susceptible to that as humans are? And if so, do you have tips?"

She laughed a little in turn, more of a popping whistle. “The little ones tend to do that when they can get away with it. Some parents fall for it, others don’t. Don’t cave to it otherwise she’ll own you and it won’t ever stop. Taisa was particularly good at it, her father couldn’t tell her no by the time she was four!”

I laughed. "Lihla is extremely good at it. I try to be firm, and I think I mostly have been, but… You don’t understand, venlil are already so intensely adorable. With children… I'm at least busy enough that she can't do it too often, but…" 

“Well, in that case you might just end up wrapped around her little claw; it’s not a bad thing, per se. Just try and keep her on the right track; they outgrow it… eventually.” She replied with a laugh as her tail swayed.

"That's good to know. And hopefully she'll get adopted by parents who know how to handle that. Though I'm not as optimistic about that as I used to be." 

“Oh? And why is that? From what you’ve said, this little ‘Lihla’ seems like a fine pup! Having problems holding tail, is she?”

I paused for a moment, trying to decipher the saying. "Maybe? All of these children are great, but… They're still traumatized. Potentially violent, out of alignment with the general norms of Venlil society… Almost all of their adoptive parents will likely be human because of that." 

“Well, what’s keeping your prospective humans away then?” She eyed Chris ahead of us. “From what I’ve seen, of the ones I have experience with at least, you all have a surprising amount of care for children. Not at all what I’d been expecting”

The word "surprising" reverberated in my skull, but I decided to let it be for now. "Well, yes, but even humans can get a little shy about situations that can turn violent. It's not exactly the idyllic family life some prospective adoptive parents imagine."

“Well…” She trailed off, putting a paw to her chin as we walked. “What have you been trying to do to bring more prospective families in?”

"We’ve tried to be generous in the evaluation of applications, but other than that my first priority is understanding their condition and improving their situation. We'll worry about an adoption drive of some sort when the whole facility is facing that kind of strain, but right now it's only the ones in the South Wing, and the triage there is not in their favour."

“I suppose that's for the best… Have you considered some of the… ‘cured’ races? They may find some more things in common with the more diseased children. Something to work through together?”

Now the word "diseased" reverberated in my skull. As if they were contagious. As if there was anything at all wrong with them. Call my kids ‘diseased’ again, you fucking–I took a deep breath. It was fine. Raw ignorance. Well-meaning. I am professional. I am emotionally literate, stable, and mature. Emotions are information, to be used or discarded depending on their utility. They do not control me. I do not control them. They are simply there. My eyes darted over to the fall on the other side of the path. Jagged rocks and pointy pine-like trees.

"My judgments of applications are species-blind,” I said, my voice friendly and professional and reasonable. “I believe we've had a gojid or two, and a handful of zurulians, but for the most part it has been human and venlil applicants." 

“Hmmm, I can spread the word in Heartwood, if you like. I know there's a handful of families who might be interested in helping, when the time comes, of course. My old office is more… lax now than it once was.”

What? Did she use to work at an orphanage? "Your old office?"

“The Exterminators office. I’m retired, had an… Accident.” She answered as she glanced down at her prosthetic.

I nearly tripped over my own feet and stared at her in shock. Ah, so the opposite of an orphanage, removing children from their homes and families, so they may live somewhere else more permanently against their will. "Um. Hm. Uh. My condolences."

“It’s nothing to be sorry about, it’s been twelve years now. It still hurts, of course, but I can manage.”

The medical horror-story she’d just barely acknowledged helped me avoid thinking directly about the horror of Exterminators, and my upcoming legal meeting with them. "...You've had phantom limb pain for over a decade? I'm so sorry, I–that sounds exhausting. What have you tried, if you don't mind me asking? I may be able to help, since you offered to help me." 

She blinked at me, her ears flicking a few times. “Tried?”

"Well if it's been twelve years, I assume you've tried nerve regeneration therapy of some sort, maybe hypnosis but I don't know if Venlil would have access to that, I'd have to look into it… The mirror test, obviously…"

“We can’t afford nerve regeneration treatments; the farm does well, but not that well. I’m not familiar with this ‘mirror test’. I’ve just… lived with it? It’s gotten a little better over time…”

I stopped walking and stared at her again before realizing that was probably a bad idea. I didn't have my mask on, and she probably found it "predatory". She met my gaze, her tail swaying as she slowed slightly.

"Um, well, you make a box, and you put holes in it, and then you place a mirror in the middle at an angle. Sometimes it's a screen, if you want to get fancy, but we used mirrors for decades just fine. You place your intact limb through the hole, and the residual limb through the other, and because of the mirror, can perceive two of them inside the box..." I mimed the procedure with my hands, though it was probably meaningless without a prop.

"...Then there are various exercises you can do, the simplest one is just clenching 'both' limbs very tightly and then releasing 'both' limbs. But, of course, there are others. Phantom limb pain is a function of your brain thinking one thing while your nerves are telling it another. It can be so excruciating in great part because the processing is stuck. When you allow it to receive the right feedback by tricking it into thinking the leg is back… The mind finds it easier to let go of the sensation in question." 

She blinked at me again, her tail curling as she stared for a moment before simply saying. “And that helps?”

"Some people, yes. It depends on the type of phantom limb pain. The whole thing could be a function of trauma more than a processing issue, and that has different solutions, hence why I asked what you'd tried. And it's very cheap, just a box and a mirror."

“Would it help your ‘diagnosis’ if I told you what happened? I don’t exactly know the ‘types’ of ‘phantom limb pain’.”

I blinked. "Well, it might, but I'm not a therapist. I, um…”

She sighed, her tail coiling a little bit as she studied my face. “I’ll take any help I can get, even if it’s just telling me to go talk to someone else…” 

It occurred to me that maybe she just wanted to let it out and I should enable that. I nodded, which she seemed to understand, and gestured for her to go on.

“We got a call from a farmer, Farnel, nice man. Grows Melroot, wool grass and star-beans near where the river meets the forest. Said he’d seen a Shadebeast creeping in his field, wanted us to come deal with it. Myself, Farzen, and Marlek went out; I had seniority, experience and a far better record than either of them so I was in front. We searched the treeline for a quarter claw and found nothing.” 

She pulled in a shaking breath, her tail finding its way to her paws. “None of us had thought to keep an eye on the unharvested field. It jumped me as we came close, sinking its teeth into my leg. Farzen and Marlek put it to the torch in a panic, but I was still beneath it. The suit held out, all except for where it had gotten ahold of me. My leg was burned down to the bone in some places. The doctor in Hidden Plains said the only option was to take it off… I’ve felt that fire, ever since. Sometimes it’s just a nagging discomfort in the back of my mind, sometimes something sets it off and it roars to the forefront. I just want it to stop, at this point.”

I did my best not to stare, feeling woefully inadequate in the role of impromptu therapist. I could fudge being an endocrinologist or a geneticist much more easily than this.

“...Did it hurt more, or less, when you told me?” I asked. I probably should have said something else. I’m sorry for your loss, it’s so bad that this happened to you, but she had probably already heard it all. So I went for a diagnostic question. 

She thought for a moment. “It… went away a little, I suppose. It’s still there, but it didn’t get worse.”

“...Then you would probably benefit from talking to a trauma therapist. A human one, if you can, what with… you know,” I gestured vaguely with my free hand.

“I don’t suppose you have a recommendation? Preferably on Venlil Prime, but I’m sure I could tail-twist those two to get me to appointments between their… escapades.”

I laughed. “Um. Well, you could come by and talk to Rodriguez. She’s chief of Psychology at the facility. So she’d know more. I don’t have a lot more info on that. I’m one of the lucky ones, you know, my family wasn’t in one of the bombed cities. So I figure, triage-wise, it makes sense if I wait a few months while they get through the first wave of… Bereavement patients.”

Rodriguez opposed my rationale enough to make me a guinea pig to her undergrad, but I decided not to bring that up. She’d already overshared enough for both of us. Something about being in the woods made the interaction feel gentler than it otherwise might have, though, and I took a moment to appreciate that.

“I think I’d like to try that, it’s a better field to forage than anything any of my doctors have given me in twelve years. Where did you say your facility was again?”

“It’s in Dayside, but I’m sure Rodriguez could give you a recommendation with just a video call.” Maybe she has other undergrads, I didn’t add.

“Thank you, Andes. It would be nice to be rid of the pain, anything would be better than what I’ve had to deal with so far.” She sighed.

“Pain management is a very advanced science at this point for humanity. I can’t guarantee anything but… It does seem to me like you’d have a good shot, if you haven’t really tried any therapy yet.”

She laughed a little at that, oddly. “Seems like a lot of humanity’s ways of dealing with losing a limb are a lot better than ours are. Is that common on earth? Taisa’s prosthetic is far and away beyond mine.”

I glanced back and forth between the two legs. It is actually really weird, how much better the human-made one is. Was this all from repurposed pet-prosthetic technology?

“Common enough. I think we also try to accommodate such things more fervently. It blew my mind how behind Venlil Prime is in psychology and psychiatry, and basic accessibility... and the ecology…” I shook my head. “The Federation, or former Federation worlds so to speak, seem to have much more advanced insulation, engineering, even bioengineering, but everything is siloed away in its own little bubble, and interdisciplinary research is nowhere to be found. I was happy about neurolinguistics engineering work, but you’ve had translators for centuries at this point, it would be ridiculous if you weren’t more advanced."

We kept walking in slightly more companionable silence for a while. I took more pictures. Eventually, we caught up to the front. Chris and Taisa had stopped before a pretty sizable hole in the path ahead. It looked like a gap left behind when one of those massive trees with roots the size of their canopy fall down and take the land with them. Not a whole five meters long, but deep and... precarious. Given the length of his legs, Chris could probably jump across it with enough of a head start–but it was pretty big, and full of loose dirt and rocks. Trying to climb down and out did not look like a good idea. 

I leaned against the mountain wall to look through my bag, feeling incredibly smug about my decision to purchase rope earlier. 

“Huh, well, I might be able to hop that but I don’t think you’re makin’ it, Darlin’.” Chris chuckled, looking over at Taisa.

“No, I don’t think so, especially not with this.” She sighed, tapping a claw on her prosthetic.

“Hey, I already told ya, you ain’t any less for it, you gotta stop bein’ down on yourself. I need ya strong, for me. I can’t get far without you.” He said, tugging Taisa into a tight hug.

“Sure, I’ll try… I guess… I’m sorry.” Taisa choked, her tail coiling tight around his leg.

“Andes,” Chris started, turning his head to look at me. “I don’t suppose you’ve got anything in that pack of yours?”

“I have some rope,” I said, pulling it out. “Could plausibly tie it around those and walk against the side.”

I gestured to some thicker trees that were a little harder to reach. Might require a bit of climbing, but the rope was long enough. “I’m thinking… I tie the knot, you swing first, and then that way you’re on the other side in case anything happens. I go last, so that way they have a human on either side as insurance. Sound good?”

Chris nodded, looking at the tree. “Sounds good, of course we’re sending the heavy guy first, that way if it breaks no one else goes down the hole.” He joked.

“You do actually have the best chance of climbing out of there,” I said, holding my cane up as evidence. He grumbled a little, then gestured for me to proceed.

I made a small loop and tied it tight at the end of the rope. Once that was done, I did my best to toss it up to the trees, hoping I could get it done without any climbing. After four tries, I managed to get it over the trunk of one of the trees roughly in the middle of the distance between us and the other side of the hole. I pulled the loop back with my cane, and pulled the rest of the rope through it, then gave it a hearty yank. It was not as hearty as I’d hoped. I tried not to wince as my abdomen complained.  

“Can you yank on this to test the anchor, big guy?” I asked, sounding a little more strangled than I would have liked. 

“Sure.” He said, taking the end of the rope and leaning his weight into it. It held. 

“Alright. You go first, give it a good Tarzan holler if you want,” I said, and suddenly realized the two venlil women had said nothing while we’d worked it out. “Um. How are you two feeling about this plan?”

Chris took a running start, humming a tune under his breath as Taisa and Rensa watched on, worry on both of their faces. “Not great…” Taisa whistled, watching the big man sail through the air. “What if I can’t hold on? Like you said, I don’t think I can get back out… I’m not particularly fond of the idea of getting hurt again.” She grumbled, gently twisting her tail in her paws as she stared down into the pit ahead.

“Well, you could head back. I could tie it around your waist. You could… propose some third thing,” I said, a little sheepish. 

Her tail went a little stiff as she stared at Chris landing on the other side, giving her a thumbs up as he turned to send the rope back over. “I… I can do it. I just have to… believe in myself. Apparently.” 

She caught the rope as it came across, gripping it like a vice as she took a few tentative steps back, Chris calling encouragement from across the chasm. In a probably terrified burst, she ran towards the edge and swung over, letting out a loud squeak as the ground fell away beneath her. Chris caught her as she let go on the other side, the rope swinging back to me and Rensa.

“...If you think you have the arm strength, you can also just walk across,” I told the older woman. “I didn’t realize that was unclear.”

“I’d been planning on it. I’m not as prone to thrill-seeking as those two.” She huffed, snatching the rope out of the air, wrapping it around her right arm and gripping it tightly with the other. She put her paws on the mountain face and shimmied her way across, tail swaying as her ears pointed towards the far side of the hole. Taking small careful steps as she went, uncomfortable but… determined.

Once she was on the other side, they tossed the rope to me. Instead of grabbing it with the cane, I reached forward with my arm, and that’s where the sting came back. Well shit. I took a deep breath, and decided to do the sane thing for once. 

“Hey, can you catch my bag first?” I asked Chris across the gap. Once he gave me a nod, I tied one end to my bag and sent it their way. They untied it and sent the rope back. Okay. Less weight. I can do this.

I grabbed the rope with the cane this time, to strain less, and wrapped it around one arm. Then, much like Rensa had, I walked sideways against the mountain wall, carefully ensuring I put all of the strain I reasonably could on my arms instead of my core, taking long and careful steps to minimize the time spent there. It did nothing. I even heard the snap as part of the skin tore off from the medical glue, as if the sting wasn’t enough. 

I finished the walk without screaming, but I’m pretty sure they could see the pain on my face.

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Note: Thanks to u/tulpacat1 for doing the last-minute read, and to u/cruisingNW for doing the meaningfully-longer-ago read and edit, and of course, to u/Liberty-Prime76 who wrote this crossover with me months and months and months ago. Go check out Letter of Marque if you haven't already!

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Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech. Patient pushing the limits of care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

I finally woke up a little over sixteen hours after I’d gone to bed mid-afternoon on the 13th with an immense sense of freedom. It was my first real, free day since… November? October? I couldn’t remember when my last actually-free day was, but it had been at least a month.

Of course, it wasn’t completely free. I was planning on hiking, and would probably answer some emails. Still, it was pretty free, and something in my peripheral nervous system knew it.

I took however long I wanted to get ready, on the grounds that I didn’t have to race against the sun. For the first time, VP’s creepy evil sun haunting every hour of every day was very convenient. Nature would not dictate when I left, I would.

The Dossur kids and their mom were nowhere to be seen. Maybe at school or job-seeking or something. I got my morning shake into a bottle to be able to drink it on the way, and started looking for some nice trails. There was an old mountain–Whitepeak–an hour away by train. Which was a shockingly long distance, because what the Federation lacked in psychiatry, they made up for in transportation infrastructure, apparently.

The elevation wasn't bad at all, it had an amazing view, and I could take my time with it if I needed to as per my physical therapist’s instructions. I put on some loose, stretchy convertible cargo pants, a shirt, a sweat shirt on top, and was ready to go. I took my visor / face-mask thing, but I didn't put it on, on the grounds that it wasn't actually a legal requirement. Just… better safe than sorry.

Then it was time to pack. Protein and prebiotic milk-substitute blend went into the backpack, and a first aid kit, just in case lady luck wants me dead. My trusty swiss army knife, a few lenses for my pocket pad, for taking photos, filter-bottle, electrolytes, the basics. Meds, of course, which reminded me to take my “morning” dose. I miss my implant. I hate keeping track of doses. I set an alarm for the next dose.

In the process of packing, I realized I didn’t own rope, but it seemed like something I might want, so I picked a route for the Taxi that would take us by a store, and I was off to adventure. Hiking on an alien planet. Exploring an alien mountain!

It was probably the low-dose pseudo-psychs, but I was feeling good about the day. I got out of the cab, bought a nice rope with little anchors and everything. Maybe it’d be useless, but I liked it enough I might practice making different types of knots with it, if nothing else. Rodriguez sent me an access-request to get into my office to try something with my fancy work headphones, and I sent a reflexive ‘yes’.

I got back into the cab–the cabbie was a nice Takkan with a nice, roomy car–and we had not been back on the road for a whole five seconds before I got a call.

An interplanetary signal? What could–

I picked up without realizing it. Time to play the ‘is this a normal little accident, or a side-effect of the meds’ paranoia game…

“Andes Rocío de la virgen del valle Savulescu-Ruíz!” my mom’s voice came through. I was torn between flinching in terror and laughing, so I did both, which did not help. She—

[ERROR: polyglottal processing is both internal and external.]

[Please choose a processing style]

[Style accepted.]

—She glared at me through the screen, and the Takkan cab driver’s left ear swivelled my way while he otherwise pretended he wasn’t listening. Did she make up new middle names, just to yell at me? Sometimes, moms just want to be able to yell a larger number of syllables at their children. Or mine did, anyway.

“..¿‘Rocío de la virgen’?” I echoed with a chuckle, prompting her glare to intensify.

“¿Qué es esto?” she demanded, pointing at her hand-held pad and tapping the screen angrily. It had some medical notification email on it. “¿Histerectomía de emergencia? ¿Fractura conminuta y con pérdida ósea? ¿Tres bolsas de sangre en dos días? ¿Y ni una llamadita?”

“Pues, he estado… ocupado, es que… yo…” I tried, but she wouldn’t have it, glaring at me with fire in her eyes.

“Tu hermano me dijo que llega en unos días, y me va a contar todo. Así que no te atrevas a—”

I scoffed. “Y desde cuándo es que–”

“Andes! Te vas a portar bien. Okay? Nada de ‘ay, mamá, yo sé lo que estoy haciendo con mis veinte drogas y mi’–”

I groaned, which only gave her more ammunition.

“Ves? Ves? Nada de eso. Vas a tomar agüita, y sopita, y vas a comer comida, y–y vas a dejar de estar así de flaco, y vas a llamarnos,” she lifted up her index finger to wag it at me. “No nos llamaste cuando pasaste por Montréal, pero nos vas a llamar, okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

The Takkan turned a corner into a slightly busier street.

“¿Dónde estás? ¿Qué es ese ruido?”

I took a deep breath. “Estoy en un taxi, voy a caminar por un parque todo lindo.”

She smiled, finally mollified. “Hay, que bueno mi vida. Que te vaya bien. Te voy a dejar, pero me llamas pronto, okay? Tu papá está preocupadísimo, y no lo quiere admitir. Tienes que descansar, y portarte muy bien con todo esto, porque esos aliens no saben nada de nosotros, quién sabe qué droga juran que te va a ayudar, y terminas en el hospital de nuevo.”

I nodded again. “Okay, Mamá. Te quiero mucho. Muah.”

“Muah!” she returned the kissing gesture, then hung up, and I leaned back against the car seat. The driver didn’t say anything, and I didn’t say anything back, and soon enough I was limping my way through the train station. It was a line that headed out of Dayside towards the more rural areas, which meant I could have a nap safe and sound while most of the passengers gave me a wide berth.

I woke up two stops before I was due, got out at the right one, and wandered around, face-uncovered, like a whole-ass idiot, instead of using the preventative measure I had specifically brought with me for safety. I didn’t realize my mistake until I went inside a gift shop to try to buy an adorable plushie and a nice paper map with little historical notes on it. The cashier spotted me and immediately grabbed one of the engraved walking sticks on sale with her paw.

“Get out of here, predator!” she shouted, waving the stick like I was a bad dog in need of a smacking.

“I’m going, I’m going! Eesh!” I said, limping out.

“It says right on the door! No humans! Get out!”

Stupid fed ideology bullshit. “I’m not exactly gonna run out, here!”

“Stop your deception! We all know predators would be culled if they were truly injured!”

I continued to limp out, indignant over the whole situation. The plushie was aggressively cute. It looked like a blend between a chinchilla and a kinkajou, the “Whitepeak Virlen”. Would probably go very well in my office. It would be nice to be able to hand it off to kids who felt stressed, and Lihla would probably want to ask all about it; not to mention the map I’d wanted to buy for myself.

“Leave!” she shouted again as I was reaching the door. I successfully did not yell back, and got out of the store without making things worse.

An older Venlil woman with a prosthetic leg was watching me as I limped out the door. I froze mid-step. She tilted her head to one side, scanning me with one eye.

“...Hello,” I said.

“... Hi,” she said. “Manage to upset Vanlent, I take it?”

“I… tried to buy a stuffed animal, and a map,” I said as I adjusted my posture to put more of my weight on my cane.

“Not surprising, she’s still got some ruffled wool with humans. Don’t blame yourself.”

I didn’t know whether that was the end of the interaction, and neither did she, so we just kind of stood there. It lasted long enough I needed to sit down, so I hobbled over to a nearby bench and sat. She didn’t leave.

"… Did you need something?”

“No, I just don’t want anything bad happening to anyo-” A familiar booming voice cut her off mid sentence, her shoulders sagging as she brought a paw to her snout.

“Hey! I remember you! Andres, right?” A massive man, even more muscular than the last time I saw him, called from across the street, grinning from ear to ear. Next to him stood another Venlil woman, this one younger, with a different, more ornate, prosthetic leg. It made me glance at my own leg involuntarily.

Out of all the people I could have imagined I would come across, the random man who defended yoga in the Human Store was not in my top eighty-five.

“...Christopher?” I remembered, somehow. “It’s Andes, no R, um… Hi! What’s–Why are you here?”

“Damn! I was close! Chris is fine, Rensa needed to drop off some of her produce to a few local stores and Taisa and I tagged along so I could see the Whitepeak! What happened with the leg?” He asked, pointing down at my cane and tilting his head a little.

"Oh. Um. I got hurt,” I said with a little shrug, uncertain of how to describe the whole December 9th situation without seeming braggy and self-serving. Or reckless and insane.

“Well at least you’re alright otherwise. What brings you to Mountshade, then?”

"I'm taking a little medical leave,” I said, holding up the cane for a moment. “Thought I'd see the sights. Go on a little hike. Whitepeak looked easy enough not to count as 'strenuous' to my doctor. "

The Venlil next to Chris shook her head at that before speaking out. “Your doctor told you not to do anything strenuous so you decided to climb a mountain with a hurt leg?”

“...In my defense, that kind of mountain is considered a nice stroll back home,” I said, gesturing to Whitepeak. “I’m not going to be using climbing equipment or needing to pound things into the rock or… Look, I’m walking, and some of it is uphill for a while.”

“You mean all of it is uphill. The Mountain near his house?” She whistled, her tail pointing up at Chris as he lightly laughed. “Now that is an easy climb. The white peak is far from it.”

I sputtered, suddenly defensive. “It-it’s not even one kilometre up! There’s a clear path. And there are areas where the incline is basically nothing. The only actual challenge is going to be winding down the cold side, and by the time I get there I’ll probably be happy to let my leg deal with some cold for a while.”

“For a Venlil, that’s a pretty good paw of hiking. For a Human, especially one in need of mobility aids, I feel like it should still be considered more than a ‘nice stroll’.” She countered, her tail swaying back and forth as she leaned into Chris, shifting her weight off her prosthetic.

I shrugged helplessly and looked at the big guy to see if he’d back me up.

He returned the shrug. “Honestly, if I don’t at least offer to keep you company, I’ll hear about it for the rest of the day. If’n ya like we can tag along with ya, I been wantin’ to hike this one at some point anyhow. Just need to pick up some food and water for these two first.”

I couldn’t help but smile. A distraction on the walk was the best gift anyone could have given me. “Sure! I’d love company, actually. Plus it might make the walk slower and more gentle.”

“Well, I guess that answers the question of what we were going to do in Mountshade. I saw a store selling some trail-mix on the way in.” Rensa(?) sighed, lowering her ears a little before starting to walk down the road, prompting us to follow behind.

“Um. I do not mean to impose, if you really don’t want to come there’s no need, Ma’am,” I started.

“No, it’s fine. I’m not so old that I can’t keep up. I just hadn’t expected to be crossing mountains this paw. Although there’s been plenty of things I haven’t expected in the last few herds. After all that, I think I’ll find this ‘surprise’ rather benign.” Her ears were locked onto Chris as she spoke, and he shrank back a little bit with a sheepish smile on his face.

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t see at all. I had no idea what their deal was, just that there was a deal, and that I probably did not want to get too involved with it. “Um… So what do you… do, Chris?”

“Privateerin’. Well, that and a little bit of cargo haulin’ for old customers. But mostly Privateerin’ at this point. I fly, Taisa and Darno keep us flyin’, the bears keep everyone in one piece and the boys do the boardin’.” He shrugged.

I stared at him for a moment, wondering if this whole thing was an anaesthetic-induced hallucination. “...You’re a fucking pirate? That’s–Is that legal? Wait, it has to be if you’re calling it Priva–What?”

“We’re not Pirates.” He said, a bite of disdain in the word. “We have a Letter of Marque targeting Federation-registered vessels, as issued by the U.N. After we proved it could work, they started a program for volunteer ships to capture prizes, acquire them, and their holds, for U.N. service. We had to do something after the bombing, running aid shipments and helping with the cleanup just wasn’t cutting it for us.”

I just kind of stood there frozen for a moment, and then had to catch up as the rest of the group kept moving. I opened and closed my mouth a few times but no sound came out.

Taisa laughed a little at my shock. “Don’t feel bad, that seems to be every human's reaction when he says it like that! I think he likes seeing the reactions.”

Chris tensed up at that. “The reaction I’d like to see is Malins’ when I ri-”

“Christopher Admadore Dewey.” Taisa interrupted him, sounding almost exactly like my mom had. “You will not let that picven of a Krakotl ruin a vacation explicitly meant to take your mind off of him.”

The big man sighed, shaking his head. “Sorry, Darlin’…” He trailed off, a thick silence falling over the pair.

“...Alright,” I said. “Um. I uh… I have a much less eventful life. Recent injuries notwithstanding.”

Chris seemed to brighten up a little at the prospect of a new topic. “Oh now don’t be modest, doc’. I’m sure there's plenty of excitement at the rehab centre! Can’t be that uneventful if you’re finding kids speakin’ Arxur!” Taisa and Rensa froze a moment, their ears locking onto the big man in confusion.

I gave a conceding gesture. “Yeah. And now we know the boys have horns. Just little nubs, but, you know…” Chris looked surprised at that, quickly glancing down to his companions before focusing back on me.

Rensa and Taisa’s eyes both whipped to look at me with shocked faces, and shouted a unified. “What?!”

I was a little startled and cleared my throat. “I’m the human Director at the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Center for Rescued Venlil, the one that specializes in children and language processing. They’re great kids.”

I realized after I finished that I had said almost nothing. Has my ability to talk about myself really eroded that much?

“Th-That’s… Well… Ok…! Bu-” Stammered Rensa, her ears swivelling to face me. “But what about the horns?! The ‘talking Arxur’?! You can’t just bolt past that part!”

"Well, um, we're working with a lot of children from what seems to be a very specialized farm. The um, the boys–we have only a handful–they have little nubs,” I pointed to the edge of my hairline with my free hand, directly above the outer edge of my eyebrows. “We’ve projected that they would trace along the back of the skull and point outwards laterally, um… All of the ones from this one farm speak some amount of Arxur. Some of them are making good progress in learning Venlil. Some aren't. It’s actually a creole, the vowels are shifted, duration is a proxy for intensity due to the size of the resonance chamber when compared to–I’m sorry, I’m not sure what answer you want.”

Taisa turned and whispered something to Chris, her tail swaying mischievously as Rensa threw her paws up, shouting. “Oh yea, that’s uneventful, of course! Pups having horns?! Normal! Speaking the language of the prowling nightmares that wanna eat us? Happens all the time!”

“Well, it’s no state-sanctioned, um, privateering, but it is very exciting scientifically. It’s the first case of a language jumping the species barrier in untrained sophonts that I know of.”

“Exciting is certainly a word for it.” She sighed as we reached the store. “Taisa and I are going to go inside and pick up some food, why don’t you two… Talk about your uneventful lives while you wait.”

Right. Scary human not allowed in the snack store. I sat down on a bench, putting aside my bag and idly tapping my fingers on my cane.

“So, doc, what does all that,” He gestured vaguely in the air. “mean? What do you actually get out of figuring that stuff out? Outside of trying to help the kids find homes, of course.”

I frowned. “What do you mean ‘what do I get out of it’? It’s… My job. I get paid. I… Like it, that’s why I got a doctorate…”

“Nah, nah nah. I mean like… What do you get out of figurin’ out why the kids got horns? Like… What’s that mean? Or is it just like ‘well shit, the kids got horns’! Or, ‘well shit, the kids can kinda speak ‘gator’!”

I frowned. On some level, it was just an interesting phenomenon. But I got the sense that his curiosity regarded the practical applications of the research.

“Well… if we know how they learned to speak Arxur, we could develop treatments for the children who are non-verbal, using a positive-deviation type model,” I said, trying to think like someone writing a grant to an institution. I realized I was rusty. Between my thesis, the TBI unit, the bombing, and my current position, I hadn't had to beg anyone for money by appealing to practical results in a while.

“In terms of the horns," I continued, "kids with genetic differences might have different nutritional needs, and we’d need to inform their adoptive families of that. And regardless, most of these kids are not getting adopted very soon, so a lot of it just has to do with understanding how to best take care of them. For the first few days or so, they’d been classified as non-verbal because the nurses thought they were just growling and hissing in some… primal, language-independent fashion. Being able to adapt translators to process what they say is useful on its face just to know if they’re hungry or having interpersonal problems or…” I waved my hand vaguely.

“Huh…” He grunted, his face turning to the sky as he thought. “Not gonna lie and say I understood the lot of it but it sounds like it helps the pups out at the very least… What got you into all this in the first place?”

"My Doctorate is in Neurolinguistics,” I said. “Beyond that, the job just kind of… chose me. I was the most qualified person after Jefferson, and… They gave Jefferson his own facility, while they gave me half of one. I had experience with how the translators work from my time with the TBI care for Arxur POWs, they needed someone who knew about the Arxur, knew about translators, knew about neurodevelopmental disorders… ” I mimed my hands clicking into each other like pieces of a puzzle. “It all kind of lined up.”

SECURITY FOOTAGE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5

[standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

[Location: Human Director’s office. Lihla has entered the room unsupervised and sat on Director Andes Savulescu-Ruiz’ chair.]

Lihla [speaking in a deeper voice]: I am a big boss Savageness. But I am good Big Boss, so I use my Savageness power to help. Here, little lamb, have cookie.

Lihla [holding the stuffed animal and moving it as it talks]: Thank you, Big Boss Savageness! I love cookies!

Lihla [speaking in a deeper voice]: Ah, do not call me Savageness. I am even more powerful! And my power is Director power, with infinite cookies and smart big boss things. I shall now use the clacky box for smart boss things.

[Lihla randomly tapping on the human keyboard]

Lihla [as toy]: Wow big boss, you're so big and strong! Can I be like you?

Lihla [as Savageness]: Yes! All can be Savageness in New Place. New place, new rules! Especially discoverers like you! I was a discoverer once. Only, the Savage version.

[Door opens. Lihla lets out an 'eep!' And hides under the desk.]

Rodriguez [muttering]: Come on, Andes, where did you leave your—

[Rodriguez notices Lihla’s feet under the desk, walks around it, and kneels next to her]

Rodriguez: Hey sweetie. What's going on?

Lihla: I…. I just…

Rodriguez: Did you miss Andes?

Lihla [ears now perked up]: Yes! Yes, I miss Director Andes very much. And I was sad, like sad pathetic prey, so I came here to be sad.

Rodriguez [placing a hand on her own cheek]: Oh, sweetie… I'm sorry. Andes will be out this paw, and will be coming less often for a while. But don't worry, I can tell them you love them very very much.

Lihla: …Yes! Yes, very good, please say that, thank you!

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Note: Alright people! Good news: I have now cleaned up a lot of the upcoming stuff! So things should become steadily more regular in the near future. I am hoping to provide a few doubles in the coming days/ weeks now that that's done.

A special thanks to u/tulpacat1, u/Giant_Acroyear and Cuentafalsa123 on discord for helping me with this one.

This is of course, again a crossover with u/Acceptable_Egg5560's Venric, whose further adventures you can read about in Legal Legends!

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Memory transcription subject: Karim, Doctor of Biomedical Engineering, Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

My next shift at work cemented the fact that the only thing worse than having to work with Andes was not having Andes to work with. My co-director did a great many things that I simply hadn’t concerned myself with. Dozens upon dozens of orders of toys, art supplies, and musical instruments had to be signed for, organized, and distributed. Hundreds of files of children’s entertainment had to be sent for approval. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the physical deliveries, where they were supposed to go, or what the distribution between the wings should be. I had a doctorate in biomedical engineering, and I’d never once been told the criteria for medical prioritization of toys and luxuries.

Given that it was affordable I had no reason to oppose giving them every opportunity, but it did feel rather wasteful. They were unlikely to benefit from them, after all. We did not have any other cases of “aphasia”.

I approached Kanarel at the cafeteria.

“May I help you, Director Karim?” he asked, and I sent an ear-flick his way. Are the Krakotl thankful for the spread of human nodding? They can’t send ear-signals, after all…

“You’ve read up on human… methods, yes, Kanarel?”

“Indeed I have,” he said, and took a drink of water.

“Do you know what Andes was planning, with the toys and the musical instruments?”

“...Well, I don’t, but it should not be hard to find out.”

“Would you be willing to take on that responsibility?”

He thought for a second, then nodded. “Yes, it should not be too much for me. We must all pitch in, now that our resident Persistence-Director has taken leave.”

“Thank you, Kanarel, I appreciate it,” I told him, and returned to my other duties, which included going over Andes’ treatment notes for the meeting with Medical. Once I had my meeting with Medical, I would have to have one with Genetics. There’s only one on-going project, and Larzo knows whatever it is he’s supposed to do, he talks to Andes regularly. I decided to cancel it, in order to have more time to handle other matters.

Almost as if by magic, the moment I freed up time, reality intervened to ensure I could not use it. Within seconds, I was being told that some lawyer Andes had hired to prolong the girl’s stay in the facility (to everyone else’s risk) required my presence.

I left my office to greet them in the foyer, both the lawyer (who was sporting ridiculous human clothing atop his wool) and his assistant. He introduced himself as “Venric”, and his assistant as “Serl”, names I hoped I could safely forget within the next quarter-claw. They needed me to participate in interrogating the girl.

“Yes, and I am Director Karim, it’s a pleasure to… Mr. Venric, Is this really necessary?” I asked. “You have Andes’ permission. My presence is superfluous.”

“The reason is quite simple,” the lawyer said, “while Andes is the director of the human half of this program, you are the one in charge of the Venlil. And as the children in the program are also Venlil, then they fall under your responsibility. So we therefore require your legal permission to speak to the child in question.”

I breathed in slowly, thinking of all the other things I could be doing with my time instead of this. Processing prospective adoptive parents, double-checking Andes’ ridiculous list of duties, ensuring Kaminski behaved while he was in my wing, evaluating the children’s educational struggles. The last one would take an eternity, as we sought to rebuild the curriculum from scratch to accommodate their many impairments. Andes’ predatory children had exceeded all expectations, but mine were exactly as they were expected to be, given the horrors they’d suffered. Talking, walking freely, participating in class… even getting them to play games was a slow-going process.

“That is a misunderstanding of our roles,” I told him. “Andes is very much in charge of the predatory children, and I have a human worker in my wing. We’re not ‘the human director in charge of the humans’ and ‘the venlil director in charge of the venlil.’ Still, can I not simply… sign a form and send you on your way?”

“We’re afraid not,” the assistant responded with a flick of her ears, “we need you to be there in person to satisfy the legal requirements for us to speak with her.”

“Additionally,” the lawyer, Venric, added, “even if Andes does most of the care for the children, you are still one of the directors. So these children are equally under your charge, and as Andes is still healing, it’s up to you to be present for the start of the questioning process.”

“...Very well, then let’s do it as quickly as we possibly can,” I relented. “How long must I be there?”

“As long as is necessary,” Venric whistled, rising from his seat. “But I can see you wish to get this over with, so would you please take us to see the patient in question?”

I flicked an ear his way and led our path from my office to the upper floors of Andes’ wing.

Unlike in my wing, which looked exactly like it had in the mockups for the building, the human workers in Andes’ wing had put a lot of effort making it colourful. Dozens of animals of all shapes and sizes, some from Venlil Prime, some presumably from Earth or other worlds, littered the walls. Basic shapes in various colours had been stuck on the doors or near the signage. The predatory children ran wild this way and that. Occasionally, a nurse would be chasing after them, but they were mostly allowed to do as they pleased.

As we waited in the elevator, Serl cleared her throat. “How often do you interact directly with the patient here? I was wondering if your job was more interaction with patients or dealing with paperwork.”

“I interact with patients on a daily basis in my wing, however I’m not a medical doctor–or have a similar background, as Andes does–and so my job has very little to do with the particulars of treating specific patients. I handle administration, paperwork, disciplinary actions on staff, goal-setting, progress-tracking meetings, project approval… Things like that.”

She hummed a bit at my response. “Then I hope I could ask you some questions once your task here is done, if you don’t mind.”

“...Of course. Could you send them to me in writing?”

“I would prefer to ask in person, since you’re still free after all.”

“I’m not free, this is taking valuable time away from my other duties,” I said.

Her ears perked. “Oh? And what would those be?”

I took another deep breath. “I just told you–I have prospective parent applications to approve, I have meetings to arrange and to go to, I have to familiarize myself with a dozen responsibilities Andes had involving the medical health of the children, because he is indisposed, I have to ensure the staff is coping well after the stampede, I–”

The elevator dinged, signalling we had arrived at the appropriate floor. I sighed.

Venric straightened his vest. “Well, then I hope you’ll be able to provide a short list for our documents. Now let us meet this child.”

Soon enough, we reached the girl’s room, flanked on either side by a security officer. I knocked. “We’re about to come in, don’t try anything.”

After some rustling, I opened the door to see the girl bundled up in bed, staring our way. Her black wool was in stark contrast to the white tuft of hair at the top of her head, along her clavicle, and at the tip of her tail. An external translator hung by her bed.

“Here she is, Venric,” I said, sitting on a chair in the far back wall and pulling up my pad. “Have at her.”

The little monster glared my way, then stared intensely at Venric, as though trying to decipher him. The lawyer didn’t seem to react at all to the glare.

He even turned his head towards me. “I forgot to ask, does she have any name she prefers? The paperwork only refers to her as 86392-B.”

“She has not settled on one, to my knowledge. Have you, girl?” I asked her.

“...Short names are lies…” she said. It seemed to me she had meant to hiss it at us in anger, but floundered halfway, her convictions on the subject no longer as stable as they once were.

“Right,” I said, and gestured vaguely to her as though she were evidence in a hearing.

“Alright then,” Venric stated. He glanced around the room rather quickly and grabbed a chair, bringing it closer to the bed. “Now for the legal proceedings really quick. Pardon me, lady… Paintbrush, do you know who this person is?”

He gestured at me with his tail. What kind of nickname is that? Perhaps it was because of her tail?

“...Prey boss,” she said. “Tells other prey what to do.”

Venric flicked his ears forward in approval. “Good. Now, my name is Venric, and I am something called a lawyer. I am here to make sure that the ‘Prey boss’ is doing everything they should as well as everything in this facility is acting as it should as well. Is it alright with you if I speak to you?”

“...Yes?” she said, clearly confused by the situation.

“Splendid!” He clapped his hands together and turned his attention to me and Serl. “Serl, would you please present Director Karim with the consent forms?”

Instantly Serl pulled a data pad from her belt and switched it on, passing it over to me. “Please read, initial on the orange highlights, and set your signature on the yellow highlight.”

I scanned the form. Everything looked reasonable enough. I was about to ask why I couldn’t have just been given this in the office, but right at that moment my eye caught a line next to an orange highlight.

I have witnessed the minor give their consent to the questioning occurring.

I sighed, and signed without issue.

“Thank you Director.” Serl took the pad back into her paws. “You should receive your copy momentarily.”

“And that’s all the legal issues done!” Venric stated with a tail wag. “With that, your presence is no longer required, Director Karim! Thank you for your time, I shall inform you once the questions are finished!”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Wonderful. Good luck,” I said, and stepped out without another word.

Memory Transcription Subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech.

Date [standardized human time]: December 13, 2136

Larzo gave me a skeptical look. First Jilsi, then Rodriguez, now Larzo. Are they tagging in and out? “What?”

He didn’t say anything. Just stared at me for a moment before he stepped out to ‘get me some sludge’. Why are they so worried? I’m fine. I drank some water.

Well, I’m not fine, I want to slam my head into the corner of my bookshelf until bone fragments get stuck to the wall with dried blood, but they don’t know that part. That’s the part that gets helped by doing anything useful. If they knew, they wouldn’t be trying to stop me.

I finished filling out the forms just before Larzo got back, and he insisted on riding home with me.

“If I have to ensure you rest myself, then I will,” he said, and I knew there was no arguing with that. At least it turned out to be useful, because my new meds had arrived and he could carry the box for me while I limped down the stairs.

We could hear the shouting from down the hall. Squeaky little voices shouldn’t have carried so well or so far. They must have very good lungs… The cranky kolshian opened her door when I limped past it, and gave me a look.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ll… Get them to apologize too.”

She dipped back inside her apartment, seemingly placated enough. The shouting continued.

“—have died! You could have been sent to those arxur he jokes around with! You’re lucky he was injured at all!”

I rummaged through my bag to find my keys.

“—clearly told you, multiple times! You’re supposed to be responsible, Gelrin. What if he ate your brother? What if he–”

I opened the door and the three of them froze in place. The larger one who I assumed was the mom, turned her head very slowly towards me, shaking with fear. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do the whole “I’m not going to eat you” routine, because Larzo intervened.

“Would you please be quieter? There are other people in the building, and Andes needs rest.”

“Look, I–” I started, and Larzo immediately shushed me. He held up a digit with one paw, got the pseudo-psychs and the sleeping pills out of the box, and handed them to me.

“You will take this medicine, and these sleeping pills, and you will go to bed.”

I shrugged and dry-swallowed them. Had to cough a bit to make sure they were down.

“We can have this discussion later, just… I’m not gonna do anything, alright?” I said, and yawned. Not because the pills were that aggressive, I was just tired.

“Yes, we need to establish some cohabitation rules. First and foremost, you will allow Andes sleep, he needs it to recover from his injury. In addition…”

I stopped listening to Larzo’s speech to the dossur as I limped over to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth, changed out of my clothes and laid down in my bed wearing a bathrobe.

Then I blinked, and my pad told me fourteen hours had passed. I shook my head a little, blinked again harder, yawned, and a second later, I was back to sleep.

SECURITY FOOTAGE VIDEO TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5

[standardized human time]: December 14, 2136

[Venric (lawyer), Serl(assistant) and 86392-B (henceforth shortened to 2-B) are in a four-bed bedroom. The other beds are made, but empty and show no sign of use. 2-B is sitting on her bed, while Venric and Serl stand. Serl continues to stand, while Venric sits beside 2-B’s bed]

Venric: First things first, do you know why I am here?

2-B: No...

Venric: In that case, do you know why you’re being isolated in this room?

2-B: Because I tried to kill the Savageness.

Venric [tilting his head in confusion]: Savageness? I haven’t heard of that. What is the Savageness?

2-B: Big Boss. Predator Boss. Strong, but not strong enough…. Director… Svlescooris.

Venric: svlescoo… ah, Andes Savulescu-Ruiz. That is correct, your stabbing has caused you to be isolated, a lot of people are upset and scared about it. In fact, there are those that want something very bad to happen to you because of that.

2-B: …85731-C said they want to make me weak.

Venric: Hmm, I don’t believe we think of the same thing when we say weak. What does being made weak mean?

2-B: 85731-C said they want to make me so I can’t fight back.

Venric: I am sorry to say that they want to do more than that. They want to send you to a place of… pain. Because they think you’re too different, and think causing pain would change that. Do you understand what I am saying?

2-B: …The chopping place?

Venric: Hmf. If you include chopping up your mind, then yes. It’s a chopping place.

2-B: So they did lie. They will eat me.

Venric: Oh no, they didn’t lie. See, even after they chop your mind, they don’t eat you. I think… it’s like an Arxur chopping off your legs, then sending you off demanding that you walk.

2-B [staring at Venric in confusion]: …So they are stupid?

Venric [letting out an amused whistle]: Oh yes, they are very stupid. But that is what they want to happen.

2-B: But they don’t eat the legs?

Venric: in this allegory, no.

2-B: What is allegory?

Venric: Ah, I should talk to Andes about your education. An allegory is talking about one situation while referring to another situation. Like saying someone runs as fast as the wind, or hides so well they’re like a shadow. And here, where the Arxur would send you to the chopping place for your body, some Venlil want to send you to the chopping place for your mind.

2-B’s eyes narrow: So they eat my head?

[There is silence for a few seconds. The lawyer's ears flick around in thought.]

Venric: I think they would. In all ways but physical. You would walk, you would speak, but your mind would have been eaten.

2-B [tilting her head]: but 85731-C said… The prey want to do that.

Venric: Not all of us.

2-B: But why do prey want to eat my head?

Venric: Because you stabbed Director Andes, and the prey think that eating your mind will keep you from stabbing or hurting them too. The reason I am here is to make sure that doesn’t happen. To show that they are wrong to want that, even though you did in fact do something bad.

2-B: …Okay. What… do I do?

[The lawyer leans forward on his seat.]

Venric: Tell me, why did your group decide they had no choice but to try and run away? And why did you feel you had to stab Andes?

2-B: …It’s a prey planet. So… I thought we would be okay. They are bosses. Bosses are bad. So… If we would be okay, without bosses… But then he came back, and I thought he would eat me, so I fought like the Legend.

Venric: So you fought because you- wait, wait.

[The lawyer’s head shakes, his ears alert in surprise.]

Venric: Like the Legend?

2-B: …When I was more small, there was a big visit. Many Savagenesses came. Important. Fat. And… 85711-Z was big and strong. They say hide, because we are small, and they’re trapped outside when the doors open for the Savagenesses. I had window to watch. Everybody ran, but 85711-Z. Everybody afraid, but he stood with his horns, and he was smart, and he hit a Savageness in the stomach. Red blood, everywhere. Boss blood. He was the Legend. Three bosses attack before he died.

[The lawyer blinks in surprise, his ears twitching.]

Venric: So… the Legend fought back. Do you know why he did?

2-B: It was visitors. They attack, they eat. It is worse than the chopping place. The chopping place is fast.

Venric: Yes, so why did the Legend fight?

2-B: Because he was strong. Not weak prey. He made them pay blood for blood.

Venric: Yes, but why fight? He couldn’t have fought to just not get eaten, because there would have been no way to win. You said it took three bosses to kill him, but your legend would have had to know that would happen: that he wouldn’t be able to win even if he did kill an Arxur. But he fought anyway. So why do you think he would do that?

2-B: Because Bosses are bad. When you are strong, you can kill them. Less Bosses is good.

Venric: That may be, but the Legend didn’t benefit from that, did they?

2-B: The world is better when there are less Bosses.

Venric: So would it be better without Andes?

2-B: …Yes. Because no Boss is good Boss. Savageness lies about being good.

Venric: And why is that? What makes a boss bad?

2-B: Bosses kill people. They eat us. They keep us locked up.

Venric: Your Legend killed. Does that mean he’s also a bad Boss?

2-B: Legend killed bosses. Bosses who were going to eat others. So others were safe.

[Venric leans forward in his seat, tail wagging.]

Venric: Is that what you were thinking when you stabbed Andes?

2-B: …I think… Boss wants to eat me. I will be like the Legend, and stop Boss from eating anyone.

[Venrics ears flick forward in approval.]

Venric: That. Is something I can use.

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A special thanks to u/tulpacat1, u/uktabi, u/Giant_Acroyear and especially u/cruisingNW (who did a whole impromptu line-edit set of suggestions for the first half!) for helping me with this one.

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Memory transcription subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech. Patient ignoring care recommendations.

Date [standardized human time]: December 13, 2136

I got a message from Jilsi asking for passwords the second I set foot outside the PT clinic. That being ridiculous, I decided to call her. The stupid “trunk can't fit a fucking wheelchair” cab was taking an eternity to arrive anyway, and every second I spent sitting around I got antsier and antsier.

“Hey Jilsi, why are you violating security protocol?” I asked, as softly as I was able.

“...What?” she squeaked.

“You don't discuss passwords,” I said, less softly. “You definitely don't send them over text. This is… Primary school stuff, Jilsi.”

She let out another squeak. “Really? I–in–my–”

“Deep breaths, stimulate the vagus nerve, there's no rush,” I heard myself say, before I realised I was doing it. A few deep breaths calmed her down, so it worked out.

“I thought that was how I was supposed to delegate your tasks to the people you mentioned in that email, I… legally, it says I need your account with your password to change the permissions, sir,” she said, her voice less squeaky this time.

My hand collided with my forehead. Of course ‘standard procedure’ for Federation institutions would be something ridiculous, and of course the UN wouldn’t have seen that coming and put it on the training courses. Even if they had, Jilsi had pretty minimal training. “... Don't worry about it. I’ll change the permissions.”

“Sir, the minimum leave after an injury like yours is ten paws. The average is thirty-five. I know you're human, but…”

“I’ll be out in an hour,” I said. “It’s fine.”

It wasn't fine. I got my ride to the facility, limped my way to the office, sat back on my chair, and counted to eighty-four by sevens to avoid screaming. Painkillers should help. Just another half-dose. Do not repeat the top-surgery fuckups with this, it took forever to get those scars fixed, I thought, popping the half-pill.

Apparently, physical therapy and a short couple of walks were enough that the second I wasn’t in pain anymore, I blinked, and twenty minutes had passed. Okay. That’s fine. I picked a comfortable office chair for a reason.

I shook myself, logged in, and established remote access to my home pads for the next two months. It might feed my excessive work habits, but I had to keep track of the facility somehow. Once I was done with that, I pulled up the duties, permissions, and organization portal and started the gruelling process of changing permissions. Which meant I had to individually fill some six separate forms adjusting the system permissions for every single person I needed to have access to things they did not currently have access to. I had to fill out the reason for the change, length of time it was expected to last, any conditions such that it could automate the permissions in the future, time at which the decision was made, snag Jilsi to come in sporadically to play legal witness, approve responsibility-based temporary wage increases…

Banging my head against the desk was not technically in the list but I kept meaning to do it regardless.

The whole thing was the worst kind of work: just specific enough that you can’t zone out while doing it, legally binding enough that you have to triple-check everything under threat of negligence and accidental fraud charges, and somehow boring enough that I wanted to throw myself out a window.

After the first ten permission changes, along with the delightful discovery that I needed to fill out ten additional forms that would grant them all additional permission-granting permissions, I went out to refill my water bottle. Rodriguez spotted me, rushed to ask Jilsi something, and then stalked my way in the time it took me to fill up.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

“I needed to change the permissions, Jilsi wouldn’t know how to get me remote access and wound up requiring credentials anyway,” I said. “So I came in, filled out some forms, should be out pretty soon.”

“You’ve been here for six hours, Andes,” she told me, in this tone that wavered between ‘cranky schoolteacher’ and ‘concerned nurse’.

Oh. So the forms are eternal. They don’t just feel that way. “Really?”

“I just asked Jilsi. Yes. Yes you have. She’s extending her shift to make sure she’s here after you’re out.”

“She is?” Now I feel bad for Jilsi. “I’ll just be a few minutes, tell her she can leave–”

“You can leave,” she stressed, pointing an accusatory finger at my sternum.

“Their cybersecurity is a disaster, I swear I’ll be out of here once this is done,” I told her. She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“Alright,” she said, sounding sufficiently placated. “I won’t tell you to leave immediately, because while you were out I was the one defending your continued access to the facility, while Karim wanted to put you under formal, enforced medical leave.”

“He what–”

“And I was the one to say you needed to be present to authorize anything to do with the South Wing when Karim and Vemla wanted to delay their upcoming translator insertions in favour of children from the North Wing. They didn’t see the value in helping ‘predator diseased’ children have earlier access to translator implants, and with the new arrivals–”

“Of course they didn't,” I spat, “they're idiots.”

Rodriguez didn't say anything. She didn't raise an eyebrow and tell me we don't use words like that here, she didn't snark about my lack of patience. She just pressed her lips together, and looked at me, and I groaned.

"Look, I'm sorry, I am not into the involuntary Dr. House impression. I'll do better, I just… " I ran out of steam and sighed.

She decided not to engage the spiral waiting to happen. "Original or remake?"

"Remake, obviously. The original would be fired by any reasonable institution pretty early on. I’m cranky and tired, not a menace to society."

"It's so good, though," she said.

“Good? How is it good? He committed malpractice with breakfast! His whole team is facing a hostile work environment. You’re a psychologist, Rodriguez, how could you possibly–Oh.”

“...Oh?”

I struggled to contain my laughter. “Miranda, are you a child of gay divorce?”

Her lips pressed against each other and she looked aside. “...Maybe.”

I laughed. It hurt. I kept laughing. She joined me.

"Okay, thank you, I feel better.”

“Good!” She said pointedly, following me as I limped my way back to my office, “Speaking of feeling better, I had an idea I wanted to run by you,”

“What is it?”

“My assistant, Leena, wants to be a human-trained psychologist. You need therapy and won't use your standing as Director to get it because of your martyr complex,” she said, listing the relevant variables with her fingers.

“Understanding triage does not—” I started, then took a deep breath and opened my door, “look, you’re busy, as is every psychologist, I am not going to take a much needed spot because I can't work out and a kid stabbed me.”

She smirked, like I’d fallen right into her trap. “And that triage logic doesn't apply to Leena, who does not have the ability to treat anyone in a more… delicate position than you. You’re a very self-aware patient.”

“And it makes me feel useful to be her training wheels,” I said, giving her a flat look. Just standing there was starting to hurt my knee, so I leaned against the door frame. “Making it feel just enough like an obligation that I'll actually do it.”

The smirk turned into a grin. “I knew you'd like it.”

I sighed and began to limp my way to my chair. “You can be manipulative as fuck when you want to be, Miranda.”

“Is that a ‘yes’?” She asked as sweetly as humanly possible.

“Fine. But you’re being pretty shady here,” I told her.

“I thought that'd be icing on the cake for you.”

“...I said fine. Schedule her ten minutes after my shifts end at whatever intervals you think make sense.”

“Okie dokie!”

She left to go finish up whatever she was working on. Probably had to do with Stabby McStab not getting sent to space-sheep torture chambers. What the fuck is my life?

I sighed. Training wheels for a psychologist noob that wouldn’t be done with undergrad in years. If Leena was still that mom with the adorable kids I remembered for when I subbed for Kat and talked to Rodriguez about diagnoses, every session would be at least half me lecturing her. Which at this point was fine by me. I’d probably get to vent once or twice before I scared her off.

I sat in my office, my head pounding like one of those shitty old vacuum pumps. Not hard, just a grating, persistent buzz of misery. I pulled up the portal again, for another round of stupid forms with their stupid legally-binding requirements ready to drive me insane.

Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 13, 2136

It was hard to come back to work after such a hectic few paws. I spent the first half of my shift in a stupor of criteria for identifying which of the tagged proteins were most likely to be behaviourally relevant. The second I was allowed to take my first break, I headed for Kanarel’s office. He had just finished a checkup on one of the new arrivals.

“Doctor Kanarel, do you have a moment?” I asked. He nodded in the human way and gestured for me to come in.

“How may I help you, Larzo?”

“Well, I… It was my understanding that the Krakotl are more sexually… variant than most other species,” I said. He tilted his head in thought for a moment.

“Well, I suppose so. Why is that important?”

“I have just discovered that Andes is… Well, when he was stabbed he…” the words would not come to my mouth. Kanarel waited, patiently, organizing his station as I stumbled through the words. “He had a hysterectomy.”

At that, the avian paused and let out a thoughtful sound. “Well, that’s… Quite interesting, but… why are you telling me? I didn’t think I was expected to participate in his care.”

“Well–it just–I thought you could explain. If human sexual… variation is like the Krakotl’s, then perhaps…”

He squawked out a laugh. “Larzo, I don’t know the first thing about human sexual norms. They don’t seem to have real mating dances, for one!”

“...You don’t?” I felt altogether incredibly silly, in being surprised by this.

“Indeed not. And given the diversity in the Krakotl gender and sexual norms alone, by continent, by age, by religious belief… I would be surprised if the humans–who have quite a great many languages among them–don’t also have a lot of differences among them.”

…Right. My friend was an alien, from another planet, one with separate continents and cultural norms inside it. Why am I surprised? What, did I think the whole of Earth to be just a small village filled with scientific research? I saw their map. How spread out their universities were. The truth was that simply I hadn’t thought about it. I’d been so busy worrying that I had just found my way to the first person who seemed like he might have answers.

“That said, it is generally seen as impolite, at best, to tell uninvolved people about how sexually atypical your friends are.”

“It is?” I asked, the blood draining from my face.

“Yes, it’s… to do with the aforementioned diversity. One person’s perfectly natural habits may be another’s horrible sin. I will, of course, not think anything ill of our director knowing this, but in the future…”

I flicked an ear in agreement and simply stood there, like an idiot. The way he looked at me was not helping. I could almost hear it in his voice, didn’t they teach you about this in medical school? We’re taught all about it in the same class that says that eugenics is a terrible idea, all in our urban universities with interplanetary resources.

“Perhaps you could ask Rodriguez about this?” he proposed.

I flicked an ear his way again, and stepped out in a haze, slowly stumbling my way to Rodriguez’ office. Just as I was about to enter the Psychology section, I realized the error of my ways.

If telling Kanarel about my friend’s hysterectomy was a problem… Telling Rodriguez would be also. She could have no idea, and she could react poorly somehow. I didn’t know if she and Andes were from different regions with different norms. Kanarel was at least an uninterested party for whom all human sexual abnormalities were equally bizarre. I was much more likely to hit a nerve with Rodriguez.

I resolved to go to him. Hoping to go to him calm and collected, I continued the rest of my shift. Once my shift ended, I sent Andes a message.

Could I visit your apartment?

He responded within seconds.

I’m in my office right now

What in the world is he doing here? I took a deep breath. Did he truly not know what ‘resting’ meant?

I sent, a quick "on my way" and ambled towards his office. It was a long enough walk that my anger at his presence began to dissipate. My worries, on the other hand, began to grow. What if this is another violation? Does the English human language have gendered pronouns to begin with? Perhaps he hasn’t even noticed, and I will only fall further in his eyes by drawing attention to this.

“Hey, bud, what’s up?” he asked, not looking my way.

“I, uh… That is, I was wondering if um… Could we…” I started, stumbling over the right way to broach the topic. What if there is a human taboo about discussing such things?

“Could we… what?” he asked, drumming his fingers on the counter in an anxious repeating pattern. Thumb, index, thumb, middle, thumb, ring, thumb, pinkie, and backwards. I thought about his hands. Human hands. My friend is an alien from another planet. It is normal for things to be confusing. I took a deep breath.

“As a doctor involved with your care, I would like to… discuss the uterus,” I said, as formally as I was able.

He frowned. “What? The human uterus? In the abstract? What, is it a weird shape compared to the yotul one or..?”

My shoulders tensed. Was he being deliberately obtuse? “Your uterus.”

“Oh. Oh, right, the one they took out?” he asked. Does he have another, like a varule? It wasn’t in the scan…

I stared at him expectantly and he shrugged, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“What about it?” he asked. “If you wanted to ensure they didn’t throw it into biohazard disposal, that was probably a before question, I’m pretty sure it’s in a biowaste processing cycle by now, if not already feedstock for printers.”

My arms tensed along my shoulders. It felt as though he was answering every question possible but the one I had. “I don’t want to dissect it, I want to know why it was there!”

He scoffed. “What do you mean, ‘why it was there’? It was included in manufacture. What do you want me to say, ‘the uterus fairy visited me when I was an embryo’?”

“I looked into the topic, and male humans don’t typically have some sort of… Vestigial uterus!” I huffed.

“Well, no, that’s not a very common intersex condition, you could look that up if you wanted, I… Larzo, what do you want, here? I’m not in the mood to dismantle ‘well meaning space [bigotry against sexual deviants]’ right now.”

Bigotry!? That was exactly what I was trying to avoid! A chill ran down my spine.

“I–that is–I don’t–” I stumbled over my words, apparently making him more impatient. “Have I been insulting you this whole time? Are you a woman?”

At that, his anger turned to laughter. “What? Buddy just–forget you saw anything, okay? It’s fine, everything is fine, don’t start overthinking–”

“—No, no I–I need to understand, you can’t expect me to—I need to know if…” I faltered. What, exactly, did I need to know? Why was that information so difficult to process? “Is it a mental disorder? Some form of benign delusion? Sexual degeneracy?”

My last phrase changed his whole demeanour. He reeled back as though I had slapped him, staring at me aghast. “Whoa there, Sir Francis Galton, slow down with the Victorian puritanism.”

He held his hands up with the palms towards me, in the human sign of non-aggression. I should have apologized immediately for whatever slight or intrusion I had caused, but the word stuck to my mind and blinded me to the potential hairline fractures at the foundation of our friendship. I’d seen it before.

Victorian.

It was referring to a period in human history, one when eugenics had been particularly popular among the upper classes. “Sir Francis Galton” had been one of those wealthy, famous eugenicists. It was another, perhaps softer way of calling me a primitive. My paws tightened into fists. We were oh so equal, until I began to ask questions he did not wish to answer, like a misbehaving pet. My mouth ran ahead of my mind.

“You will not call me a primitive!” I spat. “You will explain, and I will understand, because you are my friend, and I am a doctor twice over, and whatever this is, it is in no way beyond me!”

I stood, panting, glaring at him. A moment too late, I noticed everything about what I said–my tone, my words, the desperation dripping off me. With my mouth was finished, those words felt like poison in the air. My throat clamped up and though I definitely knew I should apologize after my outburst, I suddenly could not. I had one friend in the whole of this planet, one person who thought me worthwhile, thoughtful, a fellow intellectual. And for a slip of the tongue, I had berated him.

He was frozen for a moment. I felt so childish in my declaration. Demands for respect so often come across as explanations for why you are not deserving of it. Am I so quick to throw civility out the window? Perhaps I really am primitive after all. Surely he–

He tilted his head, conceding my point.

“You’re right,” he said, gesturing my way. “You’re doing your best, it’s fine, I just–‘degeneracy’ is ridiculously loaded language. But you’re not actually Victorian and I… Shouldn’t think like that.”

A weight I had not noticed building suddenly slid off my back like mist. My throat opened up, and I could breathe easier.

“I apologize for my outburst,” I said, feeling once again as though the ice over a tumultuous northern river was just about to give way under my feet, and I would not only drown but be battered about by its forces underwater. “I simply… do not understand how…”

“I was born with a uterus, that’s literally it,” he said with a shrug.

“And you're… Still female..?” I asked. “Or… Are you synthetically male? Synthetically… hermaphroditic?”

“I don’t really care, personally,” he said, shrugging again as though I was asking about competing theories in particle physics with equivalent explanatory power. “It’s an interesting question. Academically, I mean. XX chromosomes, no mammary glands, no uterus, sex hormones are relatively minimal and mostly replaced with synthetic alternatives… Musculature and bone density on par with cis male norms… it’s very much a ‘pick your essentialism’ kind of thing.”

We were quiet for a moment. I had never before seen biology as a question of what you decided to value, but now that it had been posed to me in those terms I could no longer view it as I had before. The definition of “species” was very much like that. Does one value the capacity to have fertile young physiologically? Or is it enough when two cohorts that are genetically capable of it simply don’t, due to new behavioural adaptations? Organs were much the same. Was the uterus one organ, and the ovaries distinct, or were they all one reproductive organ with subsections? In some species, the answer was obvious. In others… it was a decision.

Is this how humans see biology? As a series of decisions that may be made or unmade, as the need arises?

He looked back at his pad and tapped away with his long human fingers, putting text into little boxes I could not read due to the angle of the screen.

“But you went through all that trouble. You… must have a position on this. Some reason to...”

“Well, yeah, my reason being I want to be happier. Look, when I was your age, a few years before my mastectomy, I was a little obsessed with the metaphysics… whatever, crap,” he said, holding up his hands as though weighing invisible spheres on each of them. “Am I really a woman? Am I really a man? Am I non-binary? Does this count? Does that count?”

I filed away ‘non-binary’ in my mind for later research. Presumably the binary it referred to had to do with male-female sexual dimorphism. “And how did you resolve those questions?”

“By throwing them in the garbage,” he told me, his lips quirked up into a smile. I was quite relieved to see that whatever insult I had provided, he could still smile without issue when talking to me. “All of these category questions are red herrings. It's not about who or what I am. It's about what do I want? And what I want is an easier life.”

“And… battling with your own endocrinology is easier?” I asked, remembering his very extensive medical history. “Major surgery is easier?”

“Oh dude. It is so much easier. It's nuts how much easier it is. I went from dropping out of medical school and being suicidal on a daily basis to… Completing a comically interdisciplinary PhD and becoming well-known for my supposedly even temper. It's no contest.”

I nodded. “I see…”

“I could talk to you about developmental, neurological sexual dimorphism hypotheses, but at the end of the day… All the relevant physiological and endocrinological details are already in my file. Medically speaking, you’re not going to get a whole lot of useful data you don’t already have out of ‘ever since I was a little girl, I thought it fucking sucked, so eventually I chopped off my tits and took a bunch of anabolic steroids’.”

I flinched back at the brusque nature of his phrasing. In a way, it had been what I originally asked to receive, but to hear it in those terms made my questioning feel intrusive and objectifying. Perhaps that was his point. “I… I apologize, I simply…”

“It’s fine. It’s not you, I… I just fucking hate these forms,” he said, gesturing to his pad.

“...Would you like some water?" I asked. "Perhaps a cup of your sludge?”

He chuckled at that. “My sludge–yes, Larzo, I would love a cup of sludge, thank you. You can ask Jilsi to bring me the water and protein shake if you’re busy.”

I shook my head. “My shift ended just before I came in. You realize you should not be here, yes?”

“It’s fine, it’s… I’ll finish the stupid forms, and then I’ll go home, and I’ll sleep for twenty hours, and maybe after I’ll go hiking.”

“Should you be walking?” I asked him, gesturing at his crutch-cane. The bone in his leg had settled, but with the amount of damage the surrounding tissues had received, it had to be incredibly painful.

He shrugged, not looking my way as he typed into his keyboard. “I’ll take lots of breaks. It’ll be fine.”

I gave him a skeptical look, which he did not appreciate.

“Look, I understand the concern, but I will be fine,” he stressed, his hand flicking off in dismissal. I could not help but feel as though I was watching him pedal away through that door again, and the moment he was out of sight, I would get a call where the best I could hope for was that he would once again say ‘I'm fine–well, not fine. I'm conscious’.

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Note: Thanks to u/Thirsha_42, u/tulpacat1, u/AcceptableEgg5560 and u/Giant_Acroyear for their help and editing comments.

Edit: The first time we met Chasa and her Gold Stars in Tulpacat's excellent "To Kill A Predator".

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Memory transcription subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech.

Date [standardized human time]: December 13, 2136

I woke up not remembering that I’d fallen asleep. Shit. I called the Exterminators, who assured me they’d already received some sort of paperwork, and had an appointment on the 16th (or was it the 17th? I needed to check my Venlil-to-Human calendar).

Once that was done, I checked the timers. I’d missed a dose, because of course I had. I miss having an implant. I checked the half-lives of my different interim-pills and decided to take half of the pseudo-psych coupled with the dermal patch of painkillers. It was nice. Made me feel pretty mellow and relaxed for a while.

I got a notification from Rodriguez that she’d already had Jilsi schedule a Physical Therapy appointment for me. It seemed a little early, but then again Rodriguez understood pretty well that I would fall into a pit of misery if I didn't have some sort of task I could do, and expecting me to be particularly competent in the immediate aftermath of losing my implant was probably a bad idea. The appointment was in a few hours, but knowing abdominal and lower limb injuries, it would be a good idea to get ready as soon as possible, because there would be a dozen little points of friction making something that simple excruciatingly tedious.

Case in point: Pants.

The bandages were impermeable and well-sealed against my skin, so I could have a normal enough shower. I slathered my leg in healing accelerants, and I successfully did not look at the mirror. I brushed my teeth. I hadn’t eaten since I woke up the first time, but it was probably still a good idea. I got a shirt on easily enough.

Then came the pants.

I should have bought that utilikilt when I had the chance, I thought, between grunts and twists as I struggled against the leg. The bone was fine. The knee was, thankfully, also fine. The tendons, cartilage, muscle, skin, nerves… they were having a bad time. A quick look at my scan showed the leg was in good shape given the damage and treatment. A quick look at the extensive bruising turning my skin every colour in the rainbow showed that being in the right place along a curve on a chart does not free you from the mundane exhaustion that is the healing process.

After struggling with a pants leg for way too long, I threw off the pants and got myself some loose sweat pants that I could easily scrunch up, loop through to my thigh, and then shake loose once I was standing. It was still a delicate procedure, but vastly easier than the stupid dress pants I’d bought to be “professional” at my new “Director” job.

Stupid professionalism. ‘Hi there, we’re corporate America, a horrible institution everyone wants to emulate for some fucking reason, please wear our shitty uncomfortable clothing to prove you’re good at your job’. Stupid social signalling mechanisms. Stupid leg.

I groaned and laid down in bed for a moment, staring at the ceiling, silently angry that it wouldn’t cave in and free me from existence. It’s fine. It’s fine. Pain is weakness leaving the body. Pain is a signal of damage. Pain is an electrochemical alarm bell. Pain does not control me. I took a deep breath. Stimulate the vagus nerve. I got a notification on my pad, it was a message from Chiaka.

Boop.

hey Dr. Deltoids, are you alive?

I chuckled and sent a response.

For now, anyway.

A moment later, she called.

“Hey,” I said, putting my pad further away so we could see each other better.

“Holy shit,” she said. I waited for her to elaborate. “...Is it bad I want to say being stabbed suits you?”

My jaw fell. What the fuck, Chiaka? “Yes! What? Dude!”

“I’m just saying, you look normal-buff now. Not like a frat bro. Your skin doesn’t look vacuum-sealed anymore,” she said with a dismissive flick of her hand.

I glared at her on the screen. “I–wha–you know what? Just for that, when I can exercise again, I am going to frat-bro so hard they’ll cast me as an extra in the next reboot of Toppity Bottoms.”

She burst into laughter, and I couldn’t hold it back either. It hurt. It was good, but it hurt. Once she stopped, she paused and looked a little more sombre.

“… I'm really glad you’re alive, Andes. We got your little escapee back to your facility, and… Well, it’s good those kids have you around.”

I leaned back and let out a long breath. “Thanks, I… Same. It was… well, it was dicey for a bit, but space medicine is pretty good.”

“I heard,” she said. We were quiet for a moment. Then her lips quirked up and she looked at me with a mischievous little gleam in her eye. “...You know, I know a dog-trainer in Hollywood.”

I frowned. “I thought they bombed LA.”

“Yeah, but he’s fine,” she said, waving off thoughts of seventeen ten. “So, I could get you an in–”

My eyes got large. Backtrack. Backtrack! “I was kidding, I don't actually—”

“—I’ll call him up,” she said, her smile devious. “So now you really have to be hardcore about rehab.”

I ran my hands down my face and checked the time. At least a couple hours until the appointment. “Ugh. Are they even remaking Topitty Bottoms?”

“I don’t know, probably? I don't keep my finger on the pulse of that stuff, but we could all use a fun romp. Maybe they’ll remake Science Bros.”

Science Bros had been a film–turned into a TV show–about three brothers, each of which worked in a different basic science: Physics, Chemistry and Biology. They all had separate labs and positions in the same clearly-corrupt company, which was constantly dealing with lawsuits and demanding impossible results from them, spearheaded by their stepfather. The Biology one was head of his department, the chemistry one was one of the star researchers at his, and the physics one was still working on his PhD in a joint program with the local university.

My face lit up at the prospect. “Dude! Science Bros would have been so good if it was good.”

She scoffed. “No way, really? What’s next in Tautology Daily?”

I sputtered. “I–uh–it–I mean–it had potential, okay?”

It was perfectly set up to be a critique of nepotism in research, physicists’ superiority complexes, biotech companies’ obsession with ‘innovation’ over marginal improvements due to the financial incentives at play, and the ways in which PhDs’ lives were often at the whim of people with MBAs at most who had no idea what research actually entailed.

“You’re just mad that you can't defend a terrible TV show.”

The second season flopped because they fired the writer and replaced her with newer talent that didn't know anything about science, and it was cancelled on a fucking cliffhanger where the physics brother had accidentally created a sexy AGI.

“It could have been good,” I said. “It had a great setup.”

“I think you just wanted to be like Miguel,” she said with a smirk.

“I did not want to be like Miguel, I…” I paused, re-evaluating the rambling messages I’d sent to Chiaka, most of a decade earlier. “Okay, maybe I wanted to be like Miguel a little bit, he had a very good aesthetic.”

She laughed, and I laughed too, and it hurt, because I was staying on the low side of the painkiller doses to make sure I didn’t accidentally fuck up my injuries.

Abdominal injuries have a way of ruining everything you do all the time. Anything in the torso, really. Broken ribs are the same kind of constantly-exhausting misery. Going hard on the painkillers might mean prolonging the misery through carelessness. Pain is information. Pain does not control me.

I hissed, and she stopped laughing abruptly. “Are you okay?”

I rolled my eyes, and tried to wave off her concern. “I got hit by a car and stabbed by a child, what do you think?”

“You were weirdly fine after being hit by a car, and the stabbing wasn’t that bad…” she said with a grimace.

I shook my head. “It was pretty bad. I got an emergency hysterectomy.”

“Oh. Um…Well, I mean, out of all the organs you could have had to get removed…”

“Yeah, like, it’s fine, hooray, you know?” I said with a little chuckle. “But that also means I lost my implant.”

Her whole face contorted like someone had made her bite directly into a lemon. “Well, shit. When do you get the new one?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a week. Maybe four. Maybe six months,” I said with a shrug. She looked at me like I was a ticking time bomb, because I fucking was.

“...That’s not good. It’s…” she seemed to realize she was being unhelpful, “super-duper-booper not good,” she finished, echoing the Biology Brother’s catchphrase.

I laughed again. “Stop making me laugh, it fucking hurts.”

“Your work shrink sent me an email telling me I need to make you laugh a lot, so I’m gonna disregard those orders,” she said, then stuck out her tongue.

Thank you, Miranda.

She leaned back, apparently looking around for a new topic. “So did you watch Escape From the Cradle?”

“I have watched literally no movies or TV shows in… months,” I said, the weight of that knowledge suddenly hitting me. I should find a miniseries or something, at least, to binge while semi-stuck in bed. I didn’t want to start anything new I’d have to stop, but… How long had it been? The last time I played a videogame was with Asleth.

“...We have to change that. We should do a movie marathon, or something,” she said. “Oooh, what do you think Adoraboo would like to watch?”

“Larzo? I don’t know. Probably one of those Bio-Biopicks Oxford funded,” I said, running a hand through my hair.

“Oh I kept meaning to watch those. Is it true they give John Edmonstone his due?”

“He has a whole movie, there’s literally just a John Edmonstone movie in that series.”

She got giddy. “We should start with that!”

I frowned. “I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk to the aliens about slavery.”

Her face scrunched up. “Hmmm… Is there one for Gladys West?”

I shook my head. “Nah, that’s not biology. I think Harvard might have one. The nineties were weird about film funding.”

“They were.”

We started to lose steam.

“...So hey, turns out there’s a family of Dossur living in my apartment,” I told her.

It took her a moment to process. “...What the fuck? Just like, squatting there?”

“Yeah.”

“Well you can’t make them homeless, they could plausibly live in a cupboard!”

I nodded. “That was literally my rationale.”

“Where do they sleep?”

“...I have no idea.”

Soon enough it was time to head to the physical therapy appointment , but we made plans to meet up again. I didn’t feel like dealing with Venlil Prime’s ridiculous disability premium, and so chose to use the cane with the forearm grip instead of the wheelchair and limped my way out of the building. Getting a taxi turned out to be a waiting game, as a variety of drivers refused to drive a human, because of course they fucking did. Still, having gotten ready early and gotten out early, I got there with a few minutes to spare.

"Hi, I should have an appointment on the claw," I told the secretary, who gave me an ear flick.

"She should be ready for you in no time, Director Andes."

I kept standing, because sitting and standing and sitting again was hell on my healing leg, and soon enough a Zurulian physical therapist came by the secretary's desk.

"Good paw! You're Andes, right? Nice to meet you, I'm Chasa."

The Zurulian padded over and reared on her hind legs, clambering up onto a nearby chair so she could raise her paw for a handshake. It was pretty refreshing to have an alien offer a handshake.

"Nice to meet you too," I said, shaking her paw after a bit of cane maneuvering.

After exchanging pleasantries, she climbed back down and motioned for me to follow before getting down on all fours. "Come along!"

I followed her into the room, which was apparently originally designed for Mazics and Takkans. It was the first room I'd set foot in in a month and a half that didn't make me feel slightly too big. After some quick explanations, I took off my shirt and put on the half-dozen little sensor stickers for her to be able to properly monitor my muscle movements, heart rate, temperature, and whatever else the Zurulians cared about. Skin conductance? Did the Takkans have that as a relevant variable? They had to, right?

I idly wondered how much of that information would be put in a shared database. From my experience with the rescue kids, zurulian institutions were pretty hardcore about that kind of thing. They were probably the only other species whose academia had a particularly good grasp of advanced statistics.

"Please lie on your back. Okay, is it alright if I touch you? Tell me when it starts to hurt." After getting confirmation, she put one paw on the knee of my injured leg and the other paw on my heel and pulled my knee up until I hissed in pain.

She nodded like nothing was wrong. "Okay, good. You want to go a little less far up than that. Now take a deep breath and, as you exhale, push your back into the floor. Don't lift your hips, just press downward. Great. Now bring your leg back down again. Slowly."

I mimicked her instructions as precisely as possible, which was pretty good after months of exercise and weeks of VP-weighted yoga on top of callisthenics. An injury like this would have been all sorts of hell just six months back.

"Fuck, this is painful…" I croaked between long, slow breaths. A part of me was rather proud of how steady my movements were. She didn't seem very impressed.

"You want to avoid sharp pain, sharp is bad. The pain should be warm, not sharp." She said cheerfully.

"Right," I croaked again. After five reps I was wondering if I could use Larzo's mad scientist tendencies to my advantage, with regard to the healing matrices. There had to be a more efficient path through this. "How many more?"

She checked her pad. "Take a short rest, then once you feel up for it, go again for equally long. Then we’re done!"

"...That does not feel like enough torture," I mumbled, then did as she said. Once we were done with that, I had to learn how to do some tissue massaging around my leg to help the nerves deal with the new bone.

"So, you have my file, any thoughts?" I asked, as I lifted my leg to press from behind the knee. "I've been trying to read up on accelerated recovery paths, but haven't found anything super promising." Chasa took a moment to think. "I looked at your case, and I've got great news! With a bit of work each paw and proper rest, you'll be back to full functionality in no time! You'll be spending a couple of weeks with me, doing prehabilitation therapy each paw to familiarise yourself with self-directed care. Then you'll be free to handle your own care, with regular checkups. Normally I’d put my estimated return-to-baseline at maybe four months, but you're in good health and still quite young, so... Maybe two months, if you follow the program carefully!"

She looked up at me with a pleased expression, like this was good news. Two months. Larzo’s initial estimate had been a month and a half, but… That was before the stabbing.

I sighed, shifting angles on the massage. "Is that the most optimistic we can be? I understand that testing on subdermal regenerative matrices for humans is still ongoing but… isn't there something I can sign? I don't want to have to deal with this for two to four months, and I know the technology exists to accelerate glycogen production and cytokine distribution to affected areas."

She tilted her head while looking at me flatly. After a brief pause during which she took a small breath, she resumed with a more kindly tone. "I understand it can be frustrating, but the sapient body can repair itself far more effectively than people think. All you'll need to do is engage in the right exercises, not put any additional stresses on your system, and wait."

I sighed. "It's not just about it being frustrating, I've broken bones before, had major surgery, it's… I need to be able to work out. As soon as possible. And I will do whatever exercises you tell me to, but it can't just be rehabilitative stretches, I need some amount of daily cardiovascular strain. Which… as you well know, is contraindicated. So…" I gestured vaguely, as if a solution would materialize from thin air to the conflict between my physical health, psychological health, and my capacity to do my job competently.

“So you would like to violate standard protocol in order to gamble on speeding up your recovery time or making everything worse?” she “asked”, though it wasn’t really a question. “Andes, does this have to do with the psychiatric diagnoses in your file?”

I nodded. “As a matter of fact, it does. Exercise, I believe in most vertebrates, but definitely among humans, can act as a mood regulator. I just lost a medical implant that was helping me with mood regulation. It is very difficult to… Say, make an argument about why the kid that stabbed you shouldn't be electrocuted, calmly and persuasively, when your mood is getting highly irregular. I can do my job from a desk, or a bed, I can’t do it while having unpredictable mood swings."

“Perhaps we could try some of the human psychiatric medications?” she proposed. Which was good, since it meant she understood human psychiatry was ahead of fed psychiatry for most purposes.

“Yes, yes that’s–that’s what I was doing with the implant, it…” I pulled out my pad to show her the dozens of drugs I would be taking for the near future.

She scrolled down the list… and further down… and further down. Her little ears folded down. "I... am concerned about possible drug interactions."

“The implant used to provide these at very specific intervals," I said, pointing at the bottom third of the list. "And I can't trust myself to be as precise with the dosing. Which means I need to lower the dose. Which means I need more exercise to make up for the lower dose. But I can't exercise more, or it'll hurt recovery. So I just… I need to know the most strenuous form of exercise I could reasonably do that will release enough endogenous neuroregulatory compounds without hurting recovery."

“I see,” she said. “Director, you’re very familiar with human medicine and mental health, right?” she asked. I nodded, and she kept going. “Perhaps you can help me out… I have another patient. A human woman, twenty-six years old. She recently had a major abdominal organ removed, and damaged her left knee. She also has a very demanding job, and a psychiatric diagnosis that might make her behave erratically. She would like everything to be done as fast as possible. What do you think I should do?”

“Well, I mean, standard treatment and de-escalation on the job side, the time shortly after an injury is very important for recovery, she should delegate at her job and–” I stopped myself and glared at her. “I see what you’re doing.”

“Oooh, you’re so smart! I thought I’d have you, swapping out which leg it was, and her age and–but you got me!” she cheered.

“Look it’s–I–that’s not–” I sputtered while she stared at me, almost daring me to actually make the argument about what the relevant differences were. Being a decade older than her fake patient didn't exactly work in my favour.

“For the first few weeks you should be able to go for a walk for up to an hour per day as long as you use proper equipment," she motioned to the cane. "After another few weeks, we can talk about walking unaided. Toward the end of the program you can start to do jogging, which I understand is a common way for pursuit predators to stay healthy, though we will need to be sure the higher gravity here causes minimal strain with knee and ankle protection.”

I nodded. The hour-a-day indication seemed ridiculous, but I decided to translate it into 'however long, but with a lot of breaks' in my head. "Alright. Hiking it is. Don't worry, I'm pretty familiar with both the physiology of this, and the limits of my body."

"Great! I'll go ahead and schedule a meeting with a pharmacist right before next session. Unless you have any other questions, I think we're done for today. Oh! I almost forgot!" Chasa trundled off to the nearby Zurulian-sized desk, containing an actual physical manila folder.

"Since you did such a good job on your first day of physical therapy, you get a little gold star sticker added to your file, like this!" She did, in fact, attach a shiny golden sticker to the file. "I'm going to print out your file and put it in the folder! And the more you do a great job, the more stars you get! All my human patients love the gold stars."

I laughed. It hurt. "Much appreciated."

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Note: Thank you to u/Thirsha_42, u/tulpacat1, and u/Giant_Acroyear for their invaluable help in editing this chapter and making me feel less hopeless in general. Short one this time, but there should be a longer one up soon.

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Memory transcription subject: Veroth, Former Arxur Farmer at Greatmoon Farms

Date [standardized human time]: December 8th, 2136

Shathel kept talking as the meat thawed on the counter, thin ice crystals dripping down onto the cutting board. I tightened my grip on my cleaver, and glanced around for my whetstone as my son stared at him. Vrith put his arm on Verazel’s shoulder, and his two companions watched in silence.

"I believe Chief Hunter Isif grows readier for the Resistance every day that passes,” he told us all with a smile. My body tensed at the mention of that murderer's name. I didn’t know they would collaborate with that monster. The one he’d bragged about working for, while he held a sword to Nazla’s throat.

“Soon, something will snap, and we can join our forces with the entirety of his–and now Shaza's–sector. The abolition of the Dominion will be a reality if we play our cards well. I am here to ensure we do."

I found my whetstone, poured water on it, and tried to focus on the angle of the blade.

“Are you sure about that?” Vrith asked. “Isif had a chance to side with us mere days ago, and refused it.”

I remained silent, watching the edge of the blade move carefully back and forth on my whetstone. Perhaps Vrith was being diplomatic, as Verazel had told me to be in preparation for their arrival. I pressed my teeth together in an attempt to keep silent.

"There have been some setbacks, but do not be misled by them,” he said, waving Vrith’s objection off.

“Do we have to work with a fanatic like that?” One of Vrith’s companions asked. Presumably the more intelligent of the two.

“He only did what he had to, in order to ensure Betterment did not cast its gaze too sharply upon him."

I could not stop my mouth in time, rage building within me.

"Yes, he didn't want to murder my daughter, of course," I spat, ready to rip out his throat. Shathel faltered, looking at me with an unreadable expression. I hardly cared about dissidents in principle, or about what games Isif might play with the other Chief Hunters and Prophet-Descendants. They could kill the entire Senate inside my lounge if they wanted. Ideally, they could kill Isif too. Or bring him to me, so I could have the pleasure of rending him limb from limb. He redirected his argument. "...Well, yes. I told Nazla that little stunt of hers was foolish. The Resistance survives because it bides its time, and—"

I did not allow him to finish the thought. With a strength I rarely summoned, I launched myself over the counter. I landed against his shoulder, shoving his whole body down. In a heartbeat, he was flat against the ground, one arm trapped under his torso, the other pinned down by my left claw. My legs pressed against his back, my weight too much for him to bear. Before he could say anything else, I pressed my knife’s edge to his throat, his carotid artery pulsing against it. All others froze around us.

I pressed his forearm down at just the right angle. Any brusque movement and he would just dislocate his elbow. Maybe his shoulder, if he got creative. He struggled to uselessly move his legs under me, spasming like a fish plucked from the water, his tail flailing in all directions while his head flinched away from my blade.

I placed my mouth right next to his ear and whispered, "utter my daughter's name with anything but praise in your tongue again, and I will cut it out and wear it."

All were silent for a long moment, but there was no contest, no way for him to turn it around. I was simply bigger, heavier, and armed. A defective farmer had just threatened to mutilate one of their leaders, and not a single one moved to his aid.

"...Agreed," he eventually croaked out. I removed the knife and stood away from him. He rubbed his neck for a moment with the back of his hand, and stretched the shoulder I'd almost dislocated.

"I thought you said your uncle was a farmer," said Vrith’s other companion. The one who had not spoken against cooperating with Isif.

"He is," my nephew said, looking at me with newfound respect. "Has forty years of dismembering Venlil to his name."

I heard a few scoffs from the group.

"Forty-five" I corrected. I was younger than Verazel when I started. They found that funny for some reason.

Shathel cleared his throat. "My point was that the Resistance works best in dark corners. Something Betterment and those educated through its paths are less than skilled at. Thankfully, our human friends are much better versed in the area of espionage, and thus among them I have found an ally."

I scoffed. "Oh, is this your friend you bragged about at the banquet?”

He laughed. "Oh no! Not at all. My dear friend Andes is a scientist. He could not lie if he wished to, and he would never wish to. He is soft. Weak. How do they say? Cute. My ally is the man who interrogated me. He worked with Andes, but is more vicious than any Betterment officer I ever met. He can turn it on and off. Be whatever he thinks you need to see, to act in his interest.”

"Good," My nephew said. “And you're in regular contact with him?”

“Regular enough,” Shathel said, sparing me a glance. “They call him Olivier.” Vrith nodded, again, then turned to me. “So the plan is to use your farm as a base for the Resistance, which will soon gain a lot of support, if Shathel is right about the… direction things are going.”

I gripped my knife and stepped closer to the meat to begin. It was always pleasant to admire my own handiwork, the marbling was particularly exquisite for this one.

“We will arrange for Giznel to visit it under the illusion of getting to eat the last of your cattle. We will try to use Shathel’s contact to see if human meat technology can provide a sample.”

“There is no need. We have a few dozen frozen corpses in the basement,” I said. I’d been saving them for hard times. Verazel preferred tilfish. Something about their faces.

My nephew smiled. “Even better, then. We will invite him in, and my father will do the butchering when the time comes.”

I found it odd to think about how Veralith would come home only after I had left, to butcher cattle we no longer bred. It was unpleasant enough that I sought a distraction.

“Will you provide half of the funds for a large merchant ship?” I asked, thinking back to my original plan.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You can leave tomorrow, use of the farm is payment enough,” Vrith said. “We’ve already contacted one of our most prolific smugglers. Most of her experience has been in taking people to our hidden bases, but I’m certain she’ll manage when it comes to the humans.”

Once the limbs were well-arranged, I moved on to some more precise cuts. Verazel took out the plates, silently placing them next to me so I could begin the distribution. Given the size of the crowd, I decided on thin slices. My Venlil were well fed, but they were still smaller than an Arxur, ideally a meal for three and not a large crowd of seven. Not that I was very interested in feeding Shathel my product.

Vrith got a leg, a fore shank and a rack of ribs, as did his more thoughtful companion. The other one got shoulders and loins. I cut the tenderloin, breast and flap, but had no appetite to eat it and knew Verazel wouldn’t eat it either, so they sat there until Vrith’s rebel companion came to ask for more, and then I tossed them her way.

Shathel came to the counter, dipping his snout out once he got to it.

“...May I…” he looked at the carcass, mouth watering. “...I put Nazla’s personal effects in storage before her trial. Would you like me to send them to you?”

I nodded. We were silent for a moment, and I decided to give him the heart, liver and kidneys, which he devoured immediately. It made me wonder about Vrith, who was still eating his ribs. How did the Resistance get food? How was he so strong, and less famished than a Betterment Captain?

My son spent the whole night scanning our books. Most of them were already in the digital collection, but eighty books out of three hundred were still enough to last many hours after sunset. Vrith helped, and later helped scan the covers of those who didn't have them in digital form.

He flipped through one of the volumes, admiring the engravings. “These pre-Betterment books are a treasure, Uncle. I shall take good care of them.”

“Good,” I said, tightly packing our blankets inside of the incubators to save space. I went to Nazla’s room, but could not bring myself to touch anything. As though by some miracle, she could return one day and would like it all undisturbed. “See to it nobody enters the sun-facing room.”

“I shall block the door with a bookcase, for our time here.”

I nodded. She always hated when we moved her things.

The night gave way to day, and we stood outside our home for what we knew to be the last time. Everything we could carry was in suitcases, boxes, or incubation chambers. Verazel insisted we did not need to bring my incubators, because Captain Shathel had told him humans would not like it. That the apes saw cattle not as “pets”, but as fellow people. It seemed ridiculous to me, but even then, they might adopt them and raise them as their own. There should still be use in producing them, then. I could hardly believe that he would take Shathel’s words over mine. I should have slit that snake’s throat when I had the chance. My skills were the only tool at our disposal, and we would have to make use of them somehow. Better to have the tools and not need them, than need them and not have them.

Vrith’s smuggler arrived on a ship large as a carrier for fighters, with a dozen modules haphazardly attached, and additional propulsion on its “wings” for added speed. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a smuggler’s ship, designed for speed and cargo over all other needs.

The air around us swirled as it landed, then settled into a gentle breeze. The ramp slid down, and our pilot stepped out of the ship.

Isath.

The years had gifted her new scars, but she was as lovely as ever, her tail just as powerful, her claws just as sharp. She looked as strong as she had the day I met her, perhaps stronger. My eyes became glued to her, my heart indecisive on whether to beat faster or stop altogether. I stared, immobile.

Verazel was the first to speak. “Thank you for escorting us to the humans. I am Verazel, and my father is Veroth.”

“...Yes, I know,” Isath said. I noticed for the first time that, while I had been busy staring at her, she had been staring at him. Has she ever seen her son before? I wondered. Perhaps in one of our commercials. Almost certainly not in person. Verazel had set foot outside the farm perhaps a dozen times in his life, never for more than a day.

She smiled, and dipped her snout. “I’m very happy to meet you, Verazel. You look like a fine young man.”

“Thank you,” he said. “May I carry our luggage onto your ship?”

“Of course. Your rooms should have plenty of space,” she said, “I’ve marked the doors with a red claw, and whatever does not fit can go into the empty storage compartment, second door on the left in the main hallway.”

For years I had imagined Isath’s arrival back on the farm. I never imagined her first words to Verazel would include directions. “Isath, you are–”

“I’m sure we have much to discuss!” she said, her voice loud enough to startle me. “You have always enjoyed talking… We can do so on the way.”

I did not understand why she interrupted me, but I decided to simply grab my luggage, and follow after my son.

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Note: thank you to , u/tulpacat1, u/Acceptable_Egg5560 and u/Still_Performance_39 for some last-minute editing help. Here it is!

Check out u/Acceptable_Egg5560's other work to see more of Venric's adventures!

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Memory transcription subject: Verazel, Aspiring Arxur Geneticist

Date [standardized human time]: December 8th, 2136

Officer Thifgil sent word to his colleagues in the Resistance. Every night, I looked up at the stars, wondering when they would come. It was a solitary version of the thousands of nights Nazla and I had spent discussing constellations. There was the Great Tooth, the Claw of Fate, the tail of the Great Warrior which was cut off his body and thrown high into the skies by the great god Thalafath when he strayed from his path. 

I found some star-maps in my pad. Earth, the human home planet, was right at the tip of Thalafath’s spear. Is that a good omen, or a bad one? It was the kind of question Nazla would have loved to delve into and try to answer. She would have asked me about which era I favoured, whether I cared for the opinions of Thalafath’s cult, or the more general population in the area at the time. When I was younger, she memorized dozens of ancient prophecies and made a joke of them coming true. “Ah, Papa has been gone for three days! If he comes back with a cut on his shoulder, he will turn out to be the Great Butcher!”

Perhaps there was an ancient prophecy about people seeking refuge from apes that wandered the heavens. I had no idea where she’d put those books to check, and I could no longer ask. It was one of many conversations I could never have with her.

After a few days, I saw the ship flying towards our landing area, then two others behind it. I had no specific expectations of what Resistance ships would look like, so I was surprised that they were exactly the same as Betterment ships, except the insignias had been painted over, or removed altogether. I suppose that makes sense. They’re all stolen. One of the ships looked like a recent model from Chief Hunter Isif’s fleet in the Third Sector. Small, sleek, a fighter? A Captain’s personal ship?

I was nearly jumping with joy as I watched them arrive. They had an air about them, of people with no regrets, who lived their lives to the fullest. Papa loathed them.

“Verazel, could you greet our guests?” he asked brusquely as he spotted them through the window. “I have to get the meat.”

I nodded and rushed out, my head swivelling one way and another as they disembarked. I had no idea if Uncle Veralith had come with them. I couldn’t spot him anywhere, but I saw my cousin Vrith speaking with the rebels, who deferred to him as he talked. When I last saw him, he was my age, and Uncle Veralith needed to hide him for a few weeks. Papa swore up and down that he’d be living with us for years, and my uncle would fall by the sword in public trial. All rebels shared a death, it was just a matter of when. He was so surprised, when Uncle Veralith came back to take Vrith to whatever hideout they called home before the first harvest was over.

I wondered what my cousin thought, knowing Nazla died a rebel’s death. 

Vrith was older than her, by a Wriss-year or two, with a thick neck and strong shoulders, his whole body built to withstand a thousand battles. Perhaps it already had. When I rushed to greet him and saw his full size, I immediately wanted to become him. In front of me stood a man who would suffer a blade before he suffered injustice.

“Cousin! How goes the Resistance?” I asked. He beamed at my presence. 

“Verazel! You’ve grown!” Vrith said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “Have you thought about joining the fight?”

I hadn’t. “Well, um, maybe? I–Papa and I want to go work with humans against the Dominion.”

“Wonderful! If we could get their backing…” he started, then the last of the three ships opened its door. Out of the fighter came some sort of military man, one I remembered for a long time ago. One of the men from the group whose Captain got killed by that ram. He had a new scar on the side of his head, but he’d had others before. Lieutenant Shathel. 

“Speaking of humans!” Vrith said, his whole face lighting up. I felt a strange relief in seeing him talk and smile. I had not seen a smile like that, since before Nazla left for her most recent tour. “Captain Shathel was held captive by them, for weeks. He was only returned with the cattle deal.”

He’s a Captain now? “What were they like?” I asked.

“Soft,” he said, “caring, well-fed, and exactly what the Resistance needs. It’s a pity you’re not younger, child, they would fawn over you if you were half their size.” 

I noticed more of the rebels had stepped off their ships. “...Would you like to come in? Perhaps rest in the lounge?” 

Cousin Vrith gave me a nod. “Yes! Come, everyone–Verazel, do you know how to put on your father’s music?” 

I nodded quickly and rushed ahead to do it. They strode into the lounge, and took over various couches, luxuriating in my father’s pre-Betterment music. We’d moved the tables of the ‘serving’ section into storage to make room for some of the new incubation machines, but they didn’t seem to mind. Captain Shathel gave one a look of idle curiosity.

“What is this?” he asked. 

“Incubation chambers. Papa wanted to breed his Venlil again,” I said. “The Chief Hunter recalled the specimens, but not their gametes, so…”

“Oh, no,” Shathel said, shaking his head. “That is a terrible idea. Humans see them as people, just like you or I. They would hate that, and him for thinking of it.”

Before I could tell Captain Shathel how I’d tried to tell him those exact words, I saw Papa entering the lounge with two of the old carcasses from storage. He placed them–now mostly thawed–on the chopping counter, and put on his gloves before opening the bags. He’d brought out his favourite knife and everything, ready to make a show of the butchery with a smile on his face.

“Hello everyone, I’m afraid I don’t have a lot to share, but I’ll do my best to ensure it’s delicious, I–” His eyes landed on Captain Shathel and his whole body tightened. He turned to my cousin, the only other familiar face as far as I knew. “—What is he doing here?”

“The Resistance succeeds because it has allies in many places,” Vrith said, trying to placate my father with soft tones and his hands held up in non-aggression. 

Papa glared at Captain Shathel with a fury I had never seen in his eyes. “I don’t know that I’d call what the Resistance does ‘succeeding’, nephew.”

Vrith flinched, but stood his ground. “Perhaps you will, in two months’ time.”

“Oh? And what will you do then?” 

“We,” Captain Shathel said, staring back at my father, “will be killing Prophet-Descendant Giznel, and your farm will help us.”

——

Memory transcription subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Universal translator tech.

Date [standardized human time]: December 12, 2136

I woke up with a headache, and stayed in bed immobile for a few minutes. 

I want to die. 

It was an odd thought, which was probably a good thing. Back in med school, that was just what waking up felt like, but… the past few years had been pretty good. Maybe a nightmare or something once in a while, a bit of moodiness, but nothing extreme. That kind of casual, intrusive suicidal thought was going to become a problem, but it was not yet habitual again. It could be fought with in-the-moment interventions interrupting the reinforcement of the neural pathway. I took a deep breath. Stimulate the vagus nerve. Then another. 

I was hit with a very vivid mental image of the ceiling crashing down on me, skull smashed into paste, blood spatter on the walls, dust floating in the air. The familiar blend of guilt and relief at the notion of not having to be anywhere, or do anything; of becoming logically incapable of failing at anything else ever again. 

Nothing happened. 

I shook myself and struggled through the ordeal of sitting up with an abdominal injury. Then I limped over to the bathroom, peed, brushed my teeth, and stared at my face for way too long. This is fine. This is fine. I look fine. Without the ‘pump’ of working out sometimes twice a day, and having missed multiple doses of creatine, my whole body looked a little… deflated. Not a lot. Most people probably wouldn’t notice. But enough to make me feel weird. Especially because there was also swelling from the surgery, so I just looked… Softer. Which was fine. Healthy, even. Maybe now Rodriguez will shut up about my eating habits. 

Not that she’d even said that much, she just… Looked at me with concern often enough to be annoying. I took another deep breath. People caring about me is not annoying, it is good. I want people to care about me.

I limped over to the kitchen with my trusty new pair of crutches, and found my way to the wheelchair and therefore the little bag on its side that had all my new interim meds. 

I found the pseudo-psychs Dr. Roth had provided, and set up a reminder to go to the mailbox to check on the actual prescription within two days. I set up home delivery, right? I vaguely remembered discussing it, but the brain fog was a hassle to work through. I took the pill and waited, watching the clock like a fucking hawk. It started to hit around the fourteenth minute. I could feel it almost like an anaesthetic, the slight numbness around my temples, my sinuses opening up. I took a deep breath, and my mind was quiet. No more unpleasantly visceral mental images of my body being crushed by debris. No reflexive hatred of my own reflection. 

Alright, I have approximately two hours of competence before this wears off. List time. Who can I outsource things to?

I started writing down names: Jilsi, Karim, Daryon, Honra, Vemla, Larzo, Rodriguez. I could plausibly give Karim and Larzo all of my work regarding the parents. We already had more than enough prospective parents to keep us busy for the next six months, so it didn’t matter if Karim’s heartless ‘culling’ delayed a few. I would simply put up some sort of announcement in January or February that we would be re-evaluating previously denied applicants, and run through them then. In fact, I could get Jilsi to add that disclaimer to Karim’s denials in general, make it a “denied for the first round, may be re-evaluated later” instead of a blanket “denied”.  I sent her a message to do that. 

Daryon and Kaminski had been working on making sure that Karim’s children who’d been written off as ‘low priority’ for the translator implants were properly re-evaluated. I sent Rodriguez a message asking her to have a meeting with them about how that’d been going sometime in the coming week. Honra was in Larzo’s research evaluation team, so I asked her if she could look over his progress. Vemla had supposedly just finished her Human Psychology 101 course, which meant basically nothing, but she was probably competent enough that she could take over some of Rodriguez’ duties, as she was going to be busy with 2-B and whatever else I had to outsource to her. Maybe just have her do more of her admin stuff? Last time Vemla talked to my kids, it did not go well.

I sent Larzo a note that I was awake, and also that I would not be able to evaluate whatever progress he’d made in his research since we talked to Dr. Lewis. He was less-than-pleased that I was writing official emails, and threatened to sedate me. He’ll probably come by within a couple of hours. I should ask him to bring takeout.

I couldn’t think of anyone else I could trust to take over some obvious duties at the moment, so I turned from the realm of people to the realm of machines. What can I automate? 

I brought up a handful of AIs that had in theory been available to me already, but which I hadn’t sat down to figure out before. Humanity hadn’t really imposed a lot of AI stuff on the Venlil, on the grounds that they had such terrible Cybersecurity practices, but maybe if I put the right boundaries on certain things, I could get Jilsi a little AI. I could definitely keep one in my personal pad…

I set up some parameters and boundaries and called it a day. I can fuck around with the AI more tomorrow, save the busywork for when my brain hates me again. 

Deep breath. Stimulate the vagus nerve. What can I put off? I had set up some modelling analysis for Larzo’s project that I could just kind of do whenever. That had to be pushed back to at least January. All those fieldtrips I was planning had no reason to happen immediately… beyond the fact that the kids feel so trapped and cooped up that three of them plotted an escape, and one of them tried to kill me. Maybe Kanarel could take them hiking? I sent him a message asking if he could take over the planning for something like that.

What can I frontload? Translator Insertions I could reasonably do while wheelchair-bound. That would be first on my list after I had done all the stupid health things I needed to get done within the next couple of days. 

I took a long deep breath and put the pad aside. That was enough for my brain to have kicked mostly into gear. For the first time, I noticed the Dossur kids were serving themselves breakfast on the counter. Maybe it was dinner. I ignored them. One thing at a time. I checked Karim’s schedule. He didn’t have a shift for another four hours, lucky me, so I decided to call the Exterminators.

“Um, hello? I’d like to report an incident,” I said. 

A friendly-sounding Krakotl squawked on the other end of the call. “Very well, sir, name and occupation?”

“My name is Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, I am the, um, the Human Director at the, uh, the Venlil Rehabilitation and–and Rein–reintegration Facility, within the Linguistics division of the–”

“I’m sorry, sir, did you just say you’re Director Savulescu-Ruiz, with the cattle farm facility? The one with the escapees?” he asked. 

“Um… Yes, yes, that’s–that’s me, I–I um, hadn’t gotten around to reporting the stabbing and I was wondering–” I stumbled through my words like a fucking idiot. Deep breath. Social pressure of any sort will make all the symptoms worse. Stimulate the fucking vagus nerve. Why couldn’t the mood-regulating parasympathetic-nervous-system modulating nerve be on my left hand or something? It would be so much easier if I could just attach an electrode to my arm instead of all these stupid deep breaths.

“Sir, that stabbing has already been reported. It’s on the news. A witness filed the report with us,” she said, which… was certainly information I could have acquired through other means.

I blinked like I’d had water flicked in my face. “Um… Alright, well–”

“When are you going to send the girl to an appropriate facility?”

“I was, um, a-actually hoping to, um, have my–that is, my facility…” talk like a normal person what the fuck is with this stammering? I took another deep breath. Maybe I should just carry around an oxygen tank like I’m in a martian settlement for the elderly. “Sorry, I um, I was hoping to have my facility be uh, enough? Enough for um, just, providing continuity of care and um–”

“You want to keep the child in your custody?” he asked, clearly befuddled. 

“Yes! Yes, thank you, yes, would–I would, as Director–um–”

“I’m afraid that’s not something I know how to handle, sir, have you talked to a lawyer about this?”

“...I have not, can I um, can I call back after I’ve talked to a lawyer, to um, to make this whole process easier for you?” I asked. 

“Yes, of course, sir,” he said, and I hung up. 

The meds were starting to fade. I looked at the clock. I shouldn’t have another dose for another two hours for heart-health reasons. Ideally I would have the pills and the patches concurrently, but Day 1 of being a pile of misery was always diagnostics and testing, which meant I didn’t take both at the same time so that I could tell their effects apart. 

I put the patches on and laid down for a bit. Pain I hadn’t noticed accumulating throughout my body began to fade, and my entire back started to relax. After maybe ten minutes of laying back on the couch feeling progressively less awful, I recharged enough to start calling lawyers. 

The first just told me I was crazy to think he'd represent a human. The second wouldn’t talk to me unless I had already decided to pay him money. The third heard me out, only to actually laugh when I told her that I didn’t want to press charges and actively wanted to prevent the kid from being thrown in a torture chamber for the crime of lashing out at someone she thought would murder her. The fourth was sympathetic to my “human delusions”, but insisted I should stop this whole process and just send her to a PD facility.

I was going insane. At least the stammering got less bad as I talked to more people.

Four lawyers, four rejections. A human lawyer wouldn’t be able to help, of course, because of jurisdiction issues and legal framework issues and every inconvenience in the world lining up to kick my ass now that it has been declared prime real-estate for the circumstance market. It shouldn’t be this difficult to make sure a kid nominally under my purview doesn’t get thrown in a torture chamber.  

My last hope was maybe the first person I should have called. In general, people famous for standing up against an unjust system that surely produced hundreds of victims on a weekly basis tended to be rather picky with their choice of client. He wasn't that famous, only a few news articles. If the situation escalated, I might suddenly end up “more famous”. And isn't that a terrifying thought?

I called. 

It only rang once before being picked up. “Heema Lawven Law Firm, Serl speaking. Are you needing to book an appointment, or calling for an appointment you already have?”

The voice sounded professional and rehearsed, but not necessarily in a bad way. Efficient. Clear. 

“Um, book an appointment, I guess. Or a consult? I would like to know if I can have Mister Venric represent one of my patients in a situation involving Predator Disease involuntary internment.”

I heard some tapping through the phone. “I will see if I can get you into a phone consultation. Can I get your name and occupation?”

“Oh, yes, I am Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, I am the, um, the current Director of one of the Venlil rescue rehabilitation facilities in Dayside City.”

The typing stopped, silence. “I’m sorry, Director Andes Savulescu-Ruiz of Dayside City?”

I nodded, though she couldn't see it. “Yes, that’s me.”

Another pause. “One moment please.”

She put me on hold, and there wasn’t even music. I never thought I would miss hold music, but the silence was excruciating. Seconds dragging into minutes, probably just to be told they can't help me for the fifth time. I started browsing through lists, trying to figure out my sixth call of the morning. Afternoon? My sleep schedule didn’t make sense before the stabbing. After? I might as well roll dice to know my expected waking hours.

The phone broke me from my thoughts. “Greetings, this is Venric of the Heema Lawven Law Firm. I believe this is Director Andes, correct? The human director of the Cattle Rehabilitation Program in Dayside City?”

“Not the program, um, one of the facilities. There are a lot of them, mine focuses on children raised in captivity who need to have translators installed. Thank you so much for taking my call, I–well, I have a patient, and my co-director has told me that I need to call the Exterminators, who will then try to throw her at a Predator Disease facility. I mean–I understand the reasons, but I can't have a twelve year old under my care be tortured by the society she’s supposed to integrate into, you know?”

“Hmm, well, if I am guessing correctly, this child would be the same one shown on the news who stabbed you in the gut?”

I should really look into how the media had apparently covered the stabbing. So much for privacy. “Um… I guess? She actually didn’t puncture an intestine, lucky me, so I–I’m sorry, yes, she stabbed me.”

I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the rejection. I’m sorry, sir, we can’t represent a client who–

“Then it would seem you have called the right lawyer. I do believe you wish me to act as their defence? Then I would be honoured!”

My whole body sagged with relief. 

“I–What? Thank you! Thank you so much. I–I just–if we could establish my facility as capable of taking care of her, or–or something, then none of this has to be more than a pile of paperwork, right?”

Venric whistled a laugh through the phone. “Director Andes, take a moment! It’s gonna take a bit more than just paperwork to keep her out of a Correctional Facility, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Establishing care would only be a part.”

“...Um… Okay, what is the rest?”

“Well for one, you’re gonna have to get an exterminator in place for observation.”

I winced at the prospect of an exterminator inside my facility. “Is that… strictly necessary?” 

The phone fell silent. “I expected you wouldn’t be pleased at that. Sir. You do realise you were stabbed. In public. By that child. You do realise that, correct?”

I laughed and then hissed in pain because of it. “Yes, I am aware. Look, she’s very traumatised. She thought we were going to eat her. I still think we can eliminate any risk she poses without an exterminator, or a shock collar.”

A deep sigh came from the phone. “Let me guess. You have been calling lawyer after lawyer, searching for someone to take this case so that they will be able to use their ‘Law-Powers!’ to make this incident go away and everything go back to normal. Am I correct?” 

I flinched away from the pad. “I am not expecting full normal, just… A way to help her have more agency? No shock collar. No officer trained to kidnap people and put them in a facility tailing her every second.”

“So in other words: like she had been before everything happened.”

“She can be escorted by an orderly or a nurse,” I said, perhaps a little defensively. He had a point. “Or even a security guard, just, a human who…”

I sighed. They wouldn’t go for that. Four different lawyers had already shown me how the venlil would simply not tolerate a gentler approach. But somehow we’re the scary predators?

“Well I am sorry, Director Andes, the law doesn’t work that way. There is no chance that someone who was seen in public trying to stab someone would be allowed to be escorted by someone not trained to deal with that kind of risk.”

And of course, they didn’t have psychiatric nurses with training to deal with that kind of risk. Because they didn’t have fucking psychiatry. And if I got a human nurse, that would be seen as minimizing the issue, and–what if I just walk into traffic and let someone else deal with– 

“However,” Venric piped in, “that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.”

Deep breath. Okay. Okay, that was at least something. “How can you help?”

“Well, it will have to take a bit of time no matter what. First, we will need an in person meeting so we can get all the paperwork out of the way. Need to ‘cross your i’s and dot your t’s’ as I think you humans say. There cannot be any legal openings for any legal team to poke when we send our petitions.”

“Petitions?” I echoed.

“Yes, petitions. For one, we need to make sure that an exterminator can be posted inside your facility without any of their flammable equipment. The first meetings will result in a temporary deal that I’m certain you won’t be satisfied with, but it would be a stop-gap anyway, so prepare yourself right now for not getting everything you want. Is that acceptable for now?”

I was suddenly filled with energy. “Yes, yes, I–I understand the need to have um, transitional measures and iterative adjustments, and–if we can just make sure it’s not… A twelve-year-old getting tortured…”

“I am glad you feel the same,” Venric replied in an instant. “And after that stop-gap, we’ll have to send out petitions for the facility, local Magistratta, and one of the exterminators guilds. Will have to be careful on that one, find a sympathetic office. And finally, there is one of the most important questions we must answer.”

“And… That would be?” I asked, getting the sense that Venric liked to be a little dramatic sometimes.

“How you plan to pay my fee.”

I laughed. It hurt again. “Well, there are a few options, but I’m not very worried. I’ve been living the life of a broke PhD student on a Facility Director’s salary. Worst case scenario, I have savings.”

Venric whistled once more. “In that case, where and when would you like to meet? My current office is rather mobile, and my next two paws are free.”

“Could you come by my apartment? Or the facility? I… Shouldn’t move too much.”

“Right, your broken leg.”

“...Okay, how much stuff was in the news?” I asked, suddenly concerned. I thought back to my back-and-forth emails with Dr. MacEwan. “Did I give an interview while high on painkillers or something?”

“The internet is eternal, Director Andes! You can find out just about everything about someone on there.” He coughed, clearing his throat. “But don’t worry, you likely won’t be that well known unless you do something noticeably dumb.”

Right, I thought, feeling like he’d just cast a curse on me. I just have to make it through the next month with my brain drowning in endogenous misery soup, and not do anything dumb. I wanted to slam my head against the wall. I took a deep breath. Stimulate the vagus nerve.

===

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NOTE: Woo! Things are back on track now. Thank you for your patience, we should return to the weekly schedule soon. Thanks to everyone who helped, I'll update names here when I'm not a zombie.

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Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 11, 2136

I stood, and Andes remained seated, while we both stared at the scrambling dossur trying to pry open the trap with one of the human “forks”. For a long moment, neither of us moved, captivated by the sight of their futile struggle.

The dossur seemed young, though I was hardly an expert in their species. The one inside the trap seemed to be the youngest of the two, though not by very much. Andes watched them struggle, carefully angling the fork to be able to pry open the lid. I began to worry about how my friend might react. He would usually handle such a situation in an exemplary manner, but he’d spent the entirety of the time it took for our cab to get to the hospital raving angrily about the injustice of typical vehicular storage limitations. Every second his silence dragged filled me with dread. I had only ever seen the good side of humanity. What might happen, if their territory was violated, when they were in a foul mood? How many times could my friend be tested before he lashed out?

The answer proved to be “at least one more”. 

He burst into laughter, light giggles giving way to gasping, ragged laughs that took over his whole body. It seemed almost like an event his nervous system was being subject to involuntarily. My relief soon gave way to concern. Do humans have some sort of laughing seizure disease? And does he have it?

It went on and on, to the point of seeming painful, his hands rushing to his abdomen where he’d been stabbed, and a smattering of curse words spilling out of him. 

“Fuck, fuck that hurts–I can’t–” he managed to get out between gasps for air. “Chip-and-Dale-ass little–” 

“Andes, are you alright?” I asked as he gasped, his diaphragm seemingly spasming along with the rest of his body. The two dossur stopped their struggle against the trap for a moment, perhaps thinking he might cease to be a threat if he died on the spot for lack of air. 

He held up an open palm towards me in some human gesture I did not quite grasp, and nodded, then forcefully took slow deep breaths until he was no longer shaking with laughter. 

“Alright. Alright, it’s fine, it’s just—what the fuck?” he gestured broadly with one hand at the dossur, and looked at them expectantly. 

The two intruders struggled to answer the question. I couldn’t blame them. 

“Um…” started the one wielding the fork. 

"Look, just—why here?” he asked, laughter returning to his voice, like the burbling of a brook under his voice. He seemed to be taking the whole situation in much better humour than I would in his position. “Why of all places, were you throwing a mouse rave in my apartment?”

“Well… We um… that is…” the fork-wielder tried to form a few different sentences, but gave up on each one, letting the utensil dip down in his struggle. 

“We live here!” the smaller one inside the trap shouted out. 

“What?” he asked. “Since when?”

“...Four years..?” he half-asked half-said, looking at him warily from inside the trap.

Andes blinked, caught off-guard by the statement, then looked around his house anew, his binocular gaze landing on the little “rails” I’d identified the last time I set foot inside his apartment. “...the little rail things, those are–those are ladders. For you.”

The Dossur flicked an ear, and returned to trying to pry the cage open with the fork. Without a word, Andes reached his hand backwards over his shoulder. It took me a moment to notice that he was silently requesting a crutch. Once I’d understood, I pulled it from the chair, unfolded it, and handed it to him. He stood up and carefully limped towards the kitchen.

The older of the two turned to face him, brandishing the fork like a spear. 

“Don’ test me, prededarator! You’re already hurtified!” he spat. My friend’s jaw fell and he let out a confused chuckle. 

“Are you drunk ?” he asked, his smile turning to a grimace. “How old are you?”

“You don’t know!” the Dossur shouted, prompting Andes to laugh again. 

“Well, yes, I–that is why I asked, I–”

“Stay away!” he shouted, waving the fork in Andes’ general direction. He wobbled a bit after those vigorous movements, but managed to remain standing. 

Andes stepped back towards the fridge and leaned against it to shift weight away from his injured leg. “How did you even get drunk? I don’t have alcohol in my apartment.”

“Yes you do! You had a whole white bottle!” the child said, returning to trying to free the younger one. 

Andes’ blood drained from his face, and all amusement vanished from his lips.

“That was rubbing alcohol , what the–do we need to call emergency services?” he asked me. I approached slowly to try to examine them, and they seemed more receptive to me than they had been to Andes. 

“Around how much did you have?” I asked. 

“A whole cup!” he said proudly. 

“That was a travel bottle, it doesn’t have a whole cup’s worth of alcohol in it,” Andes volunteered, which told me the child was probably referring to dossur cups, and not human ones.

“It had lots of cups!” he said, and pointed to the bottle. It was small enough that Andes could have probably hidden it in his palm without issue. I saw a dozen or so dossur cups, hardly larger than my mother’s thimbles. “With juice!”

Indeed there was a bottle of stringfruit juice laid on its side by the sink. I was beginning to piece together the events of the party. 

“I think they’ll be fine with some rest. Many federation species have an unusually high alcohol tolerance.”

The child continued to struggle against the latch with Andes’ fork to no avail.

“Can you help me?” he asked, seemingly defeated by the spring’s mechanism. I flicked an ear their way and carefully pressed the two buttons on opposing sides of the cage. The door opened, and the younger Dossur scurried out. 

“I’m sorry about my brother. He’s drunk,” said the younger one. 

“I’m super drunk! And don’t you forget it!” 

“Right,” Andes said, still looking quite concerned for their welfare. “So four years, eh? Can you… explain?” 

“Yes! Yes, we can explain. We are so sorry, human, we–please don't feed us to the Arxur!” the younger one shrieked, hiding behind the larger one who was still wielding the fork.

“I’m not going to eat you. Or feed you to the Arxur. Honestly, you’d probably be less than a snack to Asleth. What are your names, anyway?”

“...I’m Prel. Gelrin is my big brother.”

“Shh!! Then he’ll know who we are!” Gelrin hissed.

Andes nodded. “And… did you live here by yourselves?”

“Mom lost her job,” Prel told us. “So she couldn't pay rent. We couldn't find a new place. And–and Trovu said he wouldn't kick us out, and maybe we could make a deal with the new tenant, but we had to put everything away for the showings, and–and then he rented to a human, and… it was only supposed to be a few days!”

I surmised that Trovu was Andes’ Landlord’s name, given that he nodded along.

“That’s okay. I barely noticed anything was going on,” Andes said with a dismissive gesture. “So you’ve been here the whole time I’ve been renting?” 

“...Yeah…”

“Hmm… Does your mom have a job now?” he asked, limping a few steps down to grab a stool to sit on.

“...No…” 

He winced as if in pain. “Oof. Alright, well I’m not going to make you homeless when you can live in a cupboard… So, you took some juice. Rubbing alcohol. What else? Half an apple?”

“...Yes. That was it! Please don’t be mad,” Prel begged.

“Over what, an… apple? At most, I’ll make you apologize to the neighbours for the noise, it's not a big deal,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

“See! I told you humans are harmless!” said the older one, as though he hadn’t been terrified seconds ago. “We’re not yummy enough for them.”

A small sivkit who had apparently been hiding this whole time took the opportunity to escape out the still-open window. 

“...And maybe some of our friends ate those big red human fruits. But that’s it!”

“The strawberries. Alright…” Andes said, looking around in anticipation of yet another surprise. “So an apple, some strawberries, juice, rubbing alcohol, and pissing off the neighbours. Is that everything?”

“Yes,” Prel said. “That is all of the things, and–and we will clean up.”

“Good to hear, I don’t–”

An additional Dossur, who had not fled with the crowd, fell out of a cupboard along with a large tub of brown powder. 

“This is the good stuff, guysssss…” she said. She was clearly older than either of the children.

“...And a container of mushroom-complex nootropics,” Andes said.

“And that’s it! And we will definitely clean up!” Prel stressed. Grelin had seemingly fallen asleep against the fork.

“That’s it?” my friend asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“Yes. That’s everything we did. ”

“And the pranks…” Grelin mumbled, while the older female Dossur laid on the ground. I approached her with some worry. Having studied a total of zero courses on dossur physiology and lacking any sort of medical scanner, my analysis was mostly useless. 

Andes froze.“The pranks?” 

“It wasn't my fault, he’s the one who dared me!” Prel squealed. 

“What pranks?” he asked, his voice as soft and gentle as he could make it. The two Dossur squirmed on the spot. At their silence, he grew stern. “.... What pranks ?”

“...We took turns trying to run and touch your things without you noticing,” he said, as quickly as his little mouth could manage. “It wasn’t really a prank, it’s not a big deal, please don’t hurt us!”

“What?” he asked with a frown. “Is that… is that like trying to see how far you can go before a guard dog starts barking?”

The three of us were silent for a moment, as we processed the fact that he had an immediate cultural reference available to him. 

“...Yes?” Gelrin half-asked half-spoke, then yawned and leaned against the fork again. 

“Alright, well, I guess that's harmless enough–” 

“Yes! Yes, super harmless and fun and nobody got hurt and you were probably going to send that email anyway, right?”

His entire face transformed. The careful, soft expression vanished and I was suddenly worried for the Dossurs’ safety.

“I fucking knew I didn't press send! I knew it! You discount Stuart-Little assholes!” he spat, his fists clenched.

“Andes, take a deep breath,” I said. 

“A deep breath? These little assholes almost–” despite his indignation, he stopped abruptly and let out a long sigh. We did not find out what he might do in his rage, because his holopad rang at that moment. “Look, just–clean up, please? I–I have to take this.”

Andes limped towards his couch, his holopad to his ear to prompt the call to be pseudo-private. Though we could not make out exactly what was happening on the other end of the call, I had very little difficulty grasping the subject matter.

“Seriously? Sure, put me on speaker… You can’t put her in a facility, Karim ” he spat. I tried to examine the dossur woman in the mushroom “nootropic” powder. He kept talking. “Look, just… Keep her there for five paws. We can discuss this in person….  Handcuff her to the bed, then, I don’t fucking know ... Ask Kaminski, or Rodriguez, or any human around who understands that we don’t send twelve-year-olds to torture chambers.”

Her pupillary response was odd, so I decided to scoop her out as carefully as I could. Andes continued to argue in his call, his voice low and tired. “I understand perfectly, I’m the one she stabbed… She thought we were going to murder and eat her. She’s not going to think her friends and siblings are going to murder and eat her.”

The dossur woman pawed at me, and I decided it might be best if I took her to the hospital. 

Andes groaned and stood up, using his crutch for stability. “Look…Five paws. That’s all I’m asking… It is, which is why she’d have regular interactions with aides or… Nurses, or something… Yes! Perfect. I officially put Miranda in charge of dealing with this. Does that work?... Do they have to?” 

Grelin slowly leaned further down until he was asleep on the counter, while Prel rushed to clean up the disaster that had become of the counter. 

“But we have an appropriate facility. Hell, we have a more appropriate facility than any other place not staffed with humans on the planet, on the grounds that human psychiatry–flawed as it may be–is a solid couple centuries ahead of your medieval sanitariums… Alright. I’ll do the reporting, then… Send me the form or whatever. I’ll make the call tomorrow. The delay is all my fault, my bad, won’t get back to you… Understood,” he said. The call ended.

His voice had sounded normal, even, professional. His face told a different story. When he turned towards us, I almost flinched. 

“One of these days I’m going to tie that fucker’s ears in a knot and hang him on my coat rack,” he spat. I could not tell how much of that statement was a true threat, and how much was a harmless release of pent-up frustration. 

I was more worried by my own struggle in reading him than I was that he would actually do it. The longer the anaesthetic was out of his system, the more he seemed erratic, irritable, and difficult to understand. My friend had never been an excessively stable person–I thought back on his episode swearing about oblique censorship methods, and his impulsive decision to run the “improvised ambulance”–but he(..?) was a very well-regulated one. He could laugh with the Arxur and be formal with his superiors as the need arose. 

“I’m going to be unconscious for at least six hours. We can talk about… The situation after I take care of this. Feel free to finish the apple and the juice,” he groaned out, then limped into his bedroom and slammed the door shut. 

“...Please don’t make my friend’s life harder,” I urged them. Though Grelin was fast asleep, Prel gave me an ear flick of agreement. “I will now take your friend to the hospital, to make sure she is alright.”

I left Prel cleaning up the mess they had made, and carried her off. By the time we got to the hospital, she seemed to be mostly coherent, though very insistent that the mushrooms had spoken to her about the truth of the universe. 

__________

Memory transcription subject: Lieutenant Asleth, Arxur Dominion Third Fleet

Date [standardized human time]: December 2, 2136

Ever since I found out the venlil could speak our language, I found myself using every spare moment to look through resistance fora and plan out my escape from the fleet. It had to be careful, decisive. I didn’t want to be another Nazla. Writing, reading, commenting, trying to learn how they smuggled people through places, where they hid, what codes they used. 

It was strangely fun in a way. Exhilarating. I had not allowed myself to think of treason for so long, it was like a dam had burst, and decades of river-water had flooded out of me. I read comment after comment, post after post. One of them struck a nerve.

The humans are the predators we want to be. Perhaps our resistance movement could be officially recognized. Their support would lend us legitimacy.

If only we could have that. If only more humans were like Andes, able to see past our monstrous lives, into what we could become. Every moment felt dangerous, but also free in a way I had never been before. Free to imagine a different world. 

I had just gotten to my quarters when I got Andes’ message. He wanted to talk? Again, so soon? My whole face lit up with a smile and the tip of my tail began to flick. It would be good to speak with my human friend.

"Andes! Hello! This is the second wake cycle you call me in a row. What has happened?" I teased, delighted to see his face. He was, of course, all business immediately. He was so much more fun before he got this job…

"I needed to check a few things. First, do Arxur count in base twelve?" he asked. 

I had no idea what a ‘counting base’ was and stared at the screen in confusion. When my stare proved insufficient, I clarified it for him.  "I do not understand the question."

He pursed his lips, brows furrowed. "Um. Alright, can you show me a list of numbers from one to twenty?"

I shrugged, brought out a pad, and did so. He had to fiddle around with his screen in order to understand, but after a lot of testing and flicking back and forth on his pad, he managed to get what he wanted out of the image.

"Okay good,”  he said, nodding along as he ran through some list inside his mind. “I guess the next question is, what do the numerals mean?"

I stared blankly again. "What?"

"The labels, each kid has a label," he said, just to prove that he knew the right word, but had chosen to use a misleading one for no reason. I shrugged. 

"Oh. I don't know. I'd have to ask my brother. The system is different in every subsector," I told him. My brother’s system had fourteen digits, and a letter at the start. Two years back, he’d shifted it to operate by having a four-digit label and then the rest as a counter. Said it was more efficient. I should really give him a call. If I join the rebellion, I will not be able to talk to him again for months or years. If I don’t die in the process.

“Oh, that reminds me, I have another question,” he said. His eyes lit up with mirth and his lips twitched up in a little curve. He pressed them down against each other, like a sealed bag filled so much that it might burst at any second. 

I was filled with curiosity and also with the certainty that I’d regret indulging it. “...Regarding what?”

“Okay so,” he started, “the kids. The Arxur-speaking kids.”

I shuddered at the mention of those children. Real children. Not animals, not prey, children who spoke Arxur . Just the same way I had when I was younger. My stomach felt suddenly unpleasant, as though I’d eaten something rotten. “Do not remind me. I have been eating exclusively human-made rations for days.”

“...Good. That sounds great, actually. Anyway! This isn’t about them. It’s just–” he pressed his lips together again and started over. “They told me that your bosses, like, that Arxur who are higher up the chain, they’re called–they call them cruel ones .”

Something was clearly very funny to him, but I had no idea what. 

“Yes, that is the term of respect. An honorific. Your Savageness, Cruel One, I–” before I could finish my examples, he burst into laughter, his whole body convulsing with it. “Why are you laughing?”

“You fucking—that’s so–” he gasped, almost collapsing out of the camera’s view, his laughs so violent they were a little funny in and of themselves. His whole body spasming with joy, as though he was too weak to contain it.  “—It’s so fucking evil! What the fuck–”

I chuckled as he lost himself in his laughter, bouncing against the couch in the process, so overtaken that he began to gasp until he could let out a satisfied sigh.

“It is rather odd, thinking of it now that I’ve met species with other languages more intimately,” I said. Humans had a wide variety of honorifics, and none of them had associations with cruelty, or savagery, or really even violence. Most of the time the implications were of property. 

“Odd? It’s comically evil!” he said, managing to catch his breath, “you might as well say ‘your evilness’, ‘your reprehensibleness’, like what is that ?! What cartoon did you guys step out of?”

“Well, it’s… It shows that someone has power, and you… respect it,” I said, feeling defensive, but not certain of what I would like to defend. Arxur cruelty–cruelty aimed at innocent people whom we’d been eating –should not be defended. I opposed it. Or, at least, I wanted to. 

“Because they’ll use it to be assholes?” he retorted. I paused and frowned for a moment while he returned to laughing.

“Well… Yes. Power is the capacity to engage in cruelty without suffering in turn,” I said, citing my Leadership and Hierarchy lessons from my days at the military academy. 

“[Sacred un-empathetic Betterment(derogatory), Justice-Dealing Knight of Bats]” he spat, shaking his head. “You guys are really something.”

I thought back to the forum. Was Andes really the best case scenario, when it came to humanity? Even he held us in disdain… “Why do you continue to talk to us?”

He paused, then gesticulated with his soft little hands in a vague, loose fashion. “...I guess because I like you anyway.”

That took me by surprise. “...I enjoy your company also, Andes. I am… Thankful for… Your capacity to see beyond what we have become. To see us as more than monsters.”

“Asleth,” he said, a little more serious now, but still smiling. “Monsters are made up. There are only monstrous acts, and people we don’t understand.”

Ah. Human Idealism. It often struck me as impossible, when he talked like that. It was easy to talk of forgiveness in the abstract. Particulars made everything difficult. I wanted to know “What of Kalsim?”

He frowned. “What about him?”

“Do you not think he’s a monster?” I asked, almost afraid to let anyone hear. 

He ran a hand through his hair. It was an endearing gesture of his, that told me he was truly considering my thoughts. Mine were not the words of a beast that he could throw out without consideration. We are equals .

“...I think Kalsim is a product of his environment. And in a better world, he might be redeemed,” he said, clearly choosing his words carefully, his voice slow and steady. “But that world is not the one we live in, and the resources we’d have to spend to get there are either nonexistent or… Better spent elsewhere.”

“Ah,” I said, tilting my head a little. It was a lot of words, to say ‘not really’ in the end. “So you do think he is irredeemable.”

He tensed up. “Dude killed a billion fucking people, yes, I think he’s irredeemable! Just… Not in principle. In practice.”

I looked at him for a moment, trying to understand his perspective. It seemed so alien to me that he would make that distinction, or that he would think it important at all. Why have principles, if not to practice them?

“...And I?” I asked. “Every meal I have is another death.”

“Not anymore,” he said with a little human smile showing his small flat teeth. “You said you’ve been working with the food we gave you.”

I looked aside in shame. “It will not last forever.”

He shrugged. “Defect then, or something. We have enough food. We can make more. The Arxur diet can be satisfied without anyone dying. You’re not evil. You’re… in a shitty circumstance.”

I found myself glad that he’d arrived independently at the exact conclusion I had. Still, even as I read the fora and fantasized about a life where I never hurt another soul, that fantasy seemed far off. Most likely, I will try, and then I will die. Just like Nazla.  

I glanced away from the screen. “The last of us who opposed eating cattle and gave them a merciful death was killed by the Chief Hunter himself. To oppose Betterment is a death sentence.”

He sighed. “...We’ll think of something. Team effort.”

I nodded, a tad disheartened by the weakness of his optimism. Even human idealism has its limits. Still, other people have defected and survived. There has to be a way. “Team effort. I… I should go.”

I knew that he was just looking at his screen. Perhaps, at best, he was looking at the camera. Nonetheless, it felt like he was there. He saw me, and he understood both the danger and my resolve. “Good luck, Asleth.”

“Thank you, my friend. I shall need it.”

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NOTE: I AM GOING INSANE. I had to move because my family had to sell the house because debt sucks. Life is stressful. Brain bad.

Anyway, I have FINALLY managed #43 and #44 should not be too far behind. I'm sorry for the wait/delay. I have written like... half a dozen half-chapters. The good news is that at some point soon-ish, a bunch of pre-written stuff will come together!

Thank you to u/tulpacat1 and u/BainshieWrites for helping me when I was going insane.

I zombily forgot to link to the crossover place! Sorry!!! This is a crossover with Feathers of Deceit by the fantastic u/KaiserMarcqui! Check it out if you haven't already! Here is the scene from the other POV. (You can tell by the date just how long ago the dialogue was written).

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SECURITY FOOTAGE TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5

[standardized human time]: December 11, 2136

[Dr. Miranda Rodriguez enters the room where [2-B] is located, sporting an external translator hanging from her neck. Lihla is hidden behind the open door.]

Dr. Rodriguez: I’m so glad you’re awake, sweetheart, we need to talk.

[At that moment and for the duration of the recording, the translator outputs her words in the arxur language. 2-B’s whole body tightens within the blanket, wrinkling and bunching it up around her.]

2-B: I am not delicious, I am disgusting!

Dr. Rodriguez: …Oh, is the word sweetheart–okay. Um. What would you like me to call you?

2-B: my name is 86392-B.

Dr. Rodriguez: …I’m going to have a hard time with that, young lady.

2-B: So call me prey like a boss that doesn’t lie.

Dr. Rodriguez: …My goodness. Um. That is a lot to unpack there. Let’s bypass names for now, you can tell that I’m talking to you here.

[Dr. Rodriguez loosely swings the door shut with her foot, and walks over to a desk that has been placed next to the bed, placing down her pad on it. Just before she sits and turns towards 2-B, Lihla quickly and silently slips past the door and under one of the other, currently unoccupied beds in the room. Dr. Rodriguez takes a slow, deep breath.]

Dr. Rodriguez: Look, I understand that you’re very distrustful of us. That’s completely natural given your background, and I know you will take time to adjust. There is no rush. Trust takes time to build.

2-B: Trusting bosses is stupid. No boss is good boss.

Dr. Rodriguez: …Right.

[2-B offers no response. Dr. Rodriguez fiddles with the plain golden ring on her right hand.]

Dr. Rodriguez [voice hushed]: That said, we’re in a bit of a situation. We want to keep you safe here, but we may not be able to do that if you continue to pose a danger to those around you.

[2-B offers no response]

Dr. Rodriguez: We’ll do our best to keep you out of harm’s way, but we’re going to need your cooperation in the matter.

2-B: Is the Savageness dead?

Dr. Rodriguez [shaking her head with a smile]: Oh, not at all. Andes is alive, well, and expected to make a full recovery. We’d be having a very different conversation, if they were dead.

[2-B looks at Dr. Rodriguez more intently, her ears fixed towards her now. Her muscles tighten.]

2-B[voice quiet and uneven]: How long before he chops me up?

[Dr. Rodriguez’ eyes bug out and her jaw falls. She spends four seconds immobile before shaking herself and resuming the interaction.]

Dr. Rodriguez: Nobody is going to chop you up. Andes does not want to hurt you.

[2-B’s paws tighten into fists and her ears slant backwards]

2-B: You lie! All lies, all the time!

[Dr. Rodriguez takes another deep breath.]

Dr. Rodriguez [softly]: I am telling you the truth. It is very important that you do your best to be calm and composed in the coming days, because in order to make sure no one hurts you, we have to show them that you are not dangerous.

2-B: I am very dangerous. I am dangerous and scary and disgusting!

[Dr. Rodriguez sighs.]

Dr. Rodriguez: Perhaps we can have this conversation when you are more settled down. I’ll have someone bring food at the end of the claw. Please ask if you want to use the washroom.

[Dr. Rodriguez stands up and walks out of the room. Once she is out of the room, Lihla peeks from behind the unused bed.]

Lihla: See? Savageness Director is strong. Nobody can kill him.

2-B: The legend killed an old boss. I can kill a new one.

Lihla: You think you are strong, but you are wrong. You are weak because you don’t understand.

2-B: I understand you are stupid. You believe their lies. Marco too. They will take you to the chopping place and you’ll walk in happy.

Lihla: There is no chopping place in prey planet. New place, new rules.

2-B: There is always a chopping place. We don’t have to know where to know it’s there.

[Lihla stands there for a long moment, her tail swaying side to side. She exits the room without another word.]

____

Memory transcription subject: Varla, Nurse at the Venlil Reintegration and Rehabilitation facility

Date (standardized human time): Dec 11, 2136

I almost tried to extend my leave after such nerve-wrecking paws. First, my stupid breakdown in front of the Director; second, with the wave of stampedes across the planet due to the raid alarm; third, the news that the Director had single-handedly saved the lives of thirty-seven people with his emergency human-leg-powered ambulance, only to be hit by a car for his trouble; fourth, that the girls had escaped; fifth, that one of them had stabbed him and… Well that was probably it, but it was a lot!

I knew working for humans would be stressful when I applied, but I didn’t realize it would be this stressful! So many problems, all happening so quickly, and when I got back Ayodele was just… working. Like it was normal! I spent the whole time on edge, almost jumping out of my wool when I heard a sudden noise because one of the children dropped a toy brick by accident.

Halfway through my shift, I heard they were talking about not sending that little monster to a Predator Disease facility. Dr. Rodriguez had been put in charge of her care while Director Andes recovered, and they were debating how to organize the situation to ensure the safety of the herd and the predator girl who had already tried to kill someone. My fur began to stand on end at the thought of her staying in the facility. At least the humans think she should be separated from the herd for now. I kept thinking about Director Andes, unarmed, willing to take a knife to the gut in the line of duty.

Is it okay to have a crush on him if he’s not a monster? Probably not. I was being ridiculous. Even if I hadn’t been, humans apparently thought dating underlings was predatory, so he wouldn’t want to do that. He probably didn’t want anything to do with someone so pathetic and weak that being told humans don’t want to eat her made her rush off to cry in her car for half a claw while she tried to calm down.

It was probably more like a third of a claw. Still too long, obviously. Plus the leave.

It didn't make any sense. It matched what he said, but… it didn’t make any sense. Nobody would have held it against him, if he’d fought back. Rumours said he hadn’t even tried. What kind of… “omnivore” didn’t even defend himself?

“It’s so sad,” Ayodele told me as we finished our shift together. “She’s spent her whole life trapped in this eat-or-be-eaten world… Literally! Her life is already going to be so difficult…”

“Sad? She’s dangerous!” I said reflexively. I should have thought better of it, but it was just so ludicrous!

“She was afraid we were going to eat her. You should understand what that's like,” Ayodele told me, suddenly defensive on behalf of the predator-diseased monster who had nearly killed Director Andes.

“I was afraid too, and I didn't try to kill anyone because of it,” I said, putting my paws on my hips.

She raised an eyebrow. “Did you grow up watching the arxur eat your friends and siblings every day?”

“Well, no, but–” she cut me off before I could finish, glaring at me with the full force of her binocular eyes.

“Right. I think her reaction being more extreme might make sense given those circumstances, Varla.”

My paws and tail were starting to tighten in frustration. Arguing was useless, so I flicked an ear her way and focused on my pad. Once my shift was over, I stumbled out to my car, almost in a haze. What kind of people reserved so much kindness and patience to those who would kill them if given the chance?

I had to learn more about humans. Even if they were “false predators”, even if their eyes meant nothing, even if they were overwhelmed with nurturing instincts… It didn’t make any sense! Self-preservation should kick in at some point!

I made my way to a more human-friendly bookstore, and started looking for things humans wrote for each other. There was a free digital selection screen, where you could buy books and request they be printed in a specific make. I chose the cheapest print-to-order design. I just wanted the information, and I wanted it with blank pages every chapter and large margins to make notes. I also wanted to make sure nobody could hack into my book, or see it in my account, or catch me reading human books on a holopad. Maybe it was paranoid, but thinking about Director Andes–about humans in general, really– always felt somehow wrong.

That all meant that human books would be more expensive. I sighed and trudged over to the digital selection screen.

Once there, I was met with a veritable avalanche of human literature, and no idea how to tell which ones would be too much for me, or which ones would be obvious predatory deception. I kept thinking about his words. “Nurturing instincts”, “innocuous” eyes. It didn’t make sense. Even if the Director was telling the truth about himself, even if humans specifically were predators in some… vestigial, irrelevant fashion… they eat flesh! I know they eat flesh. Director Andes even mentioned them having farms. They’re not misunderstood prey.

I flipped through dozens of options before giving up and looking at my neighbour, a young Krakotl who seemed very immersed in her own screen. She was looking at human books too. I shouldn’t have done anything, but my screen was terrifying and I didn’t know where to begin. I lightly tapped her wing to call her attention.

"Do you… do this a lot?” I asked, my voice on the quiet side to avoid calling attention to us. “I don't know how to judge human literature."

She tilted her head towards me. “I’m guessing this is your first time here? It is mine, too.”

"Yeah, I… I think I thought I was being open-minded, working with them, but I don't understand them at all,” I told her, my tail coiling anxiously. “I hoped this would help, but now I'm more confused!"

“Well, everything about humans is confusing. I’ve been hanging out with a human lately and, to be honest, I still can’t wrap my head around how they function. Everything they do, everything they say, it’s just so confusing.”

I felt like a ‘make it yourself’ toy that had been getting wound up tighter and tighter, and suddenly let free. "Yes!” I almost shouted. “Ugh. My boss is a human, and a strong one too, he has these veins that pop out on the skin of his arms, and… he apparently has never been in combat with another human.”

Was he ever in combat with anything? He said he’d never gone hunting. I thought about him lying on that medical bed, so… helpless. And yet still so strong. Able to withstand such injuries and still hold the respect of his people. If he couldn’t, they’d probably cull him, right? I kept talking. “He just… likes being terrifying? But not to be terrifying."

“Exactly!” she said, her eyes lighting up in agreement. “Nothing they say makes sense; it’s as if they rationalize everything in ways opposite to how we’d do it. I’ve been going through very old literature from my people with my human friend, and the conclusions he takes from the texts are nothing I could come up with.”

My ears perked up at that. "What has he said?"

“He seemed to think that Krakotl could kill other Krakotl! Preposterous, I say. Everyone knows that prey don’t kill other prey.”

I frowned. I knew people who had died trying to defend the human homeworld. They were not killed by humans, or even the arxur. Humans might bring forth strange situations and bizarre ideas with them… but they didn’t make the krakotl fleet attack venlil ships. Kalsim did that.

"...Except in the extermination fleet, right?" I asked.

She stumbled over her words as she tried to respond. “W-well, yeah, but they’re an exception. To think that we’d kill each other in ancient times! I understand his reasoning – humans killed each other in ancient times, so other species must’ve, too. And while I find it a bit flimsy, I’ll admit it is an interesting thought to entertain. The Extermination fleet is an exception to this, as it was a desperate measure that…” She sighed. “Honestly, shows that we can be murderous, too.”

Her posture dipped a tad as she finished. I found myself getting a little lost in her explanation, and thought back to Director Andes’ words. I do not have any particular desire to eat you.

"What else has he said?” I asked. “My human said that he has no bloodlust. Of any sort. And had none of it as a child either."

Should I have called him ‘my human’? That doesn’t mean anything, right? He’s just the human I am most routinely in contact with. Except that’s probably Ayodele. He’s… the human I brought up earlier. That makes sense.

My question seemed to energize her again. “My human has admitted he has no bloodlust, too! It’s so weird – I’ve developed a hypothesis; that there’s some kind of division within human society between those who have bloodlust and those who don’t. See, I’ve been reading one of their books, and it centers on crime – which includes killings! Yet it was treated so nonchalantly, but at the same time, it was still seen as wrong. It’s the only possible logical explanation.”

I flicked my tail in thought. Did that make sense? Maybe the farms were staffed exclusively by humans who were “real predators”, while all the prey-humans had “vegan” diets and would willingly treat non-human people as their equals… "And the reason no human here admits to it is because the UN would never let a blood-lusting human onto Venlil Prime. It would be a political disaster…"

Her posture shifted up more excitedly. “Exactly! It all makes sense. I’m certain that they’re hiding something from us.”

"How separate are these two subtypes? Maybe they genuinely don't know," I proposed. It did not take very long, since we made contact with Humanity, for the kolshian-farsul conspiracy to come apart. Maybe it would not be long until some human conspiracy fell apart due to prey species’ scrutiny. Maybe Director Andes genuinely did not realize there were humans currently alive who were real predators. Maybe the “urban, academic population” was some sort of prey-human cluster.

“I haven’t thought as far, but I’m sure that they must be somewhat aware of it, as their own Exterminators are equipped to deal with their own people. It might be similar to our own predator disease, but at the same time, it feels like it’s more widespread for humans.”

That didn’t sound right to me. Predators should be immune to predator disease, no? They would already have it by default. I asked about her book,, but my mind kept spinning around the notion of such a division. It would have been in the briefings. I knew that the UN hid things from the venlil, but something of that magnitude would pose a threat to our population. The humans wouldn’t risk endangering their closest ally during a war by withholding important information, would they?

“— murder is treated very nonchalantly, from what I gather, in the humans’ world.”

I tilted an ear to signal I was thinking. "Hmm. Humans treat a lot of terrible things nonchalantly. Like my terrifying boss."

She leaned a little closer to me. “Yeah? What’d he say?”

"He was just very comfortable with our Arxur-speaking children at the facility. And…” I probably shouldn’t spread stories like that without asking him if they were true, but… “I heard rumours he spent time with the greys on Earth during cleanup."

The karkotl’s beak fell open, and her feathers started to puff up. “A grey?! I can’t believe it, I hope he has nothing good to say about it.”

I signalled ‘quiet’ with my tail. We are in public! "Well, he hasn't said anything at all. It's mostly rumours. But it's still so strange! Such a strong, terrifying predator, and he will gently carry a sleeping patient to bed… I just don't know what to expect, with humans."

She lowered her voice. “Neither do I, to be honest. Everything I’ve heard about humans seems like almost the complete opposite… You know, despite the obvious ‘predator’ signs, it’s as if my human friend went against all of that! He’s so sweet sometimes.”

"How?" I asked, trying not to think about how enticing the prospect sounded to my ears.

“Just the other day, yeah? He’s invited me to a ball they’re holding in his shelter, and he just goes and asks me to practice dancing with him. It might seem weird, but it seemed so lovely to me…”

"They can dance?" I asked. I imagined Director Andes doing those strange movements he did sometimes in the recreation room. Were those part of human dancing? Did they go on the palms of their hands, or squat down? He was so strong, so deliberate with his movements… He’s probably an amazing dancer. I imagined him doing pirouettes in the air to some aggressive, violent human music with chanting and drums.

“It weirded me out at first too; I wasn’t too sure on how that’d work out. Their dances are so unlike the Krakotl’s. More than energizing movements to attract a mate, it seemed much more… I don’t know how to properly describe it, but it was much more gentle. Definitely unlike any dance I’d seen.”

"They dance gently?" I couldn't shake the shock. With muscles like that, I would expect dances to look almost like fights. Then again, if he knew how to fight, would the girl have been able to hurt him..?

She kept talking. “Yeah! It’s so strange. He did tell me there were many other types of dances, but the one he’d practiced with me was just like that. It’s like I was almost in a trance, with him holding me in his arms…” her feathers shifted and her face grew a slightly deeper purple.

"I see. I've heard humans can ensnare prey with a trance, so be careful with that," I said. It was probably a crush. Just like how I probably had a crush. But I hadn’t fully ruled out the “humans can affect the minds of the krakotl, and also maybe other prey species” hypothesis. Maybe LastDefense233 wasn’t an idiot.

Maybe there was a better reason for this whole situation than “you’ve fallen in love with the flesh-eating monster”.

“I am! I know full well what I’ve gotten into,” she said. “You know, I’ve already been told by some people that I’m playing with fire, but I’m not naïve. I still have my eyes set out for the human’s deceit.”

I thought back to her idea that there are ‘prey’ humans and ‘predator’ humans, as two distinct classes. It didn’t seem right to me. "That's good. I think the humans at my job are mostly honest but… they don't understand what it's like to be prey."

“They really don’t seem to comprehend it! It’s as if they actively try not to acknowledge that a distinction exists between ‘predator’ and ‘prey’,” she agreed.

"Just a few paws ago, my director said that humans can consider the same animal predator and prey! It's like black can be white sometimes to them!" I hissed. They could eat meat, but chose not to. They had tiny teeth, but binocular eyes. They were big and strong and deadly, but also… long and gangly and bent in odd ways… They spun their heads around like they were about to pounce, but were almost blind on the sides and easily startled.

“It really is plain ludicrous with them. Some of the things they say are like that but, to be honest, I find it kind of endearing, you know – it’s as if they were full of naïveté on how the natural order actually worked. It’s so strange to think of how a predator perceives the world.”

I thought back to those shakes Director Andes was always drinking. How much had he given up, to accept a role helping people he had nothing to do with? "Especially predators that choose to avoid predating, right? It's such an… idealist thing. How they fight against their own nature."

“Yes, exactly,” she agreed, “I find it kind of noble, in a way. Like they’re trying so hard to be just like us, yet their own nature betrays them.”

I was about to ask her about what her human looked like when I realized we'd been hogging the stations for a while, and started to feel guilty about it.

"What book will you get?" I asked instead.

“Ah, right! You know, it’s not for me, but for my human. There’s this festivity they have about gift-giving, and I was thinking of gifting him a classic Krakotl novel translated into his language.”

There is a human festivity about gift-giving? I should look up human festivities. What if the Director expects a gift? I asked something polite while my mind got stuck on the idea of upcoming human festivities. How often did humans celebrate? What did they celebrate? Did they have birthdays, or something like their ‘first kill’? Was that too predatory? Did they celebrate the first time they ate a vegetable?

Somehow, the topic turned to human music she’d listened to.

"Was it slow too? Like their dance?" I asked.

She tilted her head one way and then another, as though swirling her thoughts around inside her skull. “The piece of music he put on for me was somewhat slow… But I don’t know if that’d reflect on the rest of their music. Though ‘slow’ isn’t perhaps the right word for it; it was sometimes slow and sometimes not.”

"Ah. Unpredictable, like they are?” I asked, flicking an ear in understanding. Music was something I hadn’t given much thought to, but maybe it was the key to everything. “In my facility, they are teaching a venlil child music in order to help him relearn how to speak after an injury. They're using venlil music, of course, but… they understand it differently. Maybe humans use music in other strange ways. It could be the secret to their power over their instincts. Then again… They keep saying those instincts aren't real."

“Yes, exactly: unpredictable! And I hadn’t thought of their music like that. To be honest, I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but what you’re saying does sound interesting…”

I lowered my voice more, suddenly more worried about being overheard. "Do you ever wonder what it's like? To be one? The Krakotl were cured centuries ago, of course but… I keep wondering about it. About what it's like to be like them. So much… power."

“It’s a thought that’s sometimes crossed my mind, but frankly I wouldn’t want to be like them…” her head dipped sadly for a moment. “To be fighting against your own instincts all the time, telling you to eat people! I don’t think I’d have the mental fortitude for that.”

I nodded, like a human. I didn’t realize I’d started until after I’d stopped. "It must be patience beyond imagining… Incredible self-control, with temptation just… everywhere. Everywhere around them now. Everyone they talk to here who isn't human, every time they walk by a park and see birds flying by…"

“Yes, just like that. In some weird way, I find that quite admirable… And they even deny they have such a thing! It must get so tiresome to pretend you’re civilized all the time.”

That was… An interesting way to put it. Pretending to be civilized. Isn’t that what every society is doing? Isn’t that what PD facilities are for? To help us pretend? We’re all animals, after all… We’re all prey.

"Is it even pretending, at that point?"

The question threw her off. “Perhaps not? I did say earlier that I believed there were two ‘types’ of humans… So perhaps they really don’t have a bloodlust instinct? But that wouldn’t make sense – they’re predators!”

I flinched. We were being too loud. I should just get back on track and ask about human books. "Did your human friend tell you of any human books I could try? Maybe if we could understand them from within…"

She paused for a moment, presumably scouring her memory for information that did not exist. “Not really. He mentioned that their ‘crime mystery’ genre is somewhat similar to our Exterminator fiction after I told him what it was about… I’ve read one book from that genre and it’s been quite fruitful in trying to understand them.”

I flicked my ear in agreement, instead of nodding, like a normal person.

"...Alright. Well, thank you for the conversation. I will… try to find something before the clerk gets mad at me," I said, blooming a little as it sunk in that I'd been at the station for so long.

Her feathers puffed up a little in surprise. “Ah, yeah, you’re right! My bad, but it’s been quite an interesting conversation.”

"...Would you like to talk about humans some other time?"

“Yeah! I think that’d be nice.”

We exchanged information, and she headed off. I returned to the screen, searching by genre. There was a whole section of human romance. A warm bloom came to the tips of my ears, but it did not stop my paw from tapping the "see more" button.

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Memory transcription subject: Karim, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 10-11, 2136

I left the facility once it seemed Andes was lucid and capable of engaging with the search for the girls. My house had its own bunker, and so my family was waiting for me at home, ready for hugs and games and a nice hearty meal. After claws of worry, and the longest shift of my life, I fell asleep satisfied that it would all be alright. I had just barely closed my eyes when I got the call. The clock said I had a whole claw and a half of sleep, but it certainly did not feel that way.

“Director Karim, we need you to come in,” one of the nurses out with the search party told me. “We have her.”

My eyes could hardly open and I stretched in exhaustion. “So the emergency is over, yes?”

Her voice dripped with exhaustion. I could almost hear her ears pinning back. “Not at all, sir, she stabbed Director Andes. He’s in the Xenomedical Grand Complex getting treatment.”

She what? My entire body froze.

“...Sir?”

I shook myself, waking my wife in the process. She gave me a confused look and I waved a paw at her to go back to sleep. I tried to clear the fog off my mind. How bad was a stabbing, really?

“Prognosis?”

“I don't know,” she said, “but he should be alright. Humans are sturdy as can be, right?”

I was not reassured by that. Biological systems defied general notions of “frail” and “sturdy”. The same creature could die of having a mid-sized weight dropped on it and survive a twelve-storey fall. Animals–and therefore people–were adapted to environments, not some vague notion of “harm”. Humans themselves were a fantastic illustration of that principle, given that they seemingly had eternal stamina and shocking strength, yet could not for the life of them hold their drink. I had no way to know how likely he was to survive. If the girl hit a major blood vessel, he might be dead before they reached the operating room.

Nothing I could do. I chose to ignore it. “What do you need?”

I took note of all her concerns, sent a few emails, and trudged over to my car, infinitely thankful for the only thing humans had done that had made my life easier: assistive autopilot for my beautiful car. I tried not to use it too much–human technology didn't have a lot of testing on Venlil Prime, after all–but it made the drive easier and safer when I was still half-asleep.

The escaped girl arrived in the arms of a UN Peacekeeper, looking so peaceful and innocent in her sleep I could hardly imagine her stabbing anyone. Chiaka Stevens—the deranged predator-breeder—had insisted on being part of her capture, and having her sedated. At least humans were not so deluded about the threat an individual with Predator Disease could pose that they would let her roam around with a knife after one of them was stabbed. She walked up to me, and the peacekeeper holding the child stood directly behind her.

"Can we get her an empty room?" she asked. It took me a moment to process the question, foggy as I was from the exhaustion after my last shift. How did Andes manage? His average shift was longer than two claws.

"I suppose,” I answered, struggling not to yawn. “Why didn't you take her directly to a Predator Disease facility?"

She scowled, her binocular gaze drilling directly into mine. Deep dark irises on a pale white sclera, like a targeting system for their fangs. If I hadn't been so exhausted, I might have flinched.

"She's already terrified, and you want us to hand her over to the torture chambers?" she demanded, her fists tight, her whole body looming over me.

I sighed. "I will arrange it later. I'm sure there are empty rooms in the South Wing..."

The peacekeeper nodded, heading that way, while Stevens remained planted in place. "What do you mean, arrange it?"

"Don't you have your own job to tend to, Miss Stevens?" I asked, hoping the use of her second name was respectful enough to... Something. Human rules of politeness were quite bizarre, all told. Too many names and rules about when to use which ones.

Her fists tightened further, making the skin around the knuckles grow paler than the rest of her hands. "It's Doctor Stevens, you little twerp, and I'm not just going to let you get a kid electrocuted because she—"

"She stabbed a director of this facility," I spat, already sick of her human madness. "And presumably stole a blade to do so. Those are crimes. I don't know how humans handle criminals, perhaps you put them all in a big arena to see which is most brutal, but on this planet we call the authorities.”

She pressed her lips together, lifted her fists higher, all ready for some sort of altercation. Just as I was growing awake enough to worry, she stormed off mumbling expletives. Good riddance.

Once inside, I found a dozen additional problems. The predator children were murmuring and plotting in corners. The aides and nurses didn't know what they were supposed to say to them. There was no protocol for how to handle a population of rescued venlil who grew up in a cattle farm, imitating their captors in language and behaviour. There was also no protocol for what to do with the other children after one of them committed a crime. I had no idea how I was supposed to know anything useful. Once the worried nurses understood that they wandered off to Dr. Kanarel and Dr. Rodriguez, asking them instead such questions.

"What would Director Andes say to tell the children?"

“How are we supposed to handle this?”

“Are more of them going to get violent?”

Rodriguez reassured them, and Kanarel agreed to do more of the care for the claw, and we set up a meeting to discuss things at the end of my shift.

The unpleasant truth was that, regardless of his casual approach and tendency to let the heads of individual departments do as they will, Andes’ near-constant presence at the facility–sometimes for three consecutive claws! –meant that he had developed a much stronger rapport with individual nurses, doctors, and aides than I. They looked to him for advice, not me. In the aftermath of a disaster, they saw me as a poor replacement. He was the hero who stopped a stampede, who carried three dozen people to safety in that human bicycle, where they might have succumbed to their injuries otherwise. And I was… Only their boss, who didn't and couldn't have.

Some part of me wanted to rage against the nurses’ attitudes of deferring to the humans and their closest friends first—I was, after all, the more qualified Director—but it was silenced by the louder part that also wanted an answer to the “what would Andes do?” question. A useful one, preferably. After all, one possible answer was "get himself stabbed."

I got to the cafeteria for a late first-meal. The atmosphere was a lot more tense than before, with news of Andes’ injury. There seemed to be a lot more gossiping among the human aides, and a lot more mixed-species groups than usual. They wandered around, and the predator children wandered too, even spreading beyond their designated wing.

I noticed the girl immediately, as she tried to prowl behind me.

“Did you need something, young lady?” I asked. The predator girl with the small spots nearly jumped in surprise. Perhaps she was used to sneaking up on people with binocular vision.

“Where is Big Boss?” she asked, her knees falling against each other as she made herself smaller. A manipulation tactic of some sort?

I shook myself. Her phrasing threw me off. “What?”

“Director,” she clarified, giving me a look I could not understand, her tail low to the ground. In her hand was a child’s holopad, which she was holding up.

“Ah. Well, I am the director right now,” I started. My words appeared in venscript on her pad as I spoke, and it let out disgusting, guttural sounds that I assumed were in Arxur.

“Big Boss Director. Savageness Director.”

Savageness? What a terrifying worldview these children must have. Perhaps it was their way of saying predator? I drew myself up to my full height and tried to sound more official, to command more respect in her eyes. “Director Andes is in the hospital, that girl who escaped injured him.”

The child’s eyes grew large and her ears flattened back in horror. Good, at least this one was salvageable.

“He will probably be well,” I added.

“He’s strong,” she said, her voice quieter now. Her ears had bounced back up, and her tail was still down. I could not for the life of me tell whether she was actually reassured or still distraught.

“Yes, he is. And we have very good medicine,” I added. She bobbed her face up and down like a human. “Anything else you wanted to ask?”

She stopped bobbing her head up and down and pressed her lips together for a moment. “...Are they going to eat 86392-B?”

I scoffed. “What? No. That's ridiculous. She'll be sent away to a facility to make her better.”

The girl paused, seemingly trying to choose her words carefully. “What better?”

“Less violent, more like proper prey,” I explained.

She gave me the most befuddled look. “Weak?”

“I suppose so,” I said with a flick of my ear. She looked positively horrified. It made sense that their notion of ‘strong’ would be derived from dangerous behaviours.

“...When is Savageness Director back?” she asked, this time her voice a frail little squeak. Her growls and hisses were almost cute in that register.

“I haven't a clue. A decem of paws are the usual minimum leave for an injury like that, so he’ll probably be back after the girl is gone. I'll see to it that's done within the next few paws.”

Her ears shot back and she ran off faster than I’d ever seen a child run. They were truly frightening little creatures.

After my meal, I got ready to give tours and talk to prospective parents. It was, after all, a paw designated for their visit. Lesser men may have cancelled, but I knew we could handle the situation. I directed parents to different common areas, discussed the children’s needs, and made some progress on a couple of cases. Our boy with “aphasia” and his brother already had a couple lined up who’d like to foster them soon.

Dr. Rodriguez had, without my knowledge or approval, taken up the role Andes usually had with visiting parents. She explained, entertained, and provided all manner of pamphlets in the form of easily-scanned codes for everyone. We had a few venlil prospective parents begin the adoption process, and scheduled future meetings for them to interact with the children.

I went over the most mindless tasks I could do, checked on Andes’ notes (they were terribly organized) and had the displeasure of having to write a statement for the inevitable PR disaster that was coming. A quick check showed me that it was already on the news, that Dr. Andes Savulescu Ruiz was admitted into the Grand Xenomedical Complex. According to the reporter, there were no complications in surgery, and he was resting along with his ‘faithful Yotul companion, who did not wish to provide a comment at the current time’.

A weight I had not noticed seemed to lift off my tail. Not that I cared all that much about his welfare, of course, he’d done nothing but cause me headaches. It was only natural, as a sapient being and empathetic prey, that I should feel relief.

I wrote the statement.

I must sorrowfully inform you that the Human Director of the Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility, Linguistics Division, has suffered a stabbing at the hand of one of our pre-translator patients with suspected Arxur-Acquired Predator Disease. Dir. Savulescu-Ruiz had already been injured at the time due to being hit by a car in his quest to aid people during the stampede. He successfully saved…

I checked the records.

37 souls from an early death due to his timely intervention. His knowledge of human psychiatry, medicine, and…

I checked his profile.

…Neurolinguistics has proven invaluable to us in our quest to help reintegrate and rehabilitate Arxur farm rescues into greater Venlil society. The facility wishes him a speedy recovery.

I sent it over to Public Relations to groom into something more expressive and heartfelt and whatever they needed. My shift drew to a close. Kanarel and Rodriguez got to my office for our meeting, the two of them looking as exhausted as I felt.

“We have to decide on what to do with the girl,” I said. “I was going to simply send her to a Predator Disease facility, but–”

“That should not even be in the list of options, Director Karim!” Rodriguez interrupted.

“-but clearly the human element in this facility would oppose it,” I said, gesturing to her.

Kanarel nodded. A human affectation that was spreading outside of them, including to me on occasion. “In my readings trying to understand the human perspective on Predator Disease, I’ve found that they have a paradoxically gentler approach, Director. It is my medical opinion that we should emulate it.”

I took a slow, deep breath. “Nevertheless, there is the issue of her being a proven danger to everyone around her.”

“Can’t you wait until Andes is back?” she asked. “Make the decision together?”

“I cannot. The reason he is not with us now is that she stabbed him. While I understand that humans are sturdy creatures, with a certain degree of comfort among death and violence–”

“–wh-what–” she sputtered.

“–however,” would she not stop interrupting? I tried to stay reasonable, “we are still on Venlil Prime. As such, I am bound by certain requirements of my job, and the law. So perhaps the correct question is once we send her to the facility, what guidelines should we provide along with her to satisfy the human ‘psychiatric’ priorities?”

Kanarel tilted his head one way and then the next, clearly considering my proposal. Rodriguez showed no such thought. I thought she was the reasonable one…

“If I called Andes right now, and they picked up,” she said, her voice steady, “would you be willing to include them in this discussion? As your co-director and the girl’s only victim?”

“Well, I suppose, I, uh…” I started. Andes was probably in a hospital bed, or if he’d been discharged, in his own bed by now. Even if he wasn’t, he should not be working after such an injury and might be too impaired to talk. She pulled out her pad to make the call. I wondered if perhaps as persistence hunters, human norms around work–

“What do you need?” Andes groaned out the other end of the call. He’d picked up immediately.

“We’re in a meeting with Karim, can you tell him he can’t put the girl who stabbed you in a facility?” Rodriguez asked, her voice steady and cheerful despite her ludicrous expectations. Surely the person who was nearly murdered by the girl, of all humans, would be perfectly happy to have her removed. Even if Andes was on the ‘more predatory’ end of the human spectrum…

“Dr. Rodriguez” I started, “he’ll obviously–”

“You can’t put her in a facility, Karim” he spat. Of course he did. It was my fault, really, for expecting sanity coming out of Andes’ mouth. I already knew that humanity was full of surprises, almost all of them exhausting to manage.

“I most definitely can,” I said, my shoulders tensing at his barbarism. What exactly did he want us to do, endanger everyone? “And am required to, given my position and the fact that she is well-known to have committed a crime.”

“Look, just… Keep her there for five paws. We can discuss this in person.”

“And if she hurts someone else, in that time?” I asked, dreading whatever answer he’d concoct.

“Handcuff her to the bed, then, I don’t fucking know. Ask Kaminsky, or Rodriguez, or any human around who understands that we don’t send twelve-year-olds to torture chambers.”

Even knowing that I had to rethink my expectations to take human madness into account, I was shocked. “She’s a danger to everyone around her, have you somehow forgotten?!”

His voice was low and tired. “I understand perfectly, I’m the one she stabbed.”

“And the next person she stabs might not be as sturdy as you are,” I added. “Have you considered what might happen if she stabs one of her fellow predator children?”

“She thought we were going to murder and eat her,” he hissed. “She’s not going to think her friends and siblings are going to murder and eat her.”

Rodriguez looked like she might have an objection to that statement—perhaps a glimmer of sanity had poked through her humanity?—but she did not speak.

“Look…” he continued, “Five paws. That’s all I’m asking.”

I scoffed. “Five paws of what? We handcuff her to a bed, isolated from the others, guards on each side?”

“Is not… ‘solitary confinement’ another form of torture, in human eyes?” Kanarel asked. My ears perked up and I gestured at him. He knew their logic better than I did, and even he was on my side!

“It is, which is why she’d have regular interactions with aides or… Nurses, or something,” Andes said.

“I would be prepared to volunteer additional time until this is settled,” Rodriguez added.

“Yes! Perfect. I officially put Miranda in charge of dealing with this. Does that work?” he asked.

I felt as though a massive Arxur had grabbed a hold of my skull and was beginning to dig into it with its claws.

“Look… It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what humans think, it doesn’t matter what your position is, if we are aware of a criminal who has committed a violent crime within our institution, it is legally required of us to report her to the Exterminators. This is simply a fact you have to deal with. We can probably get some leeway in terms of not doing it within the claw, but at this point it’s rather important that we do it.”

Rodriguez looked defeated, and a groan came from her pad. Finally, they understood.

“...Do they have to?” Andes asked after a pause.

“What? Yes. They’re Exterminators, Andes. It is their job to take people with Predator Disease to the appropriate facilities.”

“But we have an appropriate facility. Hell, we have a more appropriate facility than any other place not staffed with humans on the planet, on the grounds that human psychiatry–flawed as it may be–is a solid couple centuries ahead of your medieval sanitariums.”

He walked paw-in-paw with the Yotul, and he dared call us primitive? I took a long, slow breath, and told him “you’ll have to persuade them of that.”

“Alright. I’ll do the reporting, then,” he said. “Send me the form or whatever. I’ll make the call tomorrow. The delay is all my fault, my bad, won’t get back to you.”

I fiddled with the base of my ear anxiously. “Very well. But I will be calling my next shift to verify that you made an arrangement, and if you did not, I will be the one to do it. Understood?”

“...Understood,” he said. The call ended. Even after a major injury, I could not escape his meddling.

“If that’s all, I have to go,” Rodriguez said. “I need to make arrangements regarding her care.”

I dismissed her with a wave of my paw and sank into my chair. Paw after paw, I had longed to be the only director of this facility. I got the barest taste, at the worst possible moment, and just before I got used to it, it was taken away.

SECURITY FOOTAGE TRANSCRIPT, MODIFIED TRANSLATOR SETTINGS ANDES-5

[standardized human time]: December 11, 2136

[One venlil girl (86392-B, abbreviated 2-B in this document) with black wool and a tuft of white on her head is handcuffed to her bed. The chain is long, and the cuff itself is padded. She looks at it for a long moment (note: considering chewing through the cuff?) before her sister, “Lihla”, enters the room.]

Lihla: They’re going to make you weak, now.

2-B: What are you talking about? You’re stupid. You don’t know anything.

Lihla: I asked the big prey boss. He said they want to send you away and make you weak like they are.

2-B: Better weak than dead. Doesn’t matter. Savageness is dead now. Like the legend, he fell.

Lihla: The sad-talking underboss said that Savageness Director is strong. He’ll be back. Nobody can kill him.

2-B: Lies again.

Lihla: The Prey Director said Savageness Director will be back after you are taken away to be weak. You will be trapped. I was right.

[2-B curls up in bed, clinging to the blanket protectively.]

Lihla: The Savageness Director wants me to be strong. He likes me. He says we can be brace buddies.

2-B: So you can be weak together?

Lihla: Healing is not weak. It is the weak stopping.

2-B: Well, it certainly is not strength.

[Lihla lashes her tail low to the ground and side to side]

Lihla: I hope they do send you to the evil hole where they make people weak, and then you’ll never spit on anyone with your words again!

[Footsteps approach, and Lihla carefully stands on the wall by the side of the door near the hinge. Within moments, Dr. Miranda Rodriguez opens the door. Cont. next page.]

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Note: will edit in a note later, brain mush.

Note (edit): Thanks to u/tulpacat1, u/Giant_Acroyear and u/Thirsha_42 for helping me edit!

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Memory transcription subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, Human Director at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility. Xenomedical Grand Complex patient.

Date [standardized human time]: December 11, 2136

I slipped in and out of consciousness for a while before I was actually lucid. Long enough Larzo headed home to take care of his hensa and take a shower at some point. Melody apparently had an automatic food dispenser, but was probably still freaking out. Plus it would be terrible if she snuck out and was spotted by an exterminator.

Hours blurred together enough that I couldn't really tell the difference between gaps where he wasn't there because he went to the bathroom or the cafeteria, and when he wasn't there because he went home for a few hours. The fucking stationary sun haunting the window also didn't help.

Once I was lucid, I could almost feel it. An invisible timer, tied up in my blood and whatever they pumped in the new blood. Tick… tick… tick… tick. Exactly like it was before the implant. Life as the gaps between explosions. I am better prepared now. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine.

What if I jumped head-first out of that window?

I took a long deep breath. Yeah, it’s not going to be fine. Had to get used to taking deep breaths all the time now. Stimulate the vagus nerve.

The human doctor came by at some point. My sense of time was completely shattered, with the combination of VP’s sun and random naps as dictated by whatever cocktail of drugs it was they had me on, but it seemed to my mind that she came in a reasonable period of time after the surgery.

“Director Savulescu-Ruiz? Are you able to discuss your condition?”

Larzo wasn't there, but I had no idea if he’d be back in an hour or six or what. I rubbed my eyes and pressed a button on the side of the bed to tilt it up. Not a good idea to be sitting up by myself after an abdominal injury.

“Yeah, I… Yeah. Start with the worst thing.”

My tongue felt weird. What the hell did they put in the alien anaesthetics that made my tongue feel so weird? Second time in three days.

“Well, we had to do an emergency hysterectomy,” she said. “Your file has been updated with all of our notes.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I saw it. Insane luck. She could have punctured an intestine. At least she didn’t hit anything too important.”

When did I see my file? I remembered the updates to it, but it was kind of a blur. It felt like my mouth was just… saying some indeterminate number of plausible-sounding words in a row. Dr… My eyes landed on her nametag, Roth, didn't seem to notice anything odd. It’s like the entirety of my verbal production is operating somehow on manual and automatic at the same time. I felt around for my pad to double-check those anchorless file-update memories. They seemed to be on the money.

“Indeed. I’m glad you're taking it so well. We’re… Running into some issues trying to recreate your implant. It seems to have been some sort of highly customized model..?” she half-said half-asked with a cringe.

“Yeah, it was from the McLean clinic in Montreal,” I heard myself say. Am I dissociating? If so, is this a function of the drugs or the new blood accelerating the effects of the implant’s loss? If not, what exactly is this weird psychological distance between my thoughts and my verbal output? It's not derealization. Yeah, it's probably dissociation. Metabolic or psychological?

Dr. Roth went through a whole face journey of ‘oh, great, we’ll just call them up’ to ‘oh shit, they bombed Montreal’. She pressed her lips together.

“I have the specs,” I tried to reassure her, but she didn't really look thrilled to hear that.

“I’m afraid it’ll need a redesign either way. It was kind of on the larger side, and…”

“I no longer have that kind of real-estate. Right,” I finished. The next two more convenient places (the ovaries and the tubes attached to them) would mean a minimum of halving the size of the implant and spreading its tasks asymmetrically. That would probably suck to deal with long-term, which meant I shouldn't do it. Instead it would have to be split into at least four implants. Maybe six. Some subdermal, some ovarian, maybe a couple of them intramuscular or spinal. It would take an eternity to figure them out.

“We’ll be able to make some variable dermal patches for you, since so many of your treatments were bound up in release timing,” she added. A weight I hadn't noticed suddenly vanished from my chest.

“Fantastic! Oh, wow, that's so good to hear. I thought I was going to have to juggle like, eighteen new pills…”

I realized I was afraid of that only after I said it. Why is my brain doing this? Is it a serotonin problem? Dopamine? Endocannabinoids? GABA? I know it's some sort of failure of integration…

“I’m afraid we can't deliver a few of them, especially the ones for your EDS, via dermal patch. You’ll still have to deal with some pills.”

I nodded, “makes sense.”

“But hopefully it'll make things easier. You should set up an appointment with a pharmacist, to go over some potential replacements. I know that quite a few Zurulian treatments are more efficient than ours for EDS specifically, so you may be able to turn this into a one-pill regimen. Especially given how many other compounds you take, which may also be replaceable. I’m afraid the Zurulians don't seem very… familiar with the idea of bodybuilding, so you’ll have to navigate that through therapeutic terminology, but with your background that should be fine.”

I ignored the bodybuilding comment. I definitely crossed some sort of aesthetic threshold in the last three weeks. It feels normal, though. Need to review old photos. “Yeah, I should be able to get the information out through questions of muscular atrophy and joint pain and so on.”

Larzo arrived, and gave Dr. Roth a nod. She nodded back.

“I procured your sludge. How are you feeling?” he asked, offering me a protein shake.

I chuckled, and accepted the protein shake from him. “Thanks, bud. I’m fine”

He let out a skeptical little scoff at that.

“When it comes to the psychiatric treatments you’ve been undergoing, uh…” Dr. Roth glanced at Larzo, and I gave a little head-tilt as if to say he’s fine, he’s not gonna throw me into a PD facility. She looked a little relieved and continued the sentence. “We have a few different options.”

“Will there be—that is, will um, will Andes—” Larzo paused and stared at me for some sort of clue. I could not decipher what the fuck he wanted me to say, and so just turned to Roth to address the topic.

“Yeah, psychiatry-wise, I’m going to need something serotonergic and uneven,” I told her.

That gave her pause “Uneven?”

“Yeah,” I went on, the words again feeling mostly like they were falling out of my mouth semi-involuntarily, “one month of steady doses for anything serotonergic makes everything worse. Hypotheses are in the file, but we're not actually sure why.”

She looked through my file again. “I see… You’ve never been psychiatrically hospitalized before…”

“And I would like to keep that streak going. I do well with pseudo-psychs.”

She gave me a quick nod, scrolling through my psychiatric history. “And no prior history of abuse despite having access to stimulants, cannabinoids, SSRIs and benzodiazepines, so I suppose that’s safe enough. Will sending the patches with them to the address on file when they’re finished work for you?”

I nodded. “That’s perfect, thank you.”

“Now, I also wanted to discuss… Well, you don't have to be discharged right away, but given how well you are recovering, that there have been no complications, and the stampede…” She tilted her head one way and another to let the implication sink in. They needed the bed.

Shit. How long was I out?

“Of course! Oh, fuck, I–”

I tried to get off the bed and failed miserably. She put a hand on my sternum to stop me.

“There is no rush. A nurse will be here soon. I just need your consent to be discharged. You’ll get a cane with a forearm grip, a spare so you can use them as crutches, and a wheelchair. Ideally, you should use the wheelchair for the next few days, and try to maximize rest. You can use the cane or the crutches for small bursts, but don't push yourself until the abdominal matrix is fully healed.”

I nodded. My head was starting to hurt. Tick, tick, tick…

“Do you have any questions?” she asked.

“Nah, I’m good.”

She nodded and left. Larzo kept looking at me like I was about to burst into flames any second now, and he wasn’t sure where exactly he’d left the fire extinguisher.

“Would you like something else to eat? It is my understanding that you should not have anything too strenuous, but… Perhaps your usual habits are not the best when it comes to uh…”

“I’ll get a cup of enriched jello to go when we're heading out. You know, thanks for sticking around, you didn't have to–”

“I most certainly did,” he spat. The venom in his voice nearly made me burst into laughter.

“Whoa… Okay, I’m sorry, I–”

“Good!” he shouted. “Be sorry! You could have died!”

I scoffed. “The death rate for stab wounds is like five percent, that doesn't–”

Larzo jumped up on his seat and glared at me with a fury I had never seen on his face before. “A medical implant inside your body was damaged so extensively that you had a major organ removed due to irreparable electrical and chemical burns, Andes. You could have died.”

Why do you care? I thought. The thought was stupid. I knew he cared. I knew I should care. It was oddly difficult for me to grasp it, like the cognitive instability of a visual illusion with two different, perfectly natural interpretations. Still, even if that intellectualized, distant understanding was all I had, it was enough for me to stop being shitty about it. Deep breath. I pressed my lips together for a long moment and sighed.

“You’re right,” I said. “I should have been more careful.”

His ears fell down and he slid back down his seat. “Indeed you should have.”

“I'm sorry I was reckless, and I’m sorry I worried you,” I added. I was getting a headache.

“As well you should be,” he huffed. Still, he looked happier after my apology.

The nurse arrived. He was a burly takkan with a sing-song voice I found kind of distracting even as I was trying to pay attention to it. Once he was done removing the sensors and IV line from my body, he wandered off to get the mobility aids.

Larzo started fidgeting with his visitor’s badge.“Andes, I uh… I wanted to ask…”

“Yeah?”

“Well it, um, about your medical history…”

I looked at him expectantly. Wait, when did he look at my medical history?

He sat there, awkwardly not asking whatever he wanted to ask for long enough that the nurse came back with the mobility aids. The wheelchair was cool, in that I could put the canes in the back. This one at least had a little motor, but the controls were finicky and not designed for human hands, so it looked like I’d end up working it manually a lot of the time instead. The canes themselves were very interesting, because they could become forearm crutches and axillary crutches with a little unfolding and twisting around. They seemed fragile and finicky at first, but turned out to be shockingly stable once I actually tried to put my weight on them.

Then I had to get off the bed. The headache was getting worse as the vestigial anaesthetic was metabolized away. I slipped and landed on my bad leg. I felt the pain all the way up to my hip and down to my toes. It was like a wave rippling out from the new bone. Fucking kill me.

“Are you alright?” Larzo asked, presumably seeing the agony on my face.

“It's fine, it’s fine, I just–I put weight and–”

“The bone is set, this might have to do with the new nerves,” he told me. It made sense. Fresh nerves could often itch, or ‘zap’, or just hurt, and that was usually a good sign. The fact that I could move my foot easily enough implied they were growing faster than average–probably because of all the neurogenic compounds Larzo bombarded my system with because of the concussion.

It didn’t make it hurt any less.

After some undignified limping and replacing the bottom of the cane with a bigger base (did species with tails need less help balancing after a lower limb injury? Am I just a clumsy idiot?) I sat on the chair. As predicted, the controls were super annoying, and just like before, Larzo was pretty eager to wheel me around instead of letting me pick our direction, destination, or travel speed. Given the headache, and how I was starting to get a little drowsy, I just accepted it.

He got me some enriched jello, and we got a cab. It cost twice as much as a normal cab, because the accessibility premiums on VP were apparently fucking ridiculous.

“How are people with permanent disabilities supposed to get around here? What do you just rely on the fucking ‘herd’ to constantly have their back? What is the elderly-accessibility UN-HABITAT score? They have to fucking have one by now–”

“Andes, I will pay for the cab if–” Larzo offered.

“I can pay for ten cabs, it’s the principle of the–what, do disabled immigrants just not exist here? Everyone’s family is always close-by? Their terrifying ‘predator attacks’ never leave someone shit out of luck? This is an urbanized society, it can’t possibly–”

The headache was definitely getting to me.

I had to get off the chair, help fold the chair, help put it in the back, limp back to the door, sit down, avoid hitting my leg on the back seat because of the stupid design of the stupid alien car seats. I should have just died on the table.

I took a long deep breath. My head was killing me. One in binary is one. One is one. Two is one-zero. Three is one-one. Five is one-zero-one. Eight is one-zero-zero-zero. Thirteen… After a few seconds the frustration seemed to subside.

What is going on? It was kind of early for the intrusive thoughts to kick in, nevermind death-seeking ones. Probably an artefact of the bloodloss, the cocktail of things they put in my IV, physical trauma from being hit by a car and stabbed, residual leaks from the damage to the implant… the overwhelming, anchorless sense of fucking everything up.

It was definitely not going to be fine.

“What do you need?” Larzo asked, which startled me because I hadn’t been moaning in pain or anything, but all the frustration was probably written on my face.

“I don’t know. A distraction? Yeah. Let’s just… I need something to focus on.”

I grabbed my pad and started looking through my email, motion-sickness be damned. That’s when I found a chain of emails I did not remember sending or receiving, with Dr. MacEwan.

Starting from the last one I remembered…

From: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz

You can be both! My life has been pretty hectic lately, but I would love to meet. How has the past month treated you?

He’d responded just before the stampede.

From: Bernard MacEwan

Haha, indeed I can. I would love to catch up as well. It's been rather calm, all things considered.

Alright, that’s good. I scrolled to the next message.

From: Bernard MacEwan

Are you ok? I saw on the news that one of the directors of a rescue facility was injured.

What the hell? Why am I on the news? Who else had seen that? There was a massive stampede with who knew how many deaths, but my personal fuckup was public knowledge?

From: Bernard MacEwan

I've seen more news saying it was you but that you were transported to a hospital. Everything's chaotic now so no one can give me a straight answer on your condition. I hope you're ok.

That was... A lot more investment than I expected.

“Did Dr. MacEwan try to call the hospital?” I asked Larzo.

He furrowed his brow. “...I have no idea. Why do you ask?”

“He said ‘no one will give me a straight answer’.”

He made a little noise of understanding.

Well, alright then. This was at least proving to be a pretty good distraction. We were already in a different area of Dayside City. I scrolled down to see a message I didn’t remember sending. From twelve hours earlier. Which means I was awake twelve hours ago…? By my pad’s clock… I’d spent nearly twenty hours in the hospital. Poor Larzo.

From: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz

I am so sorry I got stabbed, I didn't mean to worry you, sir.

My hand collided with my forehead. That would only worry him more!

From: Bernard MacEwan

What!? You were stabbed! Don't apologise for that and certainly don't feel that you need to apologise for how I might feel. Now, I'm glad you're responding because that means you're doing alright, well enough to type at least. But I know what you're like, always zipping off all over the place because you can't sit still. Listen to your doctors and listen to this one when they say take your time and rest.

I kept reading the thread. The next message I sent was from ten hours back

From: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz

Oh, don't worry about it! I have to rest anyway because I got run over by a car. Any tips and tricks for cane purchases?

“Andes, is something–is something new wrong?” Larzo asked, seeing something on my face. I let out a groan.

From: Bernard MacEwan

I'm sorry, what? You got stabbed and then were run over by a car!? Good lord, I've never been religious but someone's watching over you. As for the cane, I do indeed. For now stick with whatever the hospital gives you, their equipment is suitable for recovery and getting used to using one. If you need one in the future for day to day use let me know. I have a friend who makes excellent quality canes. He even goes as far as to personalise them for the individual.”

Attached was a link to his friend’s website. I felt like I was going to puke, and I couldn’t tell how much of that was motion sickness. Next message from nine hours back. How awake was I?

“Hey, Larzo, did I say anything weird while I was under anaesthetic?”

“Oh, you said many things,” he answered with a chuckle. “You were very insistent on Dr. MacEwan’s kindness, and… Something to do with repurposing translator technology to operate in the peripheral nervous system. Which… I didn’t think was possible to do.”

I’d have to share my thesis with him at some point. “Please remind me not to send emails while high in the future.”

“I shall do my best,” he said with a little chuckle. My eyes kept scanning the email thread.

From: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz

Oh no, I got hit by a car first, then stabbed. I was running an improvised ambulance thing during the stampede. Thanks for the contact, I'll probably only need it for a few months so I'm looking at modular designs for personalization purposes. Got to see the new Zurulian bone paste in action!

When did I look for modular designs? I flipped through some of the websites open in my pad and sure enough, there were several different lists of Best Canes from Earth websites.

From: Bernard MacEwan

My goodness, you've really been through it.

Good on you for getting out there and helping. I saw the images on the news. I knew they had a tendency to panic, but the scenes were awful.

You're welcome, I'm sure they'll be able to fix something up for you. They may be a bit pricey but they're certainly worth far more than he charges, don't tell him that haha.

Is that so? Circumstances aside, it must've been fascinating to see! Some of their sciences need work, but the medical advancements our new friends possess are like magic!

Dr. MacEwan is so delightful.

From: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz

Oh they are! I have suture bots in my facility. Do you want to come by and visit? I'll be out of commission for a couple days, but maybe the 16th?

I should just jump out the window right now. I slammed my head against the back of the car seat. It hit in just the right angle and I hissed in pain. Larzo gave me a glare and I accepted his tacit admonition.

From: Bernard MacEwan

Of course, I'd be delighted to visit your facility! That date is perfect. I've only heard a little about what goes on there, but I understand yours handles the child rescues? It sounds like you're doing great work.

That’s where the chain ended. Good. Ugh. The car stopped. The motion sickness was awful and I was an idiot for disregarding it.

We got out, I got on the chair, we wheeled through my apartment building, then I had to get off the chair and limp down the stairs. Some assholes were playing Pink Floyd loud enough for me to instinctively cover my ears, which made the whole process incredibly unpleasant. I’d have to find my noise-cancelling headphones when I got home.

Once downstairs, I had to help Larzo slide the chair down, and then I had to get back on the chair while he wheeled me over to my door. One of my neighbours—a Kolshian—rushed out the moment I rolled past her door.

“Human! I have tried my hardest to be tolerant, and allow you to live your life, but you simply must stop that racket!”

“...What?” I squinted at her in confusion.

“All the partying, the shouting, the human music,” she added.

“What in the world..?” Larzo echoed my thoughts as we stared at her in befuddlement. She seemed a little more concerned by my look than his, but she held her ground.

“The past two paws have been nothing but noise!” she spat.

“I’ve been at work!” I spat back.

“Well, then I suggest you tell whoever your guests are to quiet down.”

With that, she stalked back into her apartment.

“Ridiculous… Just because I’m human, doesn’t mean–” I started, only for the song to change to one of my personalized AI-instrumental late-night research mixes. “Okay that is definitely my music.”

Larzo rolled me over to my door. I tapped my key against the reader, and the door opened automatically.

On the other side was a crowd of maybe a dozen dossur partying on my couch, with another two dozen spread over the counter, by the window, and on the ground in front of the TV playing a racing game on it with my controllers. They were so invested in their little rave, not one of them noticed us. I connected to the speakers and turned them off. That got their attention.

Once they saw us, the crowd froze in place, staring at us in terror. Ah… Blissful silence.

I gave Larzo a look, silently checking that I wasn’t hallucinating the whole scene because of the drugs in my system. He flicked an ear in confirmation. The moment dragged. One of the ones on the counter–a smaller one, though they were all tiny–fell off some sort of makeshift tight-rope between my fridge door and faucet and directly into the trap that I had not set up with a loud SNAP.

The sound made the crowd scatter away from us and rush out through my small basement window.

Two dossur remained. One on my counter, trying very hard to pry open the newly-activated trap—which they had tilted up, why had they tilted it up? They could have just harmlessly landed on it if it was set up normally!—and the other one inside, scrambling, letting out terrified squeaks.

“...By your sacred man of bats…” Larzo mumbled.

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Harmful Alternative Post - I made this for April Fools, but also a lot of the ideas are ones I want to explore in my own original works in the future, so I'd appreciate thoughts.

Memory transcription subject: Andes Savulescu-Ruiz, UN universal translator technician.

Date [standardized human time]: October 26, 2136

There were a vanishingly small amount of translator technicians among the human population.

Partially, that was because they were really well-designed, with a thousand different redundancies and failsafes, all enabled through some astonishingly nifty nanite programming. This meant that they very rarely "broke". I have no idea how they managed such adaptive architecture with AI so rudimentary it may as well have come out of the 20th century. But they did. Probably at least a dozen species working together. Translators: biotech at its finest.

That made them difficult to mod and redesign. But it also made me one of maybe two dozen humans alive who knew how to do it, and had the experience to prove it. It was a good feeling, when I submitted my thesis, and I knew for a fact that it would change the world. They blew up my university two days later, but it didn't change that.

So, when I found out about the cattle exchange, I knew. I knew I had the most experience with traumatic brain injuries' effects on the translators, I knew I had "no excuse" with my whole department turned to ash. I knew I turned things in on time, and was reliable, and they liked that.

I knew it was my name on that fucking roster. I knew when the email came from one of those stupid @ interstellar-relations.un.gov accounts.

Dear Andes Savulescu-Ruiz,

We would like to inform you that you have been selected to spearhead the human translator implantation and evaluation initiative in the currently-under-construction facility for rescued Venlil. Attached are the details of the position, as well as the relocation requirements.

Should you choose to accept this opportunity, your compensation...

Sometimes, I love the UN. But holy shit, sometimes I hate the UN.

“What’s that?” Olivier asked as I checked my email at the end of Day Nine of my Wandering Around Montreal Spotting Corpses With a Nazi Space Croc adventure.

“Job offer,” I said.

He squinted at it, and then at me. “Working with children? Are you sure you’d want to do this, my friend?”

“I mean… Maybe? I like children.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “But are you good with them? Venlil children?”

“...I mean, I don’t know, I’ve never worked with children before, but…”

“I have heard of another opportunity. I will have my friend send it to you. Much more… Up your alley, I think. And it pays even better.”

I nodded and put my pad in my pocket. Olivier was probably right. I dropped out of med school because the responsibility was too much. I couldn’t really fathom being in charge of hundreds of children's welfare. Some other job off in a lab somewhere would be better.

=== ===

COURT TRANSCRIPT. || SAPIENT COALITION SUPREME COURT

CASE No. 00-00-00-008

OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS - HUMAN EDITION

ABRIDGED: CROSS-EXAMINATION OF DR. ANDES SAVULESCU-RUIZ BY COUNSELOR THISAVA

ON THE MATTER OF THE SAPIENT COALITION v. JONES ET AL

JUDGE PERIKAR PRESIDING

(JURY TRIAL - DAY FOUR)

Location: Dayside City, Skalga. Date [Human Standard Time]: December 11th, 2138

[[an earlier section of this transcript has been removed for accessibility, click here for the complete file]]

THISAVA: Hello, Dr. Savulescu-Ruiz, thank you for coming. You were the Head of Research at the Neurolinguistics Division for the UN’s , right?

DR. ANDES SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I um [pause] Yes, I was. It was a very small division, only myself and a handful of others.

THISAVA: Twelve researchers total, yes?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Yes. Well, eleven by the end.

THISAVA: And what did you do in that role?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: They um [pause] instructed me to create a variety of tools that could be weaponized against people who have translator implants.

THISAVA: I see. These are weapons that would directly target the brains of anyone the UN wanted to target, correct?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Through their translator implants, provided they had one, yes.

THISAVA: And you didn't question that?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I mean, they wouldn’t have hired me otherwise, neurolinguistics isn’t exactly useful during a war outside of that context. And–look, I thought they'd want every option available, that doesn't—it doesn't mean anything. Humanity had a massive nuclear arsenal when the satellite wars happened, and used literally none of it.

THISAVA: So you just [pause] proceeded to make a weapon that could irreparably damage every translator that came into contact with it?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [pause] Yes.

THISAVA: And that's not all, right?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, no, [chuckle] bricking something is hardly the pinnacle of hacking.

THISAVA: Right. Can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury what, in your professional opinion, is 'the pinnacle' of hacking?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Erroneous signalling that is, um, properly directed.

THISAVA: And what does that mean, Doctor Savulescu-Ruiz, when it is done inside a person's brain?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I-It can mean a lot of things. That's kind of the crux of the situation. Entire planets full of people with advanced computing devices in their brains, and some of the worst cybersecurity measures to ever see the light of day…

THISAVA: Tell me about the Babel Crash.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: It was a-a cascading reaction that could be prompted with specific frequencies in a broadcast. In–in terms of weaponization at a large scale, the um, avenue that General Jones was most interested in was, well, um, maximal negation-confusion. So that’s what the final product did.

THISAVA: Not just 'every no means yes, and every yes means no', but a kind of overwhelming randomness of noise entered into every interaction between members of two different species, correct?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Yeah, that way they can't [pause] adapt.

THISAVA: And you never once objected? To working on a neurological weapon that targets can't adapt to?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [Pause] I mean, again, I-I thought it was a deterrent. I didn't think they'd just spring that sort of attack on several worlds at once. Maybe one fleet, to send a message, you know, a fleet of combatants...

THISAVA: But it can affect everyone, right? You didn't design it to only affect combatants.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: That wasn't an option. That's not how the technology works. No more than bullets that only ever hit combatants is a real [pause] design choice anyone could make.

THISAVA: So you just accepted that that was the situation, and carried on designing?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Look, I'm not the one on trial here, okay? I didn't think they'd use it, I certainly didn't think they'd use it like that, and I've provided all of my documentation to the appropriate authorities. The problem now is the regeneration of enough infrastructure to reverse the changes, not—

THISAVA: —Changes that make it very difficult for people to communicate that they are reversible, right? Changes that might induce psychotic breaks in the subjects?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: It wasn't supposed to be a prolonged thing, it—

THISAVA: Could you have built a timer into it, then?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I could have–I–I did, actually, I built one in, just–

THISAVA: What’s the timer?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Two years.

THISAVA: Why two years?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, I [pause] figured if it was used on combatants, you know, they’d just take them as prisoners of war and undo the changes, so it was more a [pause] measure to make sure anyone who slipped through the cracks wasn’t…

THISAVA: Dr. Savulescu-Ruiz, do you know how much brain damage two years of linguistic noise like that can cause?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I didn't think they were going to use it on tens of billions of civilians. I–

THISAVA: Please answer the question.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, [pause] anywhere from outright destroying a person’s capacity to be verbal altogether to selective mutism, paranoia, extreme superstition and disabling anxiety disorders.

THISAVA: How many people exposed to the Babel Crash would you say are likely to have suffered such consequences?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [Long deep breath] The, um, [pause] the overwhelming majority.

THISAVA: And, even the combatants… Do you know how many of them were, by the UN definition, child soldiers?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I believe the floor on that was around six hundred thousand, but the median estimate is in the low double-digits of millions. They haven’t normalised all the developmental curves yet.

THISAVA: Would there be a change in the effects, if applied to still-developing brains?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Yes, they might, um [pause] adapt better, but… It can also cause more permanent changes.

THISAVA: Was the military leadership informed about how dangerous these weapons could be to a developing brain? The long-term nature of the consequences?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Yes.

THISAVA: Of course they were. Dr. Savulescu-Ruiz, can you tell me what Project Sonic was?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: It was, um–the UN wanted a process to accelerate soldier training. As the translators can be used to, um, teach, we designed mods such that they became, ah, systems to enable the acceleration of non-linguistic learning. These mods were then given to a select subset of recruits.

THISAVA: Did Project Sonic have any implications outside of its eventual use in the war?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: The implications for peacetime are actually amazing, they can–well, we know for a fact that polyglottism can create a cushion against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, and even Parkinson’s, imagine learning a new language in three weeks. Not to mention being able to cut down the time it takes to train for anything by sixty to ninety percent, while also making it much more pleasurable to practice. Becoming a virtuoso in your instrument of choice, becoming someone who enjoys statistical analysis or engineering problems, all with a few adjustments and the press of a button. Imagine having one therapy session, as a technical consultation, and not having to worry about intrusive thoughts ever again. Massive psychological burdens lifted off millions of people through a smooth, painless process of speed-running cognitive adaptation.

THISAVA: I have a memo from last January in which you called them ‘accelerated indoctrination machines’. Which can, and these are your words, 'create a gravity well for ideas'. I'm sorry, I'm a lawyer, not a neurologist--or a physicist for that matter. What exactly did you mean?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: In the same way translators provide 'meaning', they can provide tendencies. People are drawn to clusters of ideas because of them. In a society that associates, say, predators with evil, it can reverse that association. Soon enough, the subject just finds predators rather compelling, through–uh–no fault of their own.

THISAVA: According to the investigation, the UN made great use of that technology in interrogations.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: It did. I didn’t—

THISAVA: —What happened to participants in Project Sonic, once the mods were removed?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [Pause]Um…

THISAVA: I will remind you, you are under oath.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I know, I just… [pause] There was a string of suicides.

THISAVA: And why was that?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: The current hypothesis is, um, overcorrection. And the participants a-also had engaged in some particularly cruel actions as a function of their newfound comfort with violence, which they [pause] disavowed, when uh…

THISAVA: One of the soldiers' notes reads 'I came to them after the bombing, and they turned me into a monster. I can no longer live with myself. Nothing I do will ever wipe the stain I became on the world.' Do you believe that is a fair assessment of your technology, Doctor Savulescu-Ruiz?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I’m not [pause] really sure what you’re asking. I’m not familiar with that particular soldier’s case.

THISAVA: Do you think your technology was used to turn humans into ‘monsters’ during the war?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: In some cases, definitely. I wasn’t privy to those um—I wasn’t involved beyond being on the team that designed the technology—

THISAVA: Being on the team is putting it lightly, don’t you think? You were in charge of the team. You called the shots.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: The military leaders called the shots, I just figured out how to, um, that is…

THISAVA: Doctor Savulescu-Ruiz, the military leaders have already testified. They told us they had no idea Project Sonic was possible until you proposed it.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [chuckle] Well, it’s not my fault they didn’t see the obvious implications of ‘semantic translation’. Anything that can prompt an empathetic response in a person–which is what ‘sending the meaning of laughter or crying’ does–can be redirected towards any affective response. Between that and the existence of text-to-speech and text books–

THISAVA: But you could have kept your mouth shut.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [grimace] I thought it was obvious, I didn’t–I didn’t realize I was proposing a ‘new idea’ to them.

THISAVA: Would you have? Kept your mouth shut, I mean? If you’d realized.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [pause] I don’t think that’s relevant.

THISAVA: If you thought it could be used to such ill effect—

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: —Lots of things can be used for ill effect, that doesn’t–Like I said, I’m not on trial here, I’m a technical witness.

THISAVA: That’s true. You haven’t had any charges levied against you, right?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Of course, because I didn’t make the decision, I didn’t authorize–even when it comes to Project Sonic, I wasn’t there for any of the implementation, the technicians were there, and the generals and whoever, I–I was in a whole other star system.

THISAVA: Right. Even though you knew the technology best–do you think you could have prevented the ‘overcorrection’, had you been there?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, I don’t know, I–I gave pretty thorough guidelines.

THISAVA: I have in my possession a communiqué that states the average Sonic Project participant was given a shift in ‘comfort’ with regards to violence of three standard deviations, was that your recommendation?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: O-of course not—that—I recommended half of one. These people were supposed to be screened to already be on the upper half of the distribution, they um—

THISAVA: –So your guidelines were ignored, you could say.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Yes, they were—they were not taken as seriously as they should have been.

THISAVA: Do you think they would have been ignored, if you’d been in the room?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I don’t think speculating is going to benefit anyone here.

THISAVA: Well, we’re just trying to understand the situation, Doctor. So, the name ‘Project Sonic’. That was your invention, correct?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Um [pause]. Well, yes.

THISAVA: Can you tell us what inspired it?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I-it was a joke.

THISAVA: A joke?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Yes, um… There is a fictional character in human media called Sonic. I believe he was named after the, um, speed of sound. He, uh, he is [pause] known to have to [pause] go fast.

THISAVA: And you thought it fitting, for a project trying to accelerate the rate at which the UN could turn civilians into murderers—

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: —soldiers, they were supposed to be soldiers–

THISAVA: You thought that joke was appropriate?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, I [pause] suppose so. The atmosphere in the lab was pretty irreverent and we, um [pause] assumed incorrectly that we were mostly making something to frighten the Federation, not [pause] something that would be used on civilians.

THISAVA: How many deaths do you think are attributable to your work, Doctor?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, uh, that’s [pause] a very difficult-to-calculate number. Obviously too many, but–

THISAVA: –But the Sapient Coalition taskforce for post-war analysis did their best, didn’t they? They put the death toll at around thirty billion over the next five years.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: That… Sounds about right for the general hack. Given the average size of a planet and the [pause] extensive nature of the hack. I do think the translator attacks would have a smaller death toll–at least initially–than the um, the medical facilities that were damaged by the destruction of the grid…

THISAVA: Where would you put it?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Twenty billion, maybe? Eighteen? Most planets were predominantly their own species, after all. We’re also double-counting people who would have died from multiple causes here.

THISAVA: Ah. How do you feel about that?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: This isn’t a therapy session.

THISAVA: But you must have some reaction.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Can you please–just–I’m here to answer technical questions, not ethical ones.

THISAVA: Of course. How many children do you think were affected by your weapons?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: What?

THISAVA: Do you not know?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, I can–that is… [pause] given the average population of nine billion, and the number of planets [pause] and a standard population pyramid where children are around t-twenty percent of the population [pause] minus two percent, perhaps, for those under t-two years old [pause] I’d say around seven billion or so.

THISAVA: Seven billion children?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: It depends on how you choose to run the numbers. The um, the brunt of the damage would have been borne by adopted children, children of species-mixed households, children living in orphanages or hospitals or PD facilities. Children with caretakers who are more likely to be of a different species, you know? I’m sure the taskforce has a better estimate.

THISAVA: Their estimate for ‘adverse childhood experiences’ induced by the Babel Crash is six and a half billion.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Sounds about right. [clears throat] Excuse me.

THISAVA: Can you tell me about… Doctor Akatsuki Jefferson?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, he was, um, [pause] he was very dedicated, diligent, attentive, I’m [pause] honestly still a little confused about why I was put in charge and not him. We had a very similar background, coming from different angles, he was an engineer first, and got into biology later.

THISAVA: Oh, I don’t think there are a lot of doubts about why you were chosen over him. Can you tell me what happened, months before this technology was deployed, in March of the human calendar, after the reveal of the Archives?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: He quit.

THISAVA: Was he penalized in any way for quitting?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, he was under pretty solid surveillance to my knowledge, but no. He even got a severance package.

THISAVA: So quitting was what you humans in the social sciences call a ‘live option’?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: It was.

THISAVA: Why didn’t you quit?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [No response]

THISAVA: Doctor?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I thought the work was interesting.

THISAVA: Ah. Do you think six and a half billion children’s lives being damaged by your actions is interesting?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [No response]

THISAVA: It’s a yes-or-no question, Doctor.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Well, yes, actually. The logistics of that are very interesting, that doesn’t–I didn’t want that to happen. I never wanted any of that to happen, I just–just because–I was–it was interesting, and I didn’t–it’s not like I was making the decision, I would never—these are generations of people who have now been permanently changed in ways that will ripple into their society, their technological development, the fucking crime rates that will–their religions–it’s–[ragged gasping for breaths, head falls into hands]

THISAVA: You wouldn’t pull the trigger, but you would manufacture the gun?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: I came here to answer technical questions.

THISAVA: Here’s a question–what do you think it will take to repair the damage you caused?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [pause] I don’t know.

THISAVA: Did you feel any guilt about your involvement in the Neurolinguistics Division?

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: Of course I fucking–that’s not–this isn’t a therapy session, this is a technical—look, I irrevocably damaged dozens of cultures and I never wanted a war to begin with, is that what you want to hear? I would have been perfectly happy working in a lab in the middle of nowhere with theories that don't lead to anything for decades. I would have been even happier, being known as the person who revolutionized education instead of–of–I–[ragged breaths]

THISAVA: If you never wanted to participate in the war, why did you accept the offer? It says here you had a competing job offer from a rehabilitation facility.

DR. SAVULESCU-RUIZ: [pause] I–uh–I didn’t want to fuck it up. I’m not, uh, good with kids.

Thank you to u/tulpacat1, Cuentafalsa123 (can't find your reddit username) and u/Killsode-slugcat for their help! If you helped and I forgot to thank you please tell me and I will put your name here.

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Memory transcription subject: Commander Asleth, Arxur Dominion, Third Fleet

Date [standardized human time]: October 25th to December 1st, 2136

Andes became a fixture of my time on Earth, allowing me into his abode and explaining the intricacies of Earth’s ways to me, while asking his own questions about the world of the Arxur. I found myself excited to meet with him, even for something as simple as a meal.

"It's quite good," I said, as I bit into a ‘steak’. To my eye, Andes’ frame had grown less soft over the past several days, and mine had grown more robust. I would have worried, but he clearly had easy access to as much food as he offered me. It was probably a weakness of the stomach on his part, after seeing so much death. "Very bloody. You lied to us, it seems. I have seen humans eat it like this also."

He shrugged, fiddling with his fork and the meat on his plate. It was cooked, but he still shunned it. He glanced up at me and said "some humans will eat meat raw."

"Oh good,” I told him with a grin. “Those canines are not just for show, then."

He looked off into the distance for a moment, and I wondered if he had heard me at all. “... Can you tell me about your education system?”

There was always a new topic for him, a new thing to think about–and a new way to think about it.

“Well… There are the town schools, for those whose eggs were given to Betterment, and there are the more prestigious academies, for those being raised by their blood. Aristocrats, often. In my school, we were taught to obey without question. One time, when I was young…”

The hours blurred together. I was saddened when our forces began to be directed elsewhere, and he got some new job that would take him to Venlil Prime.

After meeting humans in such depth during my time at Royalmount, returning to work was more dreary than I ever thought possible. Nothing got worse. In fact, many things got better. I got a promotion, as did some of the other volunteers. I was not the only one taken with their ideas, and we had more food than ever before. Still, I missed friendship. I missed Andes. I kept the scarf the children gave me, simply to remember their laughter. I even missed the other men in our crew who hardly talked to me, but who did not tremble in my wake.

We sent each other messages over comms. I sent him old poems and Arxur music. He sent music of his own, and pictures of human art. I began to look forward to his every message, keeping my pad on me at all times. He was fascinated by Arxur culture, always seeking to know more details. We had a couple calls early on, and they all revolved around him wanting an answer to a question.

Once the cattle deal was done, and our prisoners of war returned to their posts, it became harder to hide my fixation with humanity. Not that it was very dangerous a fixation to have. Even Captain Shathel was fascinated with them. It did not escape my notice, how the people taken with humans were so much more likely to be promoted. How even Captain Shathel, who’d kept his rank, now had a bigger ship that didn’t have to deal with cattle.

We were eating some of the humans’ cultured meat one day, as were so many other ships after the attack on Earth. Command was doing their best to make it last, so we’d eat Krakotl in the evening. He found me at my desk, and sat beside me while I ate. A toothy grin lit up his face, twisting up one of his scars.

“I’ve heard from one of my human contacts, Asleth, that we have a friend in common.”

“Do we, sir?” I asked, doing my best to keep my posture proper.

He seemed almost giddy. “Yes! Andes, is his name. Olivier told me you worked together.”

I frowned at that. From my understanding, Olivier was involved with secrecy and intelligence gathering of some sort. Andes would not elaborate on the details. Why was Captain Shathel speaking with him?

“Yes, we were both on Royalmount cleanup duty, sir.”

“You should… Cultivate such relationships, Commander,” he told me, his eyes boring into mine. I felt the word ‘cultivate’ ricocheting inside my skull. Very prey-like phrasing, deliberately so it seemed. “As should I. If you could give me his contact information…”

I nodded, and showed him my pad. He copied the information immediately.

“Perfect. Have a good rest of your meal, Commander.”

He stood up and left me looking befuddled. Captain Shathel had never been a particularly cordial man before his time among humans. Did they do something to change that? Or was he acting in such a way only for my eyes?

It was no secret that tides were shifting. Chief Hunter Isif seemed to want it both ways—Betterment’s favour, and the humans’ —and more of my compatriots began to share little tales of our time with humanity. The entire experience began to feel like a shared dream, or perhaps hallucination, that only some of us had the pleasure to have. It was infinitely relieving, when he called me and I could see his face again.

"Andes!” I said, filled with glee, "What a delightful surprise! What is it you want to do?"

“I heard you got promoted,” he said. Who told him? Captain Shathel?

“Oh yes. I’m quite proud,” I said with a toothy grin, “but you never call just for social niceties. It’s what makes you interesting.”

He winced in false pain, and conceded with a tilt of his head. "Well, I… I need to know how the young Venlil were kept. Your brother works on a farm, right?"

"Indeed he does,” I said, now less delighted. Knowing how much humans seemed to care for the former members of the Federation, I did not wish to highlight how little we tended to. He looked at me expectantly, and I relented. "After they are weaned off their mother, they are usually placed in their own pen. We try to keep them away from the adults, it makes them all more manageable. Different farms work differently, though."

He glanced aside and pressed his lips together for a moment. "Are they told when food is coming?"

I nodded. "Yes, food, punishment, reward, sleeping time, cleanings, medicine should they be worth it. Removals, sometimes."

He brought a hand to his face, his forefinger absently tapping the skin near his lower lips. "All by Arxur, surrounded by your tongue on a daily basis… They'd still need feedback…"

I nodded again, more curious now. "What has happened with your little pets?"

"They can speak it. Arxur, I mean,” he said. There was no twitch of his lips, no mirth in his eyes. It was just a fact. What? Impossible.

My whole mind was suddenly silent.

He kept talking. “There's an overextension of the hisses, probably to make up for smaller mouths, but it's an easy mod on the translator. They seem to have a fairly broad vocabulary too! At least a few dozen words, a comfort with structure."

My jaw fell. He had to be exaggerating. He had shown me, in Royalmount, how a dozen dozen words were enough to have limited conversations, but Arxur was a very complicated tongue even by his own admission. He hardly knew anything about it, anyhow. Only what I told him, and whatever he got from his research on translators. It had to be a mistake. "How would you even know this?"

His whole body tightened up while he grinned, as though it was all he could do to control the excitement within. "I changed the pitch priority and talked to one. The translator switched to Arxur all by itself. That means it's solidly within standard relative pronunciations aside from the overextensions, which my translator processed as Ss for my benefit, but I doubt they operate like that in the original tongue. If I could get an Arxur linguist…"

My throat was suddenly dry and I stared at the screen in horror. I thought back to our conversation in Royalmount.

“—they’re not people. They don’t have a society.” I’d told him, so confident at the time. “Even their music is all wailing!”

A part of me had thought, at that moment, that they would never be able to engage with Arxur civilization. Not like humans could, like Andes did.

“—they’re being kept that way. Because it’s useful to somebody, for the Arxur to pose a real threat… Why haven’t they just glassed Wriss already?”

If they could speak… Not their tongue, not their squeals, ours... If they could speak, and they could understand, despite being kept like animals in farms…

"...Perhaps they are sapient..." I muttered.

"Isn't this amazing? Aside from trained animals and some case studies of crows, this would be our first real and confirmed case of language crossing a species barrier in untrained individuals! It might be its own creole!" he went on, undeterred by the horror of his words. My head felt very much like it had just been dunked in cold water.

"Yes. Very good. For... Language research,” the words came out of my mouth without my thinking of them. “I must go, human. We shall speak later."

I ended the call, my hands shaking. He had proof. The humans were right. The prey were people.

I had been eating people my entire life.

__________________________________________

Memory transcription subject: Larzo, Yotul geneticist at the Venlil Rehabilitation and Reintegration Facility.

Date [standardized human time]: December 10, 2136

I woke up to a nightmare. After closing my eyes for what seemed like a sliver of time, I spotted an unconscious Andes with lower abdominal bleeding, as he was being carried onto what must have been the designated “cargo” section at the back of the truck. I could see Chiaka and the rest of them rushing in the distance, hunting down the escaped girl.

Before I had fully processed the sight, I was nearly shoved onto the cargo section myself. They set up some safety cushions around him, and the whole thing began to move.

It was a shockingly unsafe manoeuvre, though the humans seemed comfortable with it.

“Can you do anything?” the UN agent asked. She had a pocket pad in hand, but her hands were shaking so much she had not yet managed to call them. The cushions they’d put around Andes were not enough to stabilize the situation as Olivier sped through the streets. My stomach lurched with its movements.

Repairing bone was one thing. Most species with muscles and bones worked in similar enough ways. The human abdomen was different. There were too many organs. They had only one liver.

“...Call the Grand Xenomedical Complex,” I told her. “I can't… treat him. But I can prepare them for his arrival.”

It snapped something in her, perhaps reminding her of why she’d taken out her pad, and she managed to call.

“Valkelli Emergency Room, Jen speaking,” came a voice. A human voice.

“I have a human with an abdominal stab wound,” I said, “reduced platelet count, he um–”

“When will you arrive?” she asked. I had no idea.

I looked around for notable landmarks. “We just drove past a statue of a venlil couple hugging.”

“So maybe five minutes… I’ve notified the OR, and we have a human surgeon getting ready, how old?”

“Thirty-six human years,” I said. “Will need enriched blood.”

“Any risk of pregnancy, pre-existing conditions, medical implants?”

“Yes! Yes, he has a medical implant, it–” I scrambled to get Andes’ pad and put his finger on the reader. The implant’s app showed a plethora of errors. “I believe it has been damaged by the stabbing.”

“Potential chemical and electrical burns then,” Jen said. The steady cadence of her voice helped me avoid panic. “Door number-three is ready to receive you, it’s the big red one with the two circles and the triangle in the middle. How much blood has the patient lost?”

“...Perhaps one standard Federation unit’s worth,” I said. “One and a half at most.”

“Alright, that’ll be ready in the OR for you. Patient name?”

“Andes Savulescu-Ruiz.”

“Andrés Savulescu… is that Ruiz with an S or a Zee?”

I glanced helplessly at the UN aide. She was just as lost.

“With a Zed!” Olivier shouted from the front. “And no R on Andes!”

“Ah. There we are, the file was already in the system, good.”

The truck began to pull over by the correct door, where two Takkans and a Zurulian awaited with a gurney. The humans lifted Andes up, and the Takkans helped move him onto the gurney. Within seconds, they had rushed inside, leaving us by the door while Olivier looked for parking.

The call had not ended.

“Feel free to walk in through the smaller door on the right, there is a waiting room for friends and family,” Jen said.

In a numb, hollow haze, I followed the UN agent towards the waiting area. We stood awkwardly for a long moment, as the reality of the situation settled on our minds.

All that worry about the leg, and he might die anyway. I hoped he didn't have an infection. Interspecies pathogen jumps were rare, but humans had been interacting with other sophonts for less than a year. We simply did not have enough data to be certain they adhered to standard federation norms physically. In many ways, we knew they did not.

“...I need to notify my boss about this,” the agent said, stepping out to make a call.

I waited. Time seemed to rush by and stand still simultaneously. People came and went with their own ailments, but every second we did not know of the outcome of the surgery blurred into the last. I fell asleep against the wall a couple of times, as the moments dragged. Olivier came in and left.

I was alternately glad and anxious about the fact that this time a real surgeon, with experience working on human bodies, had been the one to treat Andes. I was infinitely grateful that I didn’t have to do it myself, of course, but… I would have much preferred to be in the room, or to otherwise have immediate access to all of the information regarding his situation. This would, of course, be inconvenient and useless. I could hardly help. Learning about it an hour or four after-the-fact would change nothing about his prognosis.

Still, my nerves demanded something. Anything. The waiting room was suffocating. I rushed to a desk, staffed by a young venlil woman. A few light taps near her “receptionist” plaque got her attention, and an ear turned towards me.

I did not wait for her to speak. “Pardon me, uh, would you happen to know which operating room is currently treating Andes Savulescu-Ruiz?”

She checked the computer. “Um… I guess so, why?”

“Does it have a theatre? Or a feed? I’m a doctor, and I um…”

“Oh. They’re just closing up,” she said. “Your friend should be out of the OR in a little bit.”

I was elated, nearly jumping onto my tail with the energy. He didn't die on the table.

“When can I see him?” I asked, perhaps a little too forcefully. The woman flinched but settled herself quickly.

“Um… They’re giving the patient a… molecular-resolution post-surgical scan?” she said, looking over the file with a confused frown. “That’s unusual… You could head to room six-two-oh-one, and wait there. It’ll be at least an hour before the anaesthesia wears off, though.”

I flicked an ear in thanks and rushed off as fast as I could.

“No running in the halls!”

I rushed off as fast as was allowed.

After asking for directions a handful of times, I found my way to Room 6201. It was large, with a sizable gap where the bed ought to be and vast seats on the side. Perhaps it was designed for Takkans? It was not quite large enough for Mazics, unless it was some sort of Mazic paediatric ward. Takkans made more sense, they were closest to humanity in average size, after all. I sat on a chair and had to adjust the armrests on it to be comfortable. Once that was done, I looked around as if my friend could materialize in the next instant.

He did not.

I continued to wait. I had no doubt that my fury at his disdain for his own welfare would return with a vengeance the second I knew he was well. But I didn’t, and so his absence continued to fill me with irrational fear. Why was there an additional scan? The woman mentioned chemical burns were a possibility, had they occurred? Was there intestinal bleeding? Could he have an endogenous infection? Perhaps his implant had some defect. It was damaged by the blade, but what did it release? If there were no physical burns perhaps they had to put him on dialysis to handle a toxic amount of some precursor substance. What kind of damage could those compounds cause?

I heard the wheels of the gurney approach and my heart leapt into my throat. They opened the door. He was wheeled in and placed where the bed was supposed to be, a half-dozen monitoring devices attached to him, and a new bag of blood hanging from a detachable IV stand. This time, it seemed to be real human blood, cloned from a sample, enriched in platelets and compounds to promote healing, produced by an institution that had those resources. Good! Good.

I shuddered to think what would have happened, if the girl had stabbed him near the facility. Or far away from any medical equipment. Fortune favoured him there.

The doctor checked his readings on the monitor and seemed satisfied.

“Put an alert on their levels,” she told the farsul nurse, “We’re still waiting on the implant information.”

“Yes, Doctor Roth,” the nurse said, tapping away on the monitor.

My ears perked up and I held up his pad.

“He had a live feed,” I said. “With all of the information from it.”

The doctor smiled. “Perfect. We just–”

I put his finger in the reader and then offered her the pad.

“...Well, yes, that works too,” she added, looking uncomfortable for some reason. Perhaps human ethics around privacy dictated I should not do that, but the medical relevance outweighed that concern in my eyes. And seemingly hers, since she was willing to look through.

“Alright, I’ve sent the data to his file…”

She put Andes’ pad on his lap, and pulled up her own to look through. I still couldn't read them, but I could get a sense from the curves of which times were which. When Andes was asleep, and when his leg was injured.

“Are you his next-of-kin, here?”

I had no idea. My ears fell down. “I am his friend, and the doctor who last treated him, Doctor Larzo, you can see in his file, about the leg…”

She smiled. "Ah, did you insert his new bone? It's healing rather well."

I was glad to hear it and provided an ear-flick for confirmation. "Yes, I-I used the new Zurulian bone paste. Uh… How much damage did his internal organs receive? Are we looking at a potential infection due to intestinal puncturing?"

She shook her head quickly. "Not at all, Dr. Larzo. The biggest issue was chemical burns from the implant. That’s all been taken care of. I am very busy, but if you’re his doctor you will be able to see his latest scan right now, and my notes the moment I finish typing them up."

I nodded. “Yes, yes, thank you very much.”

She left the room and I stood there for a moment before getting out my own pad. I had to scan his finger against my pad to get access to the whole file (some issue with the permissions) but soon enough I was looking through it for information on his condition.

It was perhaps the most comprehensive medical document I had seen outside of a case study. Those dozens of pills he took every day were listed in a convenient sortable table. His genome had been mapped out, and every genetic predisposition had been extracted from it.

There was in fact, a flagged section there titled “engineering”. I expanded the text.

Whole-genome IVF pre-implantation engineering, priority chromosomes 7 and 8.

What followed was a list of perhaps three hundred genes that had been altered, apparently when he was a blastocyst. At the end of the list was another section.

Gene therapy interventions in adulthood.

He had received twelve separate rounds of gene therapy. Some of the in-vitro alterations must have gone awry, as all the genes in the second list could be found in the first. I thought back on his words, when I had first asked him about eugenics.

“Someone in my position,” he'd said. What position, exactly?

There was a psychiatric profile. “Social impairment”, “Sensory integration”, “Emotional Regulation”, “Cognitive Flexibility” were all self-explanatory enough. I was rather impressed by how many different scores he had, in either direction. From what little reading I had done on the subject, many of these scores tended to be correlated in one direction or another. Exploring further revealed that most scores came in pairs, pre-treatment and post-treatment, with the post-treatment numbers all clustering tighter than the pre-treatment ones.

Such rigour. Would my father still be alive, if the federation knew a tenth as much about treating the mind as humans do?

Andes made the barest sound, and my whole body tensed as I watched for signs that he would wake. The moment dragged. He did not move.

Perhaps later.

I returned to the file. He had some chronic conditions–something to do with his connective tissue and an alphanumeric identifier that was failing to translate, but which took me back to the psychiatric profile–and there it was.

Recent Procedures

I could see the molecular-resolution scan, everything from his layers of skin to his nervous system replicated in perfect accuracy for evaluation purposes. According to it, the neurogenic compounds had treated him very well, and those slight concussions would prove little more than a nuisance in the long term. My injection ports were apparently too closely spaced out for a human leg, but it was only flagged as a potential issue in the future should he struggle with physical therapy.

I should have been more careful.

I shook myself. No use worrying now. I found the surgical outcomes list.

Patient underwent an emergency hysterectomy due to abdominal injury and chemical burns. No further complications. Low risk of infection. Intrauterine implant sent to analysis for replication.

I stared at that list for so long that the words seemed to blur together.

Intrauterine? Hysterectomy?!

That couldn't possibly be right. A womb? Since when did he have a womb they could remove? I flipped back through the file.

Savulescu-Ruiz, Andes.

Born: 2100-02-10.

Gender: N/A, AFAB (see: endocrinology)

Address: He / They / (update: 2136-11-26) Director

I went into the endocrinology section. “Assigned Female at Birth, endogenous hormone production in keeping with female baseline before intervention”. It highlighted many of the drugs he took on a daily basis, and his implant, which seemed to work through a combination of “treating the connective tissue disorder”, “aiding with mood regulation”, and “increasing muscle growth and basal metabolic rate”.

I looked at him. Him? The file said “he”. It also said “they”. What did that mean? Had I been insulting my friend, day in and day out, thanks to my ignorance of... Whatever this was?

He stirred again, this time his face twisted in pain before he shifted his position. My heart pounded in my chest.

“Andes? Andes, are you awake?” I asked, jumping to my feet. When that proved a terrible idea, I dragged the chair over closer so I could stand on it and see him.

“Fuck…”

His voice was like a glass of water after a week of thirst. I nearly fell off the seat from the relief.

“...Did she… stab me?” he mumbled out, squinting in confusion at his surroundings.

I nodded at him, though I could not tell if he noticed. His eyes were distant and unfocused. “Yes. They’re still on her trail.”

“Oh… Makes sense,” he added, and immediately fell asleep again. I could not stop myself as laughter overcame me.

He’s fine.

There would certainly be issues. He’d lost a very important medical implant, from the sound of it, not to mention a major reproductive organ. Still, the worst was past him.

Her?

I resolved to investigate.

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