What human means to me
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:25pm
Thread Topic: What human means to me
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Log//begin
I don't use these things much, but I thought this would be a good time to get back into it. I feel like this needs to be recorded.
We have an exchange officer. That isn't new. What is new is the race it... "he" comes from. Honestly, when they told me we'd be hosting a human I had to ask what a human was. I mean, I guess they've been in the news a bit, but nothing really stuck, you know? There was barely anything in the database, either. That meant they were a recent contact. That never ends well.
So this guy was going to be working in my department. They said he was a missile tech, but... I mean, come on. What could he possibly know, right? someone from a race I'd never heard of, probably just discovered a few years ago. And they were telling me he could put a gravity drive together in his sleep. Right.
Well, first impressions didn't help. He swam through the airlock like a crate with legs, all wrapped up in a bulky white suit, opaque faceplate, life support pack, the whole deal. Two manipulator limbs with five big fat, useless-looking tendrils. Rigid posture, poor reflexes, complete inability to read scents. Translator wasn't up to snuff, either. And I had to "shake his hand." What the hell kind of greeting is that? I mean, the suit was clean and all, but... ugh.
Oh, and they briefed me on the suit, too. Humans can't survive normal atmospheric pressure. Chlorine kills them. Carbon dioxide kills them too, if there's enough of it. Our hallway lights would burn their eyes without those visors. And besides that, they... flake. As in, their skin just comes right off. All the time. One of the others told me that most of the dust on human ships is their skin. I had to excuse myself.
But, I've got to be honest. He wasn't bad at the actual work. Sure, I had to teach him almost everything, but at least he picked it up fast. The physical part was a little difficult. With only two limbs, horribly low mobility, a level of strength that would be unacceptable even in a child... we had to work around him a lot. But at least he was compact. Even in the suit, he took up a lot less space than one of us. They're really, really short. Not... "snakelike," he called up. Anyway, the captain assigned him a storage closet. he said it was at least three times as big as the cabin he'd have on one of his own ships... shared with five other humans. Brr.
All in all, I guess it was an interesting experience. "John" was pretty unobtrusive. Not at all like I thought he'd be. He did all the work we gave him, never made a fuss, ate about half a standard ration PER WEEK and was totally fine. Special human food, you know. Something called beef. Anyway, a few of us got to know him pretty well. Invited him to games and stuff. He wasn't any good at most of them. Though, I will give him credit for finding a way to play Junker with only two hands.
But enough about that. What you really want is what everyone's been talking about. The one story everybody knows a different version of. Well, here's mine.
We were attacked. Not by your standard raiders, either. This was an entire destroyer group, fresh off a jump, no more than a couple light-seconds away. The closest friendly ship was at least fifty minutes out. We were toast, and we all knew it.
We fought anyway. No time to disengage, no hope of seeing our families again if we surrendered. I put the human on fire control. He had a knack for it. Every salvo on-target, warheads keyed to seek the perfect weak points. It was enough to put one of those ships out of action before they could even close the energy range. But they kept moving.
Lasers tore into our engineering section, slagging most of our jump drive. Torpedoes gutted crew quarters and medical. Primary sensors went down. The human kept firing, switching to new arrays as each one was destroyed. He was fast. A pinpoint strike got through our armor, stitching right along the control bay. A dozen crewmen were cut to shreds. he didn't even flinch. Armor scorched and venting atmosphere, he just kept right on going, and the missiles kept on flying.
Then... it happened. An enemy warhead went off point-blank, right outside our section. The launch tubes were torn to wreckage. The hull was opened to space. The blast doors closed, trapping us. A support beam detached form the housing, pinning me against the wall. I couldn't see. My helmet cracked, hissing air out into the void. I felt a hand on me.
I heard the whine of servo-motors reverberating through the beam. A grunt of exertion, the strain of an engine taxed to its limit. And I was free. He looked at me, suit blackened with soot, life pack burned to ruin. He slapped a hull patch on my helmet and grabbed my hand.
"Get up," the human said, "We've got a job to do."
And he walked right back to his station. The same station that had just seen a missile blast close-up, the same console that just now overlooked a barrier wall that might as well have been clawed right out of the ship. And he stood there, humming, as he loaded all remaining tubes and went right on firing at the enemy.
That, my friends, is what a human means to me.
Log//end -
nearly two days.... no response...
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Wow, 4 days and nothing.
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I liked it a lot. I enjoyed the diary form. Please post more!
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Alleria NoviceI like it. It's very interesting. Please post more
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LovelyTeenWriter NoviceNice. Definitely you should write more. Your really great at it!
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LovelyTeenWriter NoviceNice. Definitely you should write more. Your really great at it!
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Holy s---. ._. This is, of course, awesome. Although it kind of surprises me to see you writing about humanity in any sort of a positive light. .3.
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I'm actually a very optimistic person when it comes to humanity as a whole. It's the different sects and dogmas that depress the hell out of me.
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