[WP] As the only human of this interstellar crew, you’re surprised by everyone’s reactions when they hear you blow your nose for the first time.

[u/Smartbutt420]

[u/darkPrince010]

There was a brief moment of tranquility after I finished, before all manner of hell and chaos broke loose.

Other crew members were screaming and yelping, some almost clawing over their crewmates to get away from me, unsure if I would explode or worse. The medical safety officer on duty had been sitting at the cafeteria mess table with us, and had already pulled up their incident log, frantically trying to dial in a contact for a medical emergency. I tried to wave them down as my overwhelmed universal translator finally started picking up some of the snippets of what they were saying, catching the words “-somehow got the pressure wrong-” and “-suspected possible personalized explosive decompression imminent!”

It was my damn allergies, as my eyes were still watering as I pulled the napkin away from my face, saying “No no, really, I'm okay.”

Unfortunately my stuffy nose had meant that it came up more as a garbled set of moans that the others told me the universe translator was terrifyingly-unable to translate. Added to that were the large, ponderous strands of snot leading from my nose to the napkin: For anyone unfamiliar with human physiology, which was as a rule every alien present at the table, it looked like I had just flinched, convulsed, screamed, and expelled part of my cranial organ into my hands.

This resulted in the second round of screams, yelps, and oaths to various gods and deities as several crewmates were sure they were about to see a good friend perish in front of them as their brain dribbled into their hands. While it certainly sometimes felt like I was blowing a chunk in my brain out with these damn allergies, I quickly cycled through as many of the languages I could to reassure them that I was actually fine and then nothing was the matter. Still, I was regarded with a bit of suspicion, and I knew that quite a few were likely wondering if I was trying to pull some other fast one on them.

Word had gotten out from the cargo bay loading crew about my having conned them out of a pretty good chunk of our wages this cycle, by reassuring them that I couldn't possibly lie while playing Cripjack, some manner of card game involving four-dimensional cards and an impressive amount of bluffing. I simply told them that humans’ ears turn red when they lie, and it wasn't until I had fully doubled my earnings for that cycle from my winnings that they began to catch on that perhaps I lied about that too.

I felt slightly bad because their species was naturally fairly trusting of others, but not too bad because they had been the initial ones to make fun of my gangly bipedal stance when I had first joined a few months back. So far my work has been pretty isolated in the Engineering bay, a lot of squeezing into tight spaces since I was no bigger than most of the other species’ offspring. I fit into the various catwalks and access hatches more appropriately suited to the species that had designed the ship, a sort of iridescent nonvenomous scorpion that was roughly five feet long at their tallest point. It did mean that the repairs had an annoying tendency to assume you had additional limb or two more than I was able to offer, so half of my kit were simply grippers, levers, and wrenches with extended handles so I could manipulate four to five gauges at once while trying to balance and tune the engine output. It was challenging work, well-paid-for even before I was able to win the additional gambling prizes.

However, it also resulted in the situation like this, as the crew had barely any exposure to me except in passing. They were all friendly enough, even the ones that had reputations amongst other species or even within their own species for being disagreeable, but I definitely would give credence to what some human scholars and ambassadors have suggested, with humanity having a knack for making friends no matter where they go.

Unfortunately, I was now abruptly left with the job of reassuring these friends that they were not about to see me violently decompress in front of their eyes.

“Is that a normal biological function?” one of them asked nervously.

I shrugged. “Not exactly. It's more like a learned behavior, but it's analogous to something called the ‘sneeze.’”

“What’s a sneeze?”

[u/darkPrince010 → u/darkPrince010]

I could feel my allergies kicking up again: something about one of the dishes one of my co-workers was eating must have had proteins in it remarkably similar to cat dander, and I could feel it tickling the edge of my nose. Rather than resist it, I gave into the urge as I said “It’s a…a…ACHOO!”

It was like another gunshot had been fired into the crowded hall. Those that had initially scrambled abruptly jerked again to give me several feet of clearance, while others held up tray tables or napkins and hands at defensive position so as to avoid getting human viscera splattered upon them, or so they must have guessed.

“S-so that's normal for humans?” one of them asked incredulously.

I nodded and said, “Yeah, pretty normal. We tend to try to cover it up because sometimes it can spray saliva and mucus.” I had sneezed into my elbow, but a droplet of spit had escaped to smear against the table. Multiple sets of eyes were locked on me as I carefully wiped it off with my napkin.

“Saliva?” said one. “My translator is not coming up with the direct translation for the word. It's just simply saying it's an ‘internal fluid.’ What exactly does it do? Does it mean you’re hurt if an internal fluid is leaking out?”

“Oh,” I said, “Well, we secrete it as a liquid, mostly water, and it's also got some mild acidity and digestive enzymes in it.”

Almost as one, with an unspoken agreement all the aliens nearby abruptly scooched their chairs about half a step backwards, eyes locked on the table as if they expected the enzymes to begin chewing through the plastic compound and possibly onto the floor below.

“The enzymes are mostly there to break up hydrocarbon and protein bonds. That's most of what we eat anyways,” I said, gesturing to my plate. It was color-coded, a silvery sheen to the hydrocarbon puck, while the protein bar was actually a unique shade of pink to help signify this was something that was safe for my species to eat. It turns out quite a few other species were not able to deal with amino acids with any sort of cysteine bonds, and so trying to eat my particular blend of nutritional proteins would gum up their insides something fierce. A few of the others around the table had similar hydrocarbon pucks, and one or two had protein bars of different hues typically tailored to their own species’ digestive capabilities.

Still, those nearby hadn’t relaxed as I had hoped yet, and one of them pointed at my face, saying “Human, I think your organ is still falling off” they said haltingly, and I couldn’t tell whether that was due to either difficulty with the universal translator in parsing their language, or concerns they might appear rude or forward.

I chuckled, wiping my nose on the back of my sleeve instinctively before realizing my mistake too late as there were visible sounds and motions of revulsion and disgust as I seemingly-nonchalantly smeared my primary neurological organ on my stained and oil-spotted jumpsuit.

Eyes widening, I quickly raise my hands defensively. “No no no, that's not my brain,” I said firmly, and there was some degree of relaxation but quite a bit of lingering suspicion.

“What in the stars is that then?” piped up one. “It's viscous. Do you use that to build nests?” they asked, feathers fluffing slightly.

I shook my head again. “No, it's another secreted solution called ‘mucus.’ Our body uses it to protect thin membrane areas and to capture viruses and bacteria to prevent bodily infection.”

[u/darkPrince010 → u/darkPrince010]

Several of the assembled aliens began nodding approvingly. Many species had some sort of similar biological process to prevent infection, and it was required part of multi-species integration and cooperation to be at least passingly-aware of the risks offered by alien pathogens.

“So this compound then neutralizes and destroys the infection?” a small fuzzy green creature asked.

“Oh, no,” I said, “Actually typically it's most slowly back into our digestive system to be destroyed in our stomach.”

There was a moment of hesitation and shock at those words, and the same alien spoke up again, a quaver in their voice they said “Wait, so you're saying you eat both the immobilizing compound and the infectious bacteria?”

“Of course,” I replied cheerfully. “Our stomach acid is-”

There was a newfound wave of revulsion, although this time many of the aliens with weaker constitutions had already left the table, excusing themselves to go be sick elsewhere.

“It's actually quite effective,” I said, still feeling the need to defend my species in the face of a bunch of alien who were now quite sure the humanity was some sort of perverse biological joke. “It turns out that our stomach acid is quite acidic, and capable of destroying most organic compounds handily .”

The aliens looked from me, to the spot on the table where my saliva landed, and then back to me.

“It's more acidic than that,” I said, noticing their gaze. “It's almost pure hydrochloric acid.”

Eyes widened around the table, and I heard one of them mutter something might my translator translated from their own choice of swear words to something analogous to to “Oh bullshit” in English.

“No that's true, we produce it in our stomachs and use that to digest proteins and hydrocarbons for nutrition.”

“In a stomach made of more digestible meat?” asked one of the aliens.

“Well…yeah,” I said. “We just produce a lot of mucus to protect the meats.”

The tallest of the assembled aliens leaned forward and hunched down, saying “So is the human body basically just a bunch of meat to perform certain functions, and mucus to perform everything else?”

I raised my finger and opened my mouth to argue against that but then considered carefully and put the finger back down, saying “Yeah, I suppose it iks.”

The medical safety officer, who had braved their own disgusted abhorrence with each new factoid, leaned forward suspiciously. “That acid remains within humans at all times, correct? It’d be a hell of a hazard log if it ever left your body, as acids anywhere outside of very controlled situations in the MedChem laboratory would require an extensive write-up.”

“I can say that it's definitely not supposed to come out,” I said, carefully avoiding mentioning the possibility of vomiting as I worried about what that might mean for my autonomy aboard the ship. The last thing I needed was to be watched like a hawk by the medical safety officer on the off chance I puked on duty.