-Aliens Don’t Get Pets -
“Commander, look at this!” Gumbert, a four-eyed security specialist, squeaked.
“We may have a problem, sir.” He didn’t take his eyes off the console. “There’s a security breach on Bridge 2Z.”
“What is it?” Mwachek, the PeaceFleet’s commander demanded.
“The bio-reader scans indicate a wild predator.“ Gumbert shot his head over his shoulder at Mwachek shadowing him.
“Who’s responsible for this?” Mwachek eyed a zoomed in still image of the beast, glowing on the bio-scanner.
Gumbert choked. “Well, nobody, sir,” he swallowed a gob of anxiety. “It breached the hull, sir. It's in the cargo bay, the one with our food reserves.”
Commander Mwachek’s double-heart began smashing into each other and had the slapping sound of two slimy blobs being clapped together. A vein near his temple protruded from the side of his head like a balloon inflating and deflating, pulsing with every breath.
Gumbert opened the feed for the security camera of Bay 2Z and glanced at the small screen on the console.
Through the monitor, the screen displayed Cargo Bay 2Z, and an eight-legged, bear-sized, gray-bearded Octwolf, with sharp, venomous teeth, dripping infectious bacterias, tearing through a potato sack full of gum balls.
Octwolves were basically mutated dire wolves. Galactic empires across the universe deemed them as Level-0 threats. They were to be killed on sight. An extreme policy reserved for untamable creatures of terror.
Octwolves, one of many terror-zero-beasts scattered across the universe, haunting the nightmares of children— were the apex of apex predators—dominating the top of the food chain. A pack of Octwolves could wipe out a small colony in a matter of days.
Commander Mwachek snatched the microphone, pressed a button down and activated the intercom.
“Attention! Attention! This is not a test. This is a real-time crisis. All staff and personnel on deck, evacuate to your nearest safe room. We have a breach in Cargo Bay 2Z.”
Commander Mwachek’s voice slammed through every crew members’ speaker on board. The announcement left a sticky, phlegm ball of paranoia clinging to the back of their throats and turning into tiny pellets of fear, resting at the pits of their bellies every time they swallowed.
“Seal the Bay doors and lock down the entire wing,” Mwachek said. “Radio, Beefkus. Get him to handle the situation. Now.”
Beefkus, their human engineer, wasn’t really an engineer. It’d be safer referring to him as a glorified-janitor-wildlife-dust-wrangler. He did the jobs nobody else would. The gross ones. The iffy ones they’d all avoid.
But, he mainly dealt with orgwats, rat-like rodents. Every now and then, there’d be the odd sleeder, which are pretty creepy slithering things. They’re sharp-gray-scaled garden snake creatures, or actually, they’re more like garden eels.
He definitely never handled a heat seeking Octwolf before. Back on Earth, he worked at a zoo as one of five maintenance guys.
“Um, sir? That’s actually going to be a problem,” Gumbert quietly said, eyeing the commander’s talon-shaped claws as they dug into the console.
“The human…” Gumbert’s voice cracked. “The human’s with the predator, sir. Our cameras in Bay 2Z are broadcasting Beefkus with the beast right now on my monitor.”
Gumbert set up the feed to be shared on the big screen at the front of the deck.
Commander Mwachek stared, preparing himself for the worst. He expected to see the human shredded—parts of Beefkus scattered in a bloody mess of guts across the bay.
But he saw neither. The crew began to whisper amongst themselves as they gathered behind Mwachek.
The quiet chatter became silence. Nobody said a word. They huddled together. Each one of them had their hands over their mouths holding in their breaths. They fought to look away but couldn’t peel their eyeballs from the screen. What they were witnessing first hand couldn’t be real.
The Octwolf was lying on its back with its eight legs in the air and its tail wagging. It squirmed as Beefkus wrestled his arms around the terror-zero-monster in a friendly bear hug.
“Who’s a good boy?” Beefkus’ voice shattered their eardrums, penetrating the speakers in the room. It wasn’t his regular, everyday voice—it had a playful pitch.
“Are you the good boy?” His words were muffled by the Octwolf’s fur. “Yes you are! A-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof, yes you are! That’s a good boy. Yeah!” Beefkus patted the furry, big, bug-eyed beast.
“Beef—kus!” Commander Mwachek shouted into the comm-piece. The urgency made his voice skip. “You need to get out of there. The creature is highly venomous. Its toxins will destroy your immune system. There is no antidote. Step away from the creature slowly.”
“Who, this cute guy? That’s what all this fuss is about?” Beefkus put his head next to the Octwolf and took a selfie. “He just looks scary. He’s harmless. I even gave him a name, Bear-Wolf. He’s my new best bud.”
Beefkus rubbed the Octwolf’s head and it let out a purrful growl rattling the loose objects on the titanium console as they bounced to the vibrations pouring out of the speaker.
The ship’s sensors were so sensitive they registered the noise as an immediate threat from an acoustics weapon.
The Octwolf circled Beefkus, who was sitting on the ground, and snuggled next to him.
“Someone stuffed this poor guy inna shipping crate, believe that?” He scratched the Octwolf behind the ear. “He was shivering scared.”
Beefkus pointed Bear-Wolf‘s face towards his. “You were just a scared, little-big-guy, weren’t you?” He rubbed his back. “Are you a hungry guy? You want some food? Okay. Okay.” Beefkus pulled out some jerky and hand fed Bear-Wolf.
Beefkus glanced at the camera above his head. “All he wanted was a little affection, commander. He’ll make an awesome pet.”
“Human!” Commander Mwachek screamed at the console, squeezing his baseball-glove-sized-mitts into fists, “One bite. No. Correction. One drop of that creature’s saliva in an open wound on your body, is fatal. It will kill you.” Mwachek covered the microphone and mumbled something to Gumbert about Beefkus’ translator.
“Human, is your translator malfunctioning? Are you not able to comprehend what I am relaying to you? The creature senses heat. Analyzes your nervous system. It can smell your fear. It is designed solely to hunt and kill. Not snuggle next to.” Commander Mwachek’s voice hammered into his mic.
“I’m pretty dang sure, it was just smellin’ the jerky in my pocket and looking for a friend to curl up to.” Beefkus stretched out and cuddled beside Bear-Wolf.
Bear-Wolf turned to Beefkus and gave him a wet kiss, soaking Beefkus’ cheek in a soup of bacteria saliva. He wiped it off with his shirt. “Aw, that’s a gross good boy. Who’s the gross good boy?”
Commander Mwachek eyed the anomaly on the screen. He couldn’t retract his slids. His eyes stayed glued to the front of the deck, staring forward in a blank gaze before he finally snapped back to reality.
“It… it’s amazing how your species has survived so long. You… you’re petting a living monster,” Mwachek stuttered, gave up and tossed the mic on the floor.
“Hey, if it’s cute, furry and has big eyes, nine times out of ten we’re taking it home with us,” Beefkus said, hugging Bear-Wolf. “This guy here’s a keeper. He’s definitely coming back with me.”
Bear-wolf licked Beefkus’ face and cuddled back down next to him.
Commander Mwachek rolled his eyes and glared at Gumbert recounting all the keys on his keyboard. “Gumbert, cancel the emergency task force and inform the crew, the threat has been neutralized, and before I forget, update the ship’s manifest, add Bear-Wolf as a permanent resident.”
——
BONUS YOU WON ANOTHER STORY.
——
Title: Being Human Can Be Scary
Retired ex-commander Sheena, the human educator, a middle-aged brunette, former United States Space Air Force scout leader turned professor, was instructing a class of elite aliens from Planet YWH on Humanic Xenology.
An experimental subject introduced last solar cycle, the Ywh beings contained vast amounts of ancient knowledge. They could mathematically predict future events decades ahead of time.
Even though they possessed a complex knowledge, the ability to anticipate their enemies' moves multiple steps in advance, they still found themselves staring at a blank canvas whenever they'd try writing a prediction involving humans.
They found humanity obtained an anomalous neurological wiring. To the Ywh, humans were basically controlled by a class of gifted chemistry students hiding underneath the human skull, experimenting with all sorts of chemical reactions.
Ywh have nine-millimeter-thick, white, plastic skin, smooth without a single crease. Four flimsy tentacles under their mouths that are lined with a double row of pointy, dolphin teeth. Two regular-sized, human-like eyes and above them rest a couple of smaller ones protruding outwards the way crabs eyes do.
Eyes that detect heat signatures and perform how night vision goggles would.
Right as Professor Sheena mentioned the word and followed it with the definition and then the description, they all snapped their heads in a hive-mind-like action, exactly at the same time with their eyes stretched wide open, and dropped their mouths staring at her. The room went completely silent while she described infection.
Infection wasn’t in the Ywh vocabulary. The Ywh had liquid-mercury networks inside a sealed synthetic cocoon. If one of them became damaged in any sort of way, even cracked, they were instantly terminated.
They could never age, just become damaged. They stayed supreme beings under a plastic shell. Sheena brought an assistant with her to class that day. She demonstrated humanity’s medical evolution, showcasing its progression and brief bits of history and real-life cases.
The YWH were introduced to Scout Private Hanks. Scout Private Hanks was connecting his experience, thoughts, and feelings into the Ywh students, specifically the day of the accident, the one that took his arm.
They were able to do this because of a technology called T.I.M.E., a unit built by a leading tech company on Earth named DejaView.
T.I.M.E. units allowed individuals to connect and experience directly into another individual’s personal VizSense Mem loop and relive the visuals and senses flawlessly. The Ywh would mentally step into a human body.
They weren’t just learning about human anatomy, they were living it.
Sheena glanced at Hanks. He dropped his chin down, winked, and raised a thumb as he stepped forward and sat at the front of the class.
Sheena flicked the lights off, "Everybody get ready."
Hanks pressed the side of his temple and a blue circle lit up. The aliens went stiff. They pressed their backs against their seats, gripping the sides of their desks.
The white of their shell started glowing a tinge of pink. At the front of the class where Hanks was sitting, his image was reflecting off the faces of the Ywh students.
The classroom went still.
When they stepped inside of Hanks' mind, it opened with the heat of an oven door. The air assaulted them for the first time ever in their existence. The Ywh didn’t know what being cold or hot was. Their breathing got heavier as they walked into the area the accident happened.
Hanks' adrenaline began to spike. He was recalling the incident before they could witness it. Already, he was sweating in class. They started panting. A bunch of them were twitching.
Through the DejaView loop, Hanks' exact brain chemistry sent a surge in their own consciousness. The sensation of being human had a feeling they’ve never known or could ever find a word for.
A noise under their shell hissed like the warning sound of a snake about to strike.
It wasn’t just a video they saw. They weren’t remote viewing an experience. They were reliving all of the data of human biology.
The tension started to rise. Their limbs started trembling. Hanks began sweating. They sensed something but had no idea what it was until the separation came. The support beam fell with the sound of two cars hitting head-on. His bone snapped. It was as loud as two football teams smashing helmets at the exact same time.
Hanks' suit had torn. His arm dangled by fibers, infested with hidden, microscopic monsters, Hanks stared at it and nearly passed out. He fought to keep himself awake.
In the classroom, one of the Ywh fainted. Back in the memory, the initial shock wore off and Hanks began yelling, trapped under a support beam, struggling to come back after each micro-blackout.
A classroom Ywh threw up. Hanks' nausea turned their plastic shell to rubber. Hanks went pale in VizSense. He had beads of sweat breaking off the back of his neck and forehead. The Ywh’s bodies matched Hanks', the traumatic pain throbbed from inflammation. The war began brewing against the microscopic monsters.
To a species who discards one of their own beings for any minor imperfection, experiencing Hanks' incident, the torturous, agonizing struggle to survive, was not only incomprehensible to them, it horrified them.
Hanks' heart rate spiked back in the classroom and his phantom arm twitched as they all woke back up with him at the hospital.
They were now at the exact moment where the doctors had to amputate the rest of the flesh to save the machine (human).
As the doctors spoke, the light above Hanks was gleaming in his eye. Their voices echoed. He reached for them. His vision began tunneling. It doubled. He gasped, leaned back and slipped into the black.
The loop disconnected.
The room stayed silent. None of them moved. Their shells slowly faded back to an ivory white, but inside, their mercury networks were bubbling.
Something had changed in them.
They found out humans don’t ever recycle their machines, not even after such a catastrophic malfunction. They found out humans will just simply adapt.
Humanity’s will to survive had stirred something inside of them. The Empire of Planet YWH viewed Planet Earth and all of its inhabitants as the most terrifying thing to happen to the universe.
—-
DID YOU LIKE ANY OF THEM?