u/dual_scanner_again

Translated alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»).

---

Fr. Shaheen sat on his porch staring up at the sky. The air was so humid you could pour it into a glass and drink it. The heat of the day had strained the local electrical grid to the breaking point, plunging the town of Erickson and its surroundings into darkness. Power wasn't due to be restored until midnight at the earliest.

He quickly tossed his lit cigarette to the ground and ground the but under his shoe as the screen door opened. Pascal emerged and took up his customary spot on the bench across from him.

«Light blind me it's hot.» Pascal rolled onto his back and stretched his legs and tail as far as the bench would allow, letting the feeble breeze blow across his belly.

Fr. Shaheen merely grunted in agreement and continued staring skyward.

«See anything particularly interesting up there?» Pascal asked.

"The Milky Way. With all the lights in town out you can actually see the stars.

«I'm sorry, the 'milky way'?» Pascal's eyes flashed red and blue and silver and gold as he fluttered his bandpass membranes, trying to tune his eyes to whatever frequency this 'milky way' radiated brightest. «All I see is the galactic core.»

"Yeah, that's the milky way. What do monkey foxes call it?"

«I just told you, the galactic core. But why do humans call it 'Milky Way'?»

"It's the milk of the goddess Hera that spilled while suckling Hercules."

«What?!» Pascal barked. He sat up on his haunches, wrapping his tail around an arm rest and gripping the edge of the bench with his rear paws. «That doesn't mesh at all with the tenets of your creed that you've explained to me.»

"It's from classical mythology. We named most of the stuff in the sky after old gods, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. Even after we stopped worshipping idols we kept it up. Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. Then when we ran out of Greek and Roman gods, we started using other pantheons, or even characters from books and movies.

"I think it's our way of preserving a bit of that wonder the ancients felt when they looked up at a sky they couldn't begin to understand. We didn't know what the stars were, so they could be anything, gods, departed souls, holes in the firmament letting in light from heaven. But now... they're just balls of burning gas."

Pascal had laid back down and resumed shifting his visual passband, trying to match what he thought a human might see.

«There was a time when our ancestors looked up at the stars and imagined sophonts without number, friends we had yet to meet, all chanting the glory of the Uncreated Light. We thought if we named the stars we would be unjustly claiming ownership over something that belonged to someone else. But as we reached out to those stars, we only found that they shined upon lifeless rocks.

«Now... yeah, balls of burning gas floating in a cold empty meaningless void.

«But sometimes, I try to find the reverence I felt when I was a pup looking up at the night sky. 'Who are we, the most infinitesimal of thy creatures, that thou heedest our cries?'»

Fr. Shaheen had maintained his skyward gaze. "For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast founded. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

The air conditioner shuddered to life and a muddy gray haze washed away the stars.

"Power's back." Fr. Shaheen got up and walked back inside. Pascal lingered on the bench a moment longer, silver bandpass membranes across his eyes filtering out the light pollution, looking for something beyond the black behind the stars.

An expedition of tech-priests on Holy Terra unearths this relic of ancient technology and manage to apply power to it. What happens next?

The world is in trouble! Deep within the Amazon, Smelters belch black soot skyward, mining drills denude the land of minerals, and transport belts spread across the once lush rain forest like a cancer. But who is responsible for this mechanical abomination? Looten Plunder? Dr. Blight? Duke Nukem? No, it's a foe Captain Planet has never faced, a mysterious figure known only as the Engineer. Can Captain Planet save the day?

Translated alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»).

---

Canned yinrih. That's what I call the particular odor you smell from the back of a cramped train car. The nose wasn't built to be assaulted by all this olfactory information at the same time. It was the combined musk of a gross of people, men and women, pups and gray-muzzled elders, sires and dams, bachelors and maids, angry, happy, sad, exhausted, all blended together into an overwhelming potpourri. It made my whiskers twitch.

It was all too much for the guy next to me. He had a glob of mentholated nose balm on his rhinarium to dull the combined musk of all those commuters. For as long as I'd been taking this route we had shared these two seats in the back of the train, his snout buried in the same old claw-written notebook and my eyes fixated on the bad news scrolling on my HUD specs. We'd never shared so much as a chuff in greeting, only the silent understanding that neither of us wanted to share this seat but at this point in the route it was the only one left.

A polite voice crackled over the announcement system. «Attention, passengers, the City of Windward meteorological agency has issued an upwelling warning until further notice. All passengers must exit at the next stop. Citizens are urged to take shelter until the city passes over the storm.»

The scent in the air shifted. You could tell who was a native Welkinsteader and who was a tourist based on how they reacted to an upwelling warning. The soup of collective emotions gave way to eleven dozen per gross mild annoyance, and one dozen per gross panic and terror.

A woman in front of me began hyperventilating. «Oh Light, I don't wanna die. Not like this! Please, not like this!»

The fellow next to her attempted some reassurance. «It's just a bit of gas comin' up from the lower atmosphere. Look, none of these other folks has got their tail in a knot. Worse comes to worst ya lose a lung. Ya got three more where that came from.»

«You're not helping!» She barked.

The train came to a stop. The passengers piled out onto the platform and trudged off to find shelter. The woman followed her new minder off the car, leaving the way clear for me. I gave my backpack a quick pat down with my tail to make sure it was still with me.

Mr. notebook hadn't budged. I clicked my claws on the floor. «Hey, dude, come on.»

He started and scented the air. «Oh Light blind me, I missed my stop again.»

«It's an upwelling. We need to get to shelter. Everyone else just got off.»

The two of us disembarked and hopped down the ladder to the tunnels. We were surrounded by the train passengers as well as others who were caught outside when the warning sounded. That same canned yinrih smell assaulted my nostrils.

There was a thunk as the safety door slid closed, then a hiss as the gasket inflated. The positive pressure system engaged, making my ears pop.

Mr. Notebook smelled positively miserable at the prospect of milling around in this tunnel for hours.

«I smell you every day but I don't think we've really met,» I said. «Name's Swift wind.»

«Fire soul,» he grunted. «Say, you usually get off here, know where I can find some water?»

«Nowhere close. This is a residential zone. But you're welcome to come back to my apartment until the storm passes.»

He smelled unsure.

«Don't worry. I promise I'm not gonna murder you.»

His thirst and sense of self preservation waged a brief silent war, then he flicked his ears in resignation and followed me. The smell of the crowd faded as we turned down the tunnel leading to the northern residential block.

We spent a few minutes walking in silence, the only sound the clicking of our claws on the floor. These dreary tunnels dated back to when Windward was one of thousands of gas extraction platforms on Welkinstead, and the atmosphere outside was made of the same noxious gas currently ruining our day. Used to be these tunnels were all there was, with nothing open to the air. But after millennia of all these platforms extracting and refining gas, polluting the atmosphere with oxygen, the air became breathable. Terraforming Welkinstead was never the intent, but a happy industrial accident.

Once it was safe to be outside, they started building on top of the vacuum pontoons keeping the platform afloat, shops, houses, a railway, the stuff you'd expect a normal city would have. Soon Windword looked like any other city on terra firma. You'd never guess we were drifting lazily through the upper atmosphere of an ice giant.

That is if it weren't for the upwellings. Only this layer of the upper atmosphere had the right mixture of gases at the right temperature and pressure, and only along the northern and southern subtropical high pressure belts. Go too far down or drift too far to one side and your lungs would be burned away by the cornerstone of Welkinstead's economy.

Upwellings were normally predicted weeks in advance and timed down to the heartbeat. But especially during the summer there would be one or two surprises when a convective storm lower down in the atmosphere burped up some gas for us to deal with. All the local met agency could do was watch the drop sonde telemetry and lidar to see if anything was brewing downwind of us and give the rest of us a tug on the tail if we needed to hunker down.

But that's why they kept the tunnels. Exactly how accessible they were varied. Cities close to the edges of the breathable belt had entrances in every building. Other cities closer to the middle just had to have a certain number of entrances accessible from anywhere on the surface. Older cities like Windward combined both. Ancient residential blocks like the one we were headed to had direct tunnel connections in every unit in addition to the normal exterior doorway, but newer sections of the city had publicly accessible hatches on street level every block or so.

«Here we are.» I opened the hatch leading up into my apartment.

«Oh Void no,» he muttered. I followed his gaze to the wall of guns visible from the entrance.

«It's OK, dude, they're antiques. The ammo for them hasn't been manufactured in millennia.» I flicked my tail in a beckoning gesture. «Come on up. I promised I wouldn't murder you, remember?»

He didn't move.

«Here, if it makes you feel better, you can bludgeon me with this if you think things are going sour.» I handed him a heavy lump of aggregate with jagged crystals jutting out at odd angles, some byproduct of the gas refining process sold in every shop in town as a dust collector for tourists.

He flicked his ears again and climbed up.

«Water, right? You want ice with that?»

He tilted his muzzle up.

«Take a seat anywhere you like.»

He flopped down into the bowl couch in my den. «What's the attraction?» He was nervously passing the lumpy crystal between his rear paws. «Why do you like collecting them, the old guns I mean. You don't look like an ear notch.»

«Well if you have good firing posture you won’t blow a chunk out of your ear. But no, I’m not a gun nut, well not THAT kind of gun nut. It’s the craftsmanship. I like the leatherwork on the saddles, the paw-forged iron barrels, none of this all-polymerite nonsense. It’s amazing what we were able to make with our own four paws before we invented fabricators.

I handed him the bowl of ice water and he began lapping it up.

«What about you?» I asked. «Got any hobbies?»

He sat the bowl down next to his claw-written notebook sitting on the end table. «Oh, just this and that.»

«This and that?» I probed. «You seem awfully attached to that notebook.»

«Oh, that. It’s nothing.»

«Clearly it’s not nothing. It's practically been glued to your forepaw every time I see you on the train.»

He let out a long sigh. «Those are my worldbuilding notes.»

«Ah!» I yipped. «So you’re a writer!»

«No, well not exactly.» He began running a rear paw through his tail and I smelled nervousness in his musk. «I've got a few stories in here, but it’s just for fun, you know. Pups make up imaginary worlds, and I just started documenting mine as I grew up. The stories are exercises to flesh out the lore, that's all.»

«Tell me about it.»

He hesitated. «Are you SURE?»

«It's either that or awkwardly sit here in silence until the storm clears.»

He started wringing his tail like a towel with both rear paws, and his shyness stank up the den. «So it’s about this race of star folk called.. well we can’t pronounce their language.»

«What do you mean we can’t pronounce their language?»

«Well, they have a very different vocal tract from us; no muzzle, more muscular lips that can form an airtight seal, flatter more crowded teeth, a smaller and much more nimble tongue. They use their tongue to shape the sounds coming out of their mouth to speak.» He had opened his eyes wide and his ears were pinned back. He was clearly excited to have someone to share all this with. «The tongue is so important that many of their languages use the word for tongue to mean language in the same way we use the word for throat.

«So the best I can do to tell you what they call themselves is give you all the sounds one by one. The word starts with a voiceless glottal fricative, then a voiced palatal approximant, close back rounded vowel, voiced bilabial nasal, mid central vowel, and finally a voiced velar nasal.»

I wanted to ask him what in the void a 'voiceless glottal fricative' was but he continued.

«But that's the singular, like if there's only one. If there are more than one you take that word and add a voiced alveolar sibilant fricative to the end to make it plural.»

«You went to all the trouble of designing their ’vocal tract’?»

«Yup. And some of their languages, too.»

By now he was holding his tail in a death grip like it owed him money. «Constructed languages. Honestly sometimes I feel like the languages are the main thing and the world is just there to give them more life.» He opened his notebook to what looked like a table of different word forms in an alien script written left to write. «That word I gave you comes from this language called, well, again we can’t pronounce the name.»

I braced myself for another onslaught of 'nasals' and 'fricatives', but I was mercifully spared.

«Ultimately the name comes from this tribe who lived on this island in the northern hemisphere.» He turned to a page showing an impressive world map and pointed to a large island to the northwest of a massive continent. «So this tribe invades this island after this other empire falls.» He pointed to a peninsula on the southern edge of the continent jutting out into a nearly enclosed sea. Anyway, this tribe becomes an empire in their own right after a few centuries.»

«Centuries? Seems awfully fast.»

«Oh, yeah, they only live a tenth of our lifespan. Makes things move a bit quicker, gives me an excuse to play around with more languages.» Now his rear paw was picking at loose whisps of fur on his tail.

«Anyway, the tribe becomes an empire and they spread their language as they expand. They found some colonies on this other continent.» He pointed to another landmass across an ocean to the west of the first. «And these colonies rebel and found their own country which eventually spreads all the way to the west coast. The tribe become empire is still expanding despite the loss of some territory to these rebels, but after two massive worldwide wars this empire also falls and the rebels turned country become an empire in their own right, with their own variety of that island tribe’s language spreading across the globe in its turn.

He turned back to the table of words. «So this language is spoken by two different empires and becomes a de facto lingua franca around the world. It’s their version of Commonthroat.»

«Sounds like they haven’t terraformed any other planets,» I say.

«No, they achieve spaceflight right before we find them.»

«And besides this ‘vocal tract’ of theirs, what do they look like?»

«Well, they have no tail, and almost no fur except on top of their head, so they weir cloth coverings like a healer. They used to have fur and live in trees just like we did, but they started living in wide open grasslands. Their rear paws lost the ability to grasp.»

«That doesn’t sound like much of an advantage, not being able to grip things with their rear paws, especially given they don’t have a tail.»

«That’s because they walk exclusively on their rear paws. Their hind legs get much longer and more muscular. It’s all so they can run long distances to catch prey. That’s also why they have no fur, it’s because they excrete saline from pores on their skin that evaporates to cool them down.»

I wrinkle my muzzle. «Sounds gross.»

«Oh that’s what the missionaries that find them think at first. It smells really pungent. But eventually they grow to like the odor. They say it smells like a friend.»

«And the wildest thing is they can’t write.»

«What do you mean; you showed me that alien alphabet earlier.»

«Well they can’t write naturally like we can. They don’t evolve it, they have to invent it. So they just speak for tens of thousands of years before finally inventing writing.»

«So no history? How do they preserve information then if they can’t write?»

«Orally at first, passing it down from sires and dams to their pups.»

«Doesn’t sound very reliable.»

«Oh it’s not at all. They spread across the globe long long before inventing writing, and don’t even remember one another until they meet again thousands of years later. At that point the different groups have developed vastly different cultures and languages.»

«More languages to invent?»

«Exactly!» he yipped.

He suddenly smelled embarrassed. «You probably think I’m the crazy one now.»

«Crazy? No. Look, dude, you absolutely stink of nervousness. Don't be. I'll admit I've never heard of someone making up a world for the fun of it and inventing languages, but this isn't something to be ashamed of. Why not post those stories of yours on the internetwork. I'm sure there's a bulletin board out there that'll lap them up.»

«But my stories are terrible.»

«And they'll always be terrible if you don't have the courage to fail. Back in the tunnel you were half sure I was going to shoot you dead, but you not only came in anyway you opened yourself up to me. That takes guts. Now use those guts to open up to others and listen to what they have to say. Besides, are those stories you've got now really that bad if they're worth the time it takes to read them? It's not like there's a law that a story has to have perfect prose and an immaculate plot and ocean-deep characters just to be unironically enjoyable.»

My ears popped again. «Positive pressure system's deactivated. Looks like we're out of the storm.»

He coiled his tail around his notebook and walked to the entry hatch.

«Hey,» I called after him before his head disappeared below the threshold, «I'll be honest, these weird flat-faced furless bipeds may not interest me, but they will be interesting to someone, go find that someone. And if you don't, I sit next to you on the train every day. It'll beat reading bad news. Maybe they'll grow on me.»

---

Check out the Lonely Galaxy wiki for more lore and stories.

The hot Texas sun beat down on the two people sitting outside the root beer stand. Bob and Stormlight looked at the cars driving down the street and the people walking along the sidewalk.

Stormlight had always enjoyed people-watching, especially now that the people smelled and looked so different from himself. Here went an older puppy or whatever humans called their offspring, her dry whiskerless nose buried in the screen of one of those glass rectangular communication devices. Next came a man in his prime, thick brown fur covering his upper lip and hanging down from his chin. Then an older woman, head fur white and face wrinkled, hobbling along with a walking stick to support her remaining good leg.

By her scent she could have been seven dozen years old, but Stormlight had a good five dozen on her, and he was still young as monkey foxes reckoned it.

Stormlight turned to Bob, regarding his bald crown and wrinkled face. He grabbed his tail and began running his claws along it as though brushing out a knot.

Bob looked up from his drink and noticed his fidgeting. "Well go on and ask. You do that whenever you're fixing to ask me an awkward question."

«Does it bother you that we live so much longer?»

"If I'm honest, maybe sometimes, but Earth has trees that live for millennia and brainless jellyfish that can live pretty much forever. It's not like humans were breaking longevity records until y'all came along. Besides, we already live twice as long as our closest animal relatives. I'd say that's pretty nice."

Bob took a few sips of soda. "Does it bother you that we don't live nearly as long as you?"

«You're not getting any younger. When you're gone I'll have to find a new human friend, then he'll be gone before I know it. We finally found bone not of our bone and flesh not of our flesh, but we never counted on that bone and flesh being so ephemeral. It's all like trying to hold water in my paws.»

After a few moments, bob said, "It hurts to say goodbye for the last time, and y'all are going to be saying a lot of last goodbyes as long as you hang around us humans. But think of it this way. You're already a big hit with my grandkids. You can help them grow up, and again with their children, and their children's children. You can tell them all about how their great great great grandpa Bob got to be the first human to shake hands with an alien. You and Iris and Tod and Sunshine and Lodestar and Pascal can be the one constant in their lives, the one thing they can count on to be there no matter what. They'll have to say goodbye to me soon enough, and by and by their parents, too, but not you. Y'all can be the one thing they'll never have to say goodbye to. And after you've said your last goodbye to me, you can pray for the repose of my soul, or speak my name among the living, or do whatever it is you critters do for as long as you feel like doing it, which will sure be longer than any human will remember me.

"But I'm in good health. I've got at least twenty years left in me if my family history is anything to go by. That might not be very long for you, but it's a while yet for me. Don't go mourning me until I'm actually six feet under.

"It's a wonderful day out, if a little hot." Bob added as Stormlight noisily lapped up some soda. "Let's just enjoy the day."

Stormlight tilted his ears back, relaxed his jaw slightly, and let his tail hang loose again. «Thanks, Bob. Sometimes I worry so much about the future that I don't appreciate the present.»

The two looked back at the cars driving down the street and the people walking along the sidewalk. "It sure is a nice present," said Bob.

Translated alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»).

Ron stared up at the metal behemoth looming over him. A nagging itch scraped at some dark corner of his primate brain, a whisper echoing through his genetic memory, from a time when his tiny furtive ancestors cowered in the shadow of giants.

The fact that the mech made no sound as it moved amplified his feeling of unease. There was no whir of motors, no roar of engines, no whine of servos, no shriek of metal against metal. There was only a dull rumor, felt more than heard, as the mech planted each of its four titanic paws on the ground.

One of those paws sailed overhead as the mech strode forward, dusting Ron's upturned face with a fine shower of loose earth. The array of force projector plates on the palm and digits of the massive metal paw mirrored the arrangement of pads on a yinrih's forefeet. Other concessions to zoomorphism had been made as well. Two heat sinks were positioned like erect ears atop the mech's head, and whiskery antenna arrays framed its metal snout. What were the odds that the only two sapient species in the galaxy would independently think to themselves "Let's build a giant robot shaped like a person and stick a guy inside it!"

Well, that isn't exactly how monkey foxes came up with mechs. They started out with conventional body armor, then powered armor, then kept building bigger and bigger until you weren't wearing it so much as piloting it. Some serious advances in materials science made the concept feasible for them, not to mention having four legs.

THUD!

The paw came to rest mere inches from where he stood.

"Watch where you're walking!" Ron yelled, shaking his fist like a disgruntled commuter up at the machine's underbelly, where a round hatch sealed away the pilot within.

"Watch where you're standing!" countered a booming synthetic voice echoing from the mech's head. Ron darted out of the way as the armored left rear leg rose to take another step.

More tremors passed under Ron's feet as the mech walked over to a tall pine tree. "Watch out," thundered the synthetic voice. The machine positioned its aft end toward the tree and wrapped its serpentine tail around the trunk. The tree cracked in protest as the mech dug its bladed claws into the argillaceous ground and reared up on its hind feet, but the trunk managed to support the mech's weight.

A sharp electric crackle issued from the mech's now freed forepaws as claws of violet plasma erupted from its fingertips. The smell of ozone drifted to Ron's nose on the breeze. The mech swiped upward, effortlessly cleaving a massive limb from the tree, leaving a smoking black stump behind.

There were two thumps in rapid succession as the limb hit the ground and the mech resumed a quadrupedal stance.

Ron jogged across the brown grass up to the front door of a tiny house nearby. He raised his fist to knock, but the door opened preemptively and a tiny septuagenarian emerged. She leaned over to peer around Ron at the mech, which had wrapped the limb in its tail and was dragging it to the curb. "Thank you, youngsters, for getting rid of that pesky limb for me. My lawn will get much more sun now."

"You're welcome, ma'am," boomed the synthetic voice, "but I should point out you're half my age."

"Well, you're only as old as you feel, and I feel too old for that stuff," she responded.

The hatch on the mech's belly opened. Lodestar was lying on his back in the pilot's couch, gripping a keyer in all four paws, eyes hidden behind a HUD visor. He doffed the visor, uncoiled his tail from around a lever at the base of the seat, and hopped out onto the grass. He trotted up to the two humans just as the lady planted a kiss on Ron's cheek in gratitude. She repeated the gesture between Lodestar's ears. He muttered a complaint in Outlander about his personal space that went unnoticed by the elderly human.

"Thanks again," she said as the pair turned to leave.

Ron turned to Lodestar. "Aren't you supposed to be a monk?"

«The Knights of the Sun are warrior monks, yes.»

"OK, granted, but what do you need a giant robot for?"

«The armies standing against justice and the legions oppressing the weak do not field only infantry.»

qLPq h qMqmg qdBqb g h rBl,
0    qLPq h  qMqm-g   qdBq-b g   h  rB-l
[I]  hear PL human-3I lap-NA POS PL ink-1
I heard humans drink our ink.

qbcK qgKqp b rl khqkhqn rDB qLPqrDBp sjgK
qbc-K     qgKq-p    b   rl  khqkh-qn rDB qLPqrDB-p   sjg-K
false-DOG yinrih-3D POS DAT dude-2   say hear-say-3D lie-DOG
Dude, that's false. The person who told you that rumor is lying.

This exchange demonstrates a few things. The first sentence has qLPq hear as the main verb. Such verbs as hear and see can take full clauses as an object. The verb of this dependent clause, in this case qdBq lap up or drink, is inflected in the nonauthoritative mood marked with -b. Using this mood in this particular clause indicates indirect evidence or hearsay. If the speaker wanted to say "I heard humans drinking our ink" as an observed event, he'd use the authoritative mood which is a null suffix.

The second sentence demonstrates one of the most common uses of the dogmatic mood, to emphasize the truth (or in this case falsehood) of a statement. He's saying "No, that's totally false!" It also shows how relative clauses are formed, using the possessive preposition b. Literally it means "The yinrih of tell you that roumer is lying."

Also, though Commonthroat loves to drop subjects and objects, it can't drop the object of prepositions, so the dative to you requires an object. But Commonthroat has no pronouns, so you have to use a noun inflected in the second person. In this case the word khqkhqn dude, guy is used.

Oh and by the way, humans don't drink yinrih ink since it's a bodily fluid (specifically musk) but we do enjoy the smell. It smells like rain.

I'm pretty sure this would never arise naturally. I came up with it because I'm interested in the cultural implications for sophonts with this method of reproduction more than how it came to be.

I call this reproduction method "exovoviviparity". Both males and females lay very large unfertilized eggs, so large in fact the ovary is destroyed during oviposition and it does not regrow (hence the semelparity). Male and female eggs contain different components required for embryo formation. The eggs are placed in a clutch together, the eggshells melt together, first forming a "womb nest" with its own heart and circulatory system, then embryos form out of the goop inside the nest.

There can be up to twelve contributing parents, but they must be divided evenly among males and females. Each child is a genetic combination of all the contributing parents, and the more parents contribute, the more offspring result.

I used various aquatic creatures as inspiration, the external fertilization and semelparity of salmon as well as the courtship of some species of octopus where the male hands a spermatophore to the female with no physical contact involved (I may be imagining that last one but I find it can be fun to run with misconceptions sometimes).

Like I said I'm sure this is completely bonkers and I have no intention of scrapping it if it is, but if I can justify it somehow I'd like to. The only advantage I can see to this system is it results in more genetic diversity.

Part 2 here. This one's gonna be a bit heavier on the footnotes, sorry. I did say this is primarily a worldbuilding project. Alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»).

---

I pulled the curtain aside and stuck my head through the doorway. Another washing pool sat to the left of the entrance under a flickering light. Wading amid the water washing her paws was a healer. My face reddened. Before I could make a discrete exit, she turned and noticed me.

«Ah!» she chuffed cheerfully. «Light shine upon you, friend!» She hopped out of the water and trotted up to me, leaving a trail of wet paw prints in her wake. «You must be my human volunteer. My name’s Doctor Shortclaw.» She extended a dripping wet paw to initiate a human handshake.

I hesitated. This wasn’t the response I expected to a man bursting into the women’s bathroom.

She extended her paw further. «This is the right way to do it, yes? Right forepaw, digits extended, palm facing to the side?»

“Yes, ma’am—er doctor,” I said in English before hastily grabbing my synth and repeating my confirmation in Hearthsider. I reluctantly accepted her waterlogged handshake. «I’m so sorry,» I hastily dried my hand on the curtain, «I must have the wrong bathroom.»

She tilted her head in confusion. «Wrong bathroom? This is the only one on this floor.» I slipped back into the hallway. The sign over the door, overlooked in my earlier haste, simply said «WASHROOM», with no qualifiers. Was this a private bathroom? She didn’t seem to object to my presence. Whatever the case, I needed to get her out of there before the chocolate factory had a meltdown.

I brought the rest of my body through the doorway. We were standing in a vestibule, the washing pool was off to the left in an alcove. The wall to the right was adorned with pictures, an air freshener, and a cabinet marked with the universal yinrih symbol for health and medicine, a stylized female paw print*. The floor was flagged with tiles of various shapes and textures, designed more to be pleasant to the touch of a yinrih’s bare paws than with an eye to visual congruity. A shallow lip separated the vestibule from the rest of the bathroom shrouded in darkness. The flickering light over the washing pool failed to illuminate the area where the toilet was.

I looked down at the little alien medical professional. The first thing a human normally learns about yinrih is that they're built for living in trees. That's where the monkey in monkey fox comes from, long sinewy prehensile tail, thick limbs and broad back, feet shaped like hands. But the thing about living in trees is you're waging a constant battle with gravity. Every one of those limbs has to be capable of not only supporting the weight of the rest of the body, all 80 pounds of it, but pulling it up as well. All this to say they're absolutely ripped under all that fur. Healers, including the good doctor Shortclaw, shed their fur to maintain hygiene, revealing their swole physique to the world. Grayish-black skin covered her paws and muzzle, becoming ruddy over the rest of her body. I caught a flash of saturated blue as she slid a pair of bandpass membranes over her eyes, scrutinizing my form under light far outside the human visible range.

Another rumbling burble emanated from my gut, causing her large hearthsider ears to perk up. «Fascinating,» she yipped, pulling a notepad from a band around her foreleg.

«Look, I really have to use the restroom,» I explained.

«Even better!» she barked. She flicked her writing claw a few times and began jotting down some notes. «Do you mind if I observe? I was fascinated by the human digestive system while studying your medical cadavers. I’m anxious to see how it operates live.»

“YES I MIND!” I burst out in English, causing her to flinch. «Sorry,» I synthesized, «If you want samples, I’ll give you samples, but I didn’t sign up to be stared at while I poop.»

«I see,» she mused. «That might be a problem.» She crossed the threshold separating the sink area from the rest of the bathroom. Motion-activated lights banished the darkness. For the first time I beheld a yinrih toilet, and I did not like what I saw.

For starters, I was very wrong about it being a private bathroom. Four stalls lined the left wall, though calling them “stalls” was exceedingly generous. They were mere partitions extending up from the floor, not even tall enough to obscure a yinrih’s head. None of them had doors, either. The toilets themselves were simple holes in the floor. What might have been toilet paper dispensers hung above each latrine, positioned to be manipulated by the tail. Most of the floor was lined with more of that mismatched tile, but the area immediately surrounding the latrine itself was coated in a uniform rough texture to tell the user backing into the stall not to plant a rear paw in the hole. There was a noticeable grade to the floor of each stall sloping backward into the toilet, which I assumed was to guide any errant excreta to its proper destination. Sitting in the far corner of the room was a standard yinrih perch, positioned so the user faced the stalls.

«Our bathrooms probably aren’t what you’re used to on Earth,» she said apologetically. «We’re inclined to be chatty while doing our business. We feel vulnerable while eliminating waste, and feel more comfortable when there are other group members watching out for us.

«This is a learning experience for both of us. My partners and I want to make this a human-friendly clinic, and any input you can give will help us make this place comfortable for both species. It sounds like humans need privacy when using the washroom, is that right?»

«Yes, doctor.» I nodded vigorously for emphasis.

«I see, I see,» she whined softly to herself, writing down more notes. «We’re planning to make major renovations to accommodate your height.» She craned her neck upward to look at my head tilted forward to avoid hitting the ceiling. «I’m sure we can install species-appropriate facilities as well.»

I shifted uncomfortably on my feet, which Shortclaw noticed immediately. «But I suppose that’s not going to help you right now, is it? How’s this, I’ll stand outside the door and make sure nobody else comes in. Take as long as you need. Oh, and no need to worry about any samples.»

«Could you?» I answered. «Thank you very much.»

She turned and walked toward the doorway, but stopped at the cabinet on the wall. She took out a case from which she retrieved what looked like a PEZ dispenser. She waddled back to me on her hind feet and held it out toward me, motioning for me to hold out my palm. She pressed a button on top of the device and a silvery gray pill the size of a grain of rice dropped into my hand.

«If you'd be so kind as to swallow this for me. It's for some images I'll be taking.» I did as she asked, then she turned to leave, brushing the curtain aside with her snout. I waited for her long sinewy tail to slither out of sight, then turned to face my destiny.

I took a deep breath. Credit where credit is due, the place was immaculate. Everything from the grout between the tiles to the walls to the floors inside the stalls looked clean enough to eat from, and this room smelled by far the least canine. “OK, you can do this,” I told myself. “You were in the Boy Scouts, you know how to use a latrine, and you don’t even have to bury it this time.”

I entered the furthest stall from the doorway, undid my belt, squatted down, and prepared to restock the pond with corn-speckled brown trout. I waited, and waited, and waited some more. My colon had gone from Mt. St. Hellen to a space station airlock. “No big deal. I just need to relax.”

I let my mind wander as I surveyed my surroundings. There was another icon hanging near the entrance to the toilets, positioned to be visible from the stalls. The saint himself was all white save for a bloody maroon stain on his abdomen. He was reared up on his hind feet, an upturned drinking bowl under his right rear paw, reaching with his foreleg to pull a pup out of what looked like a pond of green sludge. Behind the saint’s head was the gilded arch which served as the Claravian* answer to the halo.

I heard Dr. Shortclaw politely ward away one of her conspecifics. «Sorry, our human volunteer is in there.»

«Are you sure he’s OK in there by himself?» asked the interloper.

«He’s got Saint Clearwater looking after him.»

«Fair enough.» The click-clack of his claws had just faded away only to be followed by the sound of four more paws skittering toward the bathroom from the other end of the hall.

«OUT OF MY WAY!» barked an unfamiliar voice. To my horror, the curtain was thrust aside and a scrawny sandy-furred fellow burst into the bathroom. His momentum was checked only briefly as the good doctor’s paw grasped futilely at the tip of his tail, relieving it of a few hairs.

«STOP! There’s a--» Shortclaw barked, but the intruder had already vaulted over the threshold between the sink and the toilets in a stunning display of agility.

«MY TEETH ARE SWIMMING!» he shot back. He took up residence in the stall next to mine, laid his tail across his back, and started putting out a fire. After heaving a contented huff, he turned and became aware of my presence.

«Oh, a human!» He tapped the partition between us with a claw. «My name’s Coolsand. I’m a junior IT admin here at the clinic. I think you saw my boss back in the waiting room.»

I suddenly became very interested in that icon hanging on the wall.

«Ah, that’s old Saint Clearwater. They say he watches out for folks who have to use the bathroom alone. Well, that’s what my sires told me growing up, anyway.»

I moved my gaze to the perch in the corner, staring at it as though it held the secrets of the universe, desperately willing my colon to finish the job. Coolsand did not interpret my silence the way I had hoped, and launched into a monologue.

«It’s kind of funny, how Saint Clearwater got associated with bathrooms. We don’t know much about his puppyhood, though I’d wager it wasn’t a happy one, given that the first records we have that mention him are police reports involving bar brawls and public drunkenness. He was an alcoholic, you see, that’s what the drinking bowl in the picture symbolizes.»

«Anyway, he eventually found himself in front of a judge. He was ordered to attend a recovery program hosted at a nearby lighthouse*. By all accounts he put his whole gut into it, and seemed to be making progress, but eventually relapsed.

«This cycle would continue, where he’d try to get sober, fail, wander off, then show up at the lighthouse a few decades later seeking absolution. Since he wasn’t getting any better, the hearthkeeper* eventually kicked him out altogether, assuming he wasn’t putting in the effort.

«He ended up homeless living in a local park, begging for food and getting his fix from the wild wind fruit* bushes that grew in the area. This park became notorious, not just for hosting a perpetually liquored up bum, but also for stinking of raw sewage. Turns out that a sewer main had burst, filling an underground pond with, well--» he slapped the textured edge of the latrine with a rear paw.

«Anyway, one day, a bunch of pups were playing in this park. Some stories say they were a litter, others say it was a school on a field trip, and others say the pups were just local kids. Out of nowhere, this sinkhole opens up, and all the pups just fall into this massive lake of--» he slapped the latrine again.

«Now there were a ton of grownups around. These pups’ childermoot, their teachers, or whoever, but every account says that a bunch of bystanders saw this happen and just stared. They usually get painted as the villains, but you know, I’m not sure what I’d do if I were standing on their paw prints. They always tell you not to dive in after a drowning person, especially when you’re not trained for it, since they’ll pull you down with them and two people will end up dead instead of just one. And, besides--» for a third time the claws of his rear paw clicked against the side of the latrine.

«Anyway, out of nowhere, Clearwater, who’s stinking drunk mind you, runs up and starts pulling the pups out of the hole. He manages to get most of them, but there are still two struggling toward the middle. He dives in after them. Well, the pups are still panicking, so they push him under while trying to climb out. The kids are able to get out, but Clearwater ends up drowning.

«So this naturally makes the news, and Clearwater is hailed as a local hero. The hearthkeeper that kicked him out of the rehab program realizes that he genuinely tried to sober up, but just couldn’t do it. He did keep coming back, after all, and he did seem to try his best, but--»

«He kept falling off the wagon,» I interjected.

Coolsand executed a quizzical head tilt.

«Sorry, it’s a Terran expression.» I repeated the phrase in English and then again in Hearthsider.

«Well,» Coolsand continued, «That hearthkeeper has a change of heart and starts advocating for his canonization. And not just regular canonization, but she wants him declared a martyr. That’s what that blood stain on his belly means.

«So even though it’s a bit controversial calling him a martyr, since he didn’t die while trying to fulfill the Great Commandment, he gets the title anyway. He’s got quite the portfolio, as you can imagine. I suppose it’s pretty obvious, his connection with restrooms, if a little morbid. But you also see little statues of him in bars, as he’s said to help drunk people get sober.»

Coolsand’s hagiography finished, I quickly cleaned myself up and redid my belt, but he insisted on continuing the conversation.

«I’m really into human stuff, and so is Calmwind. We both know English. He’s the one who made that poster in the entry room. If I knew you’d be here I’d have brought my synth so I could practice. I really want to visit Earth some time.»

I walked out of the stall and made a move toward the washing pool. Coolsand quickly finished up and followed. A few seconds after we had vacated the stalls, there was a whirring noise, then a cascade of water smelling mildly of bleach rushed out of a grate spanning the entrance to the previously occupied stalls and rushed down the slope and into the latrine, simultaneously flushing it and sanitizing the floor.

“Well,” I said in English as I squatted in front of the washing pool scrubbing my hands, “Nice meeting you, Coolsand. But let me give you some pointers on men’s room etiquette whenever you visit Earth. Not sure how you’ll negotiate our toilets; I’m sure you’ll figure it out. But whatever you do, remember these words: shut up and stare straight ahead.”

«Wait, humans don’t chat in the restroom?» I could almost feel him blushing behind his khaki fur. «Did I offend you? I’m sorry if I did, It’s just--»

“No, no we do not.”

«So that’s why the old bald-back* was guarding the door.»

“Yes… Look, it was nice meeting you, really, don’t sweat it—uh pant it—I mean don’t worry about it. I think these little psychological quirks that we don’t share stick out only because we have so much else in common.”

«I guess that’s what the Great Commandment means by ‘bone not of our bone and flesh not of our flesh’.»

“Just look out for that doctor next time. By the way, my name’s Greg.” I performed the yinrih’s traditional greeting, patting myself on the abdomen twice with the left palm, then turned to leave.

Dr. Shortclaw was still standing outside. She looked up at me sheepishly.

«Sorry about that,» she said. «Like I said, we’re talkative in there. That’s why that perch is in the corner.»

«I hope you’re a better doctor than a bouncer,» I said as we walked down the hall to the exam room.

---

* female paw print: The arrangement of pads on a yinrih's forepaws is sexually dimorphic.

* Claravian: of or relating to the Bright Way, the formerly dominant religion in yinrih culture, whose missionaries found Earth.

* Lighthouse: A house of worship of the Bright Way

* Hearthkeeper: A priestess of the Bright Way, whose principle duty is to tend a ceremonial nuclear fusion reactor called a star hearth.

* Wind fruit: A sugary fruit that is rapidly fermented into alcohol by the yinrih's gut flora, causing a large amount of gas as a byproduct.

* Bald-back: Slang for a doctor, cf English sawbones.

Check out the Lonely Galaxy Wiki for more lore and stories.

Part 1 here. Translated alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»).

---

Behind the exterior doors was a sort of mud room. To one side was a shallow pool for washing paws, barely ankle deep. Next to it was a small shelf, a sign hung above it written in perfect English. “Welcome, human visitors! Remember, our hands are also our feet. Please help keep this clinic clean by removing your footwear before entering. --St. Starlight’s House of Healing. 🐾”

I placed my sneakers on the shelf and ducked through the curtain leading to the waiting room. Despite the poster’s exhortation to cleanliness, the musty smell of a kennel hung in the air. That’s not to say the place wasn’t clean, well, as clean as a species with constantly shedding fur can make such a high traffic public area. I didn’t mind the smell at all. It reminded me of the animal shelter where I picked out my first dog when I was little. It smelled like a friend.

Perched next to the wall under a beautifully written icon of the clinic's patron saint were a handful of monkey foxes, a family by the looks of it. Three adults—two sires and a dam, travelling with three of their pups, all girls, much younger than the lads out in the square. All three girls started yipping excitedly upon seeing this hairless ape duck through the doorway. Twelve paws scrabbled on the slick tile to be the first to interact with me.

«Wow, wow,» said one, peering behind me. «Lookie, he really has no tail.»

«See,» said the second, her nose pointed at my stockings. «No thumbs on his rear paws. Is it true you stand on your hind legs all the time, mister?»

«Just that patch of fur on top of your head?» queried the third. «Is that why you wear those covers like a healer?»

«No, look, sis» barked the first, gesturing with her muzzle up at the meager hair covering my arm, «He does have fur, just not a lot of it.»

«Now now, my delights, don’t bother the gentleman,» chided one of their sires. They scampered back to their parents. The sire dipped his head in apology. I smiled and did the same to show I wasn't offended.

My stomach churned. Hearthsiders were an unhurried bunch, even by the standards of other yinrih, a species with all the patience you'd expect from someone who lived over seven centuries on average. I had expected a wait, but didn't account for being hounded by the call of nature.

I strapped my synth to my hand and began fingering the keys like I was playing a guitar.

«How old are they?» warbled a tinny voice from the anemic speaker.

The sire's ears perked up and his eyes opened wide, as near as a monkey fox can get to an excited smile, surprised to hear a human speaking his native throat. «In Terran years? Let's see.» He tilted his head to the side and scratched his ear with a rear paw. «Late teens or early 20s, I think. There's three more where that came from, all boys. They're at the market with our other dam. These three are here for a checkup»

«Six little ones all at once.» I tried to make the synth sound impressed. «That's got to be a lot, even with two moms and dads to spread the load.»

«They're a pawful, alright, especially these three. He looked at his daughters, his ears flattened in disapproval. After being robbed of her strange playmate, one of the girls had begun thumping the wall with her tail, and through the endurance that only youth can provide, would continue her little game despite her father's objections for the remainder of my time waiting.

«But I wouldn't trade this time for the world. Only fifteen more years before adolescence kicks in and they start thinking they know everything and their fur will stop bullets. Right now the world is still new and wonderful. They were just learning about humans in school, and they haven't been able to talk about anything else. I'm sure you'll be the only thing in their ears and out of their throats for the next two weeks.

«You are the first human they've seen. First I've seen, in fact... well first live human, if you'll excuse me.»

I dipped my head to show he was in fact excused. «Yeah, all those cadavers. That's why I'm here, actually. The healers want live human subjects now, and somebody has to get probed for the sake of all mankind.»

He tilted his head trying to process my joke, but decided not to ask for clarification. I had been assured the healers would be doing nothing of the sort, of course. The only clothing I'd be removing was already sitting on that shelf in the entry room.

He sniffed the air. «It's true what they say about the scent of humans. You smell very...» the next word was impossible to translate. The closest thing any of the Hearthsider-English dictionaries I'd ever seen could come was "pleasant but inedible", but that barely scratched the surface. Hearthsider, like all monkey fox languages, had a myriad of ways of describing odors. In any case, the word came out to a compliment.

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, trying to ignore the increasingly urgent churning growls coming from my gut. I wouldn't be smelling pleasant for long if I didn't find a bathroom soon.

The heat didn't help matters. Focus hung low on the horizon, its golden rays pouring into the room through the large windows lining the entrance wall, turning the room into a greenhouse. In the time I had been here the shadows cast by the doorframe hadn’t moved an inch, and they never would. On Hearthside, the time of day changed with the latitude. Golden Hour city sat comfortably on the terminator dividing day and night.

If the foul brew festering in my colon and the wicked sun weren't enough, my hand had begun cramping from operating the synth. I removed the device and gave my hand a few shakes.

«Are you OK?» asked the sire.

I decided to be blunt. «Not really. I desperately need to use the bathroom.»

«Please, allow me. You rest your paw.»

He hopped down from his perch with a sharp clack of his claws on the tile and walked up to the counter. Perched behind it was a fawn-coated receptionist, her HUD specs sitting halfway down her muzzle flashing reflected sunlight back in my face.

«Excuse me, ma’am.»

She slid her HUD specs further down her muzzle. She hadn't heard a word we were saying. «I told you folks when you came in that we were having network problems. My paws are tied until it gets fixed.»

«My friend here is looking for--»

She whipped her head to one side and barked «Calmwind, is the network back up yet?!»

Through a curtain dividing an adjoining room a dusty gray snout poked out, twitched a few times, then its owner waddled forward. The white noise of server cooling fans escaped the room as he pushed the curtain aside. He was definitely a fair ways up the chonk chart. I think this was my first time seeing a fat monkey fox. He panted a few times as though the effort of walking ten feet from his little techie cave was too much.

«And I told YOU,» said Calmwind as though he had been part of the conversation from the beginning, «It’s not a network issue. The payment processor is down.»

«I don’t think—» she said, but Calmwind snapped back as though venting years of pent-up frustration.

«Look, It’s not the network, okay? I swear it’s always the network with you people. Broken heat pump fan? Network must be down. Light flickering in the bathroom? Better call Calmwind, it’s the network again. What does he get paid for anyway?»

I made my way up to the front of the room, ducking my head to avoid the ceiling fixtures. This building wasn’t built for someone who stood over 30 inches at the shoulder. The sire gave me an unreadable look which I chose to mean “Is this seriously happening right now?” Then he shot a glance back at the other two members of his childermoot*. The remaining sire and dam hopped down from their perches and herded their pups out the front door to spare them this public display of office politics.

Meanwhile, Calmwind had plucked the HUD specs from the receptionist’s muzzle. «See, I told you, you’ve been browsing the internetwork this whole time. It’s not a problem on our end. You need to send a message to the payment processor.»

«I’m a receptionist, not an office manager, I get one paycheck but everyone expects me to do the work of two people!» she hissed.

“Thanks for trying,” I sighed in English, shrugging at the sire standing next to me. He flicked his ears back, returning my shrug with his species’ own gesture of resignation.

A loud grumble issued from my gut, catching the attention of all three yinrih.

«Are you feeling well?» asked Calmwind, out of breath from arguing.

“Are YOU feeling well, big chungus?” I said under my breath in English, then put my synth back on and continued in Hearthsider. «Pardon me, but do you know where the restroom is?»

«It’s a bit down the hall and to the right,» he said, tossing his muzzle to one side indicating the hallway nearby.

I ducked into the hallway and started jogging, I caught one last snatch of conversation from the waiting room before turning the corner. The sire, in an attempt to de-escalate, changed the subject. «Amazing how fast they can run on just those two long hind legs of theirs.»

«I know, right?» answered Calmwind, «and with no tail for balance and as tall as they are, you’d think they’d be falling over all the time.»

I rounded the corner and was met with another long hallway. My gut rumbled in protest again. My jog had made my situation even more dire. I continued at a brisk walk, accumulating a few bruises on my forehead from the fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Finally, I came to another doorway. I could hear running water from behind the thick curtain. I could wait no longer.

---

*childermoot: a group of two to twelve yinrih divided evenly between males and females constituting the biological parents of a particular litter of pups.

Alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»)

---

I had to chuckle at the mundanity of it. Before First Meeting if I was told I'd be medically examined by aliens, I'd have imagined ominously hovering UFOs, bright lights, and then waking up in a ditch four hours later one or two internal organs lighter. Yet here I was, on my way to do just that, but the atmosphere couldn’t be more… suburban, for lack of a better word.

Food sellers to my left and right barked their best sales pitch at me, most in heavily accented Commonthroat. They assumed a human wouldn't bother learning Hearthsider, but knowing the local language is why I was picked to be the first live volunteer patient. It'd be like an alien landing on Earth asking to learn a human language, and after refusing English and Spanish and Mandarin they said "Nah, I want to learn to speak Icelandic." They'd be laughed at. I certainly was.

I guess all those lectures in a nearly empty classroom paid off, because the clinic that did all the cadaver dissections turned out to be a sleepy little town on Hearthside. Maybe in a hundred years somebody will get a new liver grown from my DNA.

I passed a group of older pups lounging on perches off the main path.

One of them came up to me. It sounds weird calling him a pup; he was old enough to be my father. I could hear his fellows urging him on. «Friend,» he said in heavily accented Commonthroat. I flashed my teeth in a jovial American smile. This apparently is what the lad was looking for. «See!» he barked back at his companions, «I told you. Humans DO have fangs, they’re just really small!»

«yeah sure, said one of the others, «but how can they eat meat with such small teeth?»

«Only one way to find out.» My interlocutor reared up on his hind feet and reached toward his fellows with a paw. One of them rummaged through a cloth-covered basket and grabbed a morsel of… something, then tossed it at him. He caught it and held it up to me. «Eat, friend!»

I took it before registering what it was. It was small, furry, and dead. It looked a bit like a chipmunk, if chipmunks had blue and yellow fur. I evidently was spending too much time scrutinizing it, as my interlocutor grunted in protest. «You a puppy gut*? Can’t eat a raw zap rat?»

«Not with those teeth,» said the one who tossed him the rodent.

"Are you trying to win a bet?" I sighed in English. He merely continued to stare at me. Do I really want to eat this thing? Raw? I had eaten a nightcrawler on a dare once when I was a kid. This couldn’t be any worse. I glanced over my shoulder at the clinic. I was already going to the doctor. If I got sick they’d probably know what to do, right? Or they better after cutting up all those human cadavers.

I popped the creature in my mouth and swallowed it whole, barely letting it touch my tongue.

«Ha!» said the pup next to me. «They ARE meat eaters!»

«That doesn’t count,» protested one of his fellows. «He didn’t bite down on it.»

As they argued back and forth, I felt my impromptu snack slither down my throat, then came a jolt as though I had swallowed a 9-volt rather than a dead rat.

My stomach began protesting almost immediately. I glared at the boy and cursed myself for succumbing to peer pressure. He merely flicked an ear in a hasty goodbye then scampered back to his friends, where they continued to debate the finer points of human dentition. I turned and headed to the clinic, my stomach making its displeasure known through noisy gurgles. "I better not need a change of undies," I muttered as I ducked through the door to the healer’s office.

---

*puppy gut: one who has the narrow culinary palate of a child, a picky eater

Alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («»). This story takes place about 10 years after my prior stories.

---

Standing a mere stone's throw from the Eternal Hearth, the edifice was supposed to be a monument to the friendship between the only two sapient species in the galaxy, and to the yinrih who built it, it was just that, but to most humans visiting the holy world of Hearthside, it was--well--a tower of human skulls.

We had offered a large supply of medical cadavers to our new galactic neighbors so that they might better understand human biology. It was thought that the yinrih, who had terraformed every suitable body in their star system dozens of millennia before we humans put plow to earth for the first time, could bestow upon our primitive species all manner of medical miracles, after, of course, dispelling their ignorance regarding our anatomy. When the human ambassador was asked what ought to be done with the bodies after they had been studied, "Treat them as you would your own dead." seemed to be the culturally appropriate response.

What we didn't know at the time was what exactly they did to their dearly departed. Bury them? Cremate them? Nope, turns out the answer was dissolve the soft tissue with acid, then use the bones to build with. Of course, not every structure had the honor of being made from the remains of your friends and family. In more traditional corners of the system, such architecture was reserved for houses of worship. In more secular parts, this peculiar building style extended to monuments, libraries, halls of learning, and centers of political power. In the most general sense, the best way to make your building scream "this is important!" was to cover it in skulls.

The yinrih healers studying our anatomy had mountains of alien remains to deal with, and also wanted to show us weird flat-faced hairless bipeds that they saw us as friends. Building a library to house the newly acquired medical knowledge in the traditional ossuary style seemed to solve both problems neatly. So there it was, bones bleaching in the perpetual noon of a tidally locked world, containing the musings, anecdotes, theories, and observations of an intelligence that was not our own pondering the peculiarities of the human form.

Aurora sat politely at the door, ready to greet any passing visitors, human and yinrih alike. She always found it interesting how differently the two species reacted to this little library. Her fellow yinrih would hurry inside, passing the facade of grinning alien skulls without comment, but eager to peruse the shelves, learning as much as they could about these large tailless creatures. Humans would stare open-mouthed at the outer walls encrusted with the skulls and bones of their conspecifics with a mixture of disgust and fascination. Or at least that's what she gathered from their comments. The nuances of human body language still escaped her.

Today was one memorable exception. He was a cleric, or at least he looked like the pictures Aurora had seen of human clergy. He approached her, teeth exposed in the way humans did to show they were not a threat, extending his arm to grasp her forepaw in a greeting gesture. After quickly remembering not to expose her own teeth, she reared up on her hind legs to better meet his gaze, wrapping her tail around the pillar behind her for balance. She politely refused the handshake. The human was positively drenched in that pungent excretion, "sweat", she thought they called it. The unforgiving heat of the nightless desert apparently did not agree with this alien visitor. It was just a brackish solution used to regulate body temperature, exuded by glands just under the surface of the skin, odorless on its own. It was the bacteria living on the skin that caused the smell. Whatever it was and however it smelled, she was not eager to get it on her pelt.

"Good, uh, morning?" said the human, quickly glancing up at the star perpetually frozen at the zenith. "Sure is hot today."

«Hello,» Aurora yipped. «It's like we say, 'On Hearthside, if you don't like the weather, too bad, it's not going to change.'»

"Quite the monument you've got here. What's it for if you don't mind me asking?"

«Not at all. I'm actually a volunteer here. This is the House of Friendship. It's a little medical library, all books on human biology and medicine.»

"Ah," the cleric responded. "And the skulls are real, then?"

«...yeah,» she hesitated. «It's considered the respectful thing to do here. You guys gave us all these cadavers to study, and we wanted to do right by you when we were done with them.»

"Fascinating."

«You're not offended? Most humans seem to think it's morbid.»

"We build our altars on top of the bones of saints. It's really not all that different, I guess. We even have a few chapels that look just like this. We usually bury our dead first, but after a few hundred years it builds up and we need to make room. The bones get dug up and they need to go somewhere." He gestured at the facade.

«Interesting,» said Aurora, ears tilted forward in attention.

"A lot of us humans still think that stuff is morbid, too. I don't know, I guess it can be, context is everything. But in a way I can see why you find it comforting. Being surrounded by friends and family. Being reminded of one's mortality also keeps your mind on the important things."

«Exactly,» Aurora barked happily, glad to finally see a human recognizing her species' gesture of kindness. «You know we've been searching for other sophonts for so long. It's kind of the whole point of all this.» She waved her paw in the direction of the Eternal Hearth and surrounding religious buildings. "We're just happy we're not alone anymore."

"Thanks," said the human. "We're just as glad as you are."

This story takes place on the same day as Beating the Heat. Alien speech is enclosed in Italian quotes («») (Edit: Formating)

---

Jim surveyed the empty trailers around him as he sat in the lawn chair in front of his mobile home. Everyone else in this little student ghetto had left for spring break. It was quiet, and he liked it that way. He raised his eyes to the object of interest, a thunderhead billowing in the distance, reflecting the golden rays of the westering sun. He took a sip of iced tea as he listened to the sounds of nature: the chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects, and the quiet clicking of claws on the wooden porch behind him. The clicking was followed by the sounds of something scrabbling its way up the tree trunk and flopping down on the large branch to the left of Jim’s chair.

“Hi, Tod,” said Jim, not looking away from the skyscape.

«Good evening, Jim,» grunted a voice off to his left. «These alien skies are breathtaking.»

Of course, they weren’t alien to Jim. He had grown up in this sleepy town in central Texas and spent many spring evenings watching storms wash over the landscape. To his roommate presently lounging in the tree above his chair, however, the chaotic vista before them was very otherworldly indeed.

Tod's real name would be unpronounceable by any human tongue. Jim gave him that name when he moved into the spare bedroom of his manufactured home. Jim had posted an ad for a roommate over Christmas break, with the only requirements being a quiet lifestyle and splitting the rent. He didn’t think it necessary to specify that the candidate needed to be a member of Homo sapiens, and, until the Dewfall arrived on Earth, that qualifier would have been redundant.

Honestly, Jim couldn’t put his finger on why everything went so smoothly when the Dewfall landed. Something always goes wrong in every story about First Contact. The aliens want to blow us up. We want to blow up the aliens. Other humans blow up the humans trying to contact the aliens. In the best case, the aliens just lecture us about how violent we are and how badly we’re wrecking the environment. Maybe everything went so well precisely because we’d been rehearsing this exact scenario again and again through a hundred years worth of books and movies. But he figured the biggest reason was that, until the Dewfall entered Earth orbit and intercepted those radio transmissions, the yinrih were all alone, just like us. They’d been howling into the void looking for other souls like them for longer than we humans had been tilling the soil, and up until now they were only met with the cold, pitiless indifference of the empty cosmos.

The joy they felt upon discovering us transcended language. It transcended culture. It transcended species. It was infectious. They were so happy to see us that we couldn’t help but be happy to see them, too. Sure, the media had a nice juicy headline to milk for a week or two, a few speeches were made, and some laws had to be tweaked to make sure nobody could murder one of our little guests and get off on the technicality that they weren’t human. But the news cycle doesn’t grind to a halt just because we found out we’re not alone in the universe anymore, and ET wasn’t going to pay our bills, so life went back to normal after about a fortnight.

Well, for the rest of the world, anyway. For the little Texas hamlet that the Dewfall chose as it’s landing site, those first two weeks were just the beginning. The first thing to do was chase away all the weirdos trying to see the aliens, pet the aliens, eat the aliens, and do whatever else you can think of with or to the aliens. That wasn’t so hard. The unwanted gawkers just had to be reminded that this was Texas, and everyone old enough to write their name owned a gun and knew how to use it. After the clowns were dealt with, everyone got to work helping our little guests settle in.

First things first: communication. It was clear from the outset that humans and Yinrih were never going to speak one another’s languages. Our vocal tract and theirs were just too different, but writing, writing they could do. They learned to write English surprisingly quickly. Even if they couldn’t speak a human language, they could still understand it when it was spoken. Humans could also understand them, even if their little yips and growls were quieter than the average human voice. So we would all just have to be Han Solo to their Chewbacca.

After surmounting the language barrier, it was time to talk lodging. The Dewfall was a tiny, single use craft designed with just enough room to carry six crew in metabolic suspension. It would remain where it was, acting as a high-tech storage shed, but our little guests would have to find accommodations somewhere else. They could have gone anywhere in the world. They could have been treated like more than royalty, but they let it be known that they wanted to grow where they were planted, so to speak. And that’s how Tod ended up on Jim’s porch on that cold day in January. Jim answered a knock—more of a scratch, really—at his door, and opened the door to see this monkey fox with his tail curled around a half-folded, half-rolled up copy of his ad.

Jim turned to look at his roommate lying on the branch. The orange rays of the setting sun made Tod’s red pelage glow as though it were on fire. His black ears completed the vulpine impression that earned him his name. Tod was nervously tossing a translucent fluorescent green cube between his forepaws, occasionally flicking a freely rotating corner and letting it spin on its axis like a fidget toy. Just the alloy that made up that thing’s chassis was probably worth enough to pay off the national debt, never mind whatever tech was inside it.

Tod tossed the cube across his back and caught it in his left rear paw and continued to fidget with it with as much dexterity as before. He turned to look at his roommate. Was he impressed? He couldn’t tell. Jim’s ears were practically immobile, and he had no muzzle to speak of. Tod was still learning the ins and outs of human body language, Jim’s lack of a tail making the endeavor that much harder. Surely his little trick must seem impressive to a creature with only two prehensile extremities. Still, Tod couldn’t help being a little jealous of the human’s ability to both walk and manipulate objects at the same time. Tod could waddle precariously while standing on his hind legs and using his forepaws to carry an object, but if he wanted to get anywhere quickly it was four legs or nothing. His tail could grasp objects. It could even support the weight of the rest of his body, but he couldn’t manipulate anything while moving at a significant speed.

“Am I supposed to be impressed by those monkey paws of yours?” said Jim.

«Oh… I was just… never mind.» Tod curled his tail around the mystery cube and turned fully to meet Jim’s gaze. He studied the human’s liquid eyes. In the center of each was a transparent dome-shaped membrane that reflected Tod’s features. Behind the membrane was a hazel-pigmented sphincter. The sphincter relaxed slightly, increasing the diameter of the aperture at its center. Delicate muscle movements turned the two orbs upward slightly, exposing the white tissue that covered the rest of the eyes. It was all lubricated with a thin lamina of mucus. When the mucus began to dry out with exposure to air, Jim would rapidly close and open his eyelids to coat his eyes afresh.

Jim hesitated for a split second before responding. Tod’s eyes, when they were fully open, appeared to be coated in vantablack. He would occasionally slide a colored reflective membrane over the eye, making it appear as though he were wearing mirrored contact lenses. He had noticed at least four different colors of these secondary eyelids. This was in addition to the regular eyelids covered in the same ginger fur coating the rest of his face.

“Well? Should I be impressed?” Jim persisted, raising his open palms to face Tod and making grasping motions with his fingers.

«Only five digits? And you can’t even write with any of them?» Tod plucked a leaf from the branch and scribbled on it with his writing claw, mimicking the territory-marking behavior of his non sapient ancestors. He let the leaf flutter down into the cupholder of Jim’s chair.

«It’s just ink,» said Tod.

Jim sniffed the blue-black scribble on the leaf. Petrichor blended seamlessly with the cool outflow from the storm in the distance. He turned back to the skyscape. The violent convection rocketing upward from the storm’s base had finally slammed against the stable air at the edge of the stratosphere, and a cloudy anvil head was pouring out across the invisible ceiling like upside-down spilled milk.

«So, what exactly are we looking at?» Tod asked.

“Never seen a thunderstorm before?”

«I was hatched and raised on a moon orbiting a gas giant. All my military assignments were either on other moons or orbital colonies. The only planet I’ve been on besides this one is nothing but desert.»

Jim turned back to contemplate Tod’s form again. He had to be 70 pounds soaking wet. More than once Jim had tossed the little ET off his couch because he was lying on it without a slipcover. Tod could barely walk and hold onto something at the same time. How on earth did he hold a gun? Did they even have guns? What on earth did armed combat look like for a four-legged species? Humanity had barely reached out beyond our own atmosphere, but we had enough nukes to glass our whole planet nine times over. What sort of apocalypse could a species who had conquered their entire solar system bring upon themselves? …And what if they pointed their weapons at us? Jim swallowed his questions for the moment.

“You’re a veteran?”

«Yup.»

“Hoo boy, you’re gonna be real popular round here.”

«It’s not enough that I’m one of only six sapient nonhumans on this planet? Why in the Void would people here care about my military service?»

“Son, this is Texas! We love our fightin’ men and women. It don’t matter where you served or how many legs y’all got. Hope you like hearing people say, ‘thank you for your service.’”

«Women? You let females in your military?»

“Yes.”

«Female soldiers and male clerics, you guys are full of surprises. You still haven’t explained what I’m looking at.»

Jim looked back at the storm. “That’s a thunderstorm. The sun heats the ground, and the ground heats the air. The air boils up into the atmosphere carrying water vapor with it. The water vapor condenses and falls as rain.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. “And there’s the thunder.”

«And what’s that?» Tod asked a little more urgently, pointing his writing claw at the storm’s base. The gesture was unusual for monkey foxes. He was accustomed to using his eyes and muzzle to indicate the direction of interest, but he felt this application of human body language would get his point across more quickly.

“That’s...” Jim scanned the area indicated by Tod’s outstretched paw. A swirling eddy of dust had developed on the ground, and a black condensation funnel was snaking its way down to the earth to meet it.

Up until this point, Tod had been mildly nervous about the storm. The sheer size of it, towering into the heavens, was a little disquieting. The flashing arcs of electricity it produced made him uneasy. He had seen similar phenomena back home, but always looking down from orbit. But that sound it made, now that was terrifying. Some of it he was sure Jim couldn’t hear. The grinding, roaring cacophony that seemed to come from the mid-section of the cloud was too deep for Jim’s ears. The loud claps of thunder that followed every flash of electricity were just icing on the cake. His playing with the cube earlier was as much a self-soothing gesture as it was an attempt to wow his human friend, but Tod kept his emotions in check thanks to a little trick he learned in the military. Look at the most experienced guy in the room. If he’s not panicking, then you’re OK. Up to now Jim had shown no signs of distress, but the object of Tod’s query set off in Jim a cascade of involuntary bodily processes, sharpened by three and a half billion years of evolution, designed to survive an approaching threat, by fighting it or by fleeing it.

Tod turned to Jim again, scenting the air as he did so. Epinephrin, cortisol, and perhaps the merest whiff of urea. «Jim, you OK, buddy? Should I be worried?»

Jim took some time to answer. The primitive simian part of his brain was screaming “Fly, you fools!” But the somewhat-misleadingly-named "rational" part of his brain was too busy cramming that little monkey into a closet and barricading the door shut. He quickly rehearsed his response in his head. “Oh, that little thing? It’s just a twister. We get ‘em all the time here in Texas. What’s that? It’s roaring with all the voices of the damned? Nah, that’s nothing to worry about. It’s ripping asphalt off the ground? Totally normal. The sirens? The ones we installed back when we thought the Russians would nuke us, and that we are currently sounding, thereby implying this is a proportional threat? Don’t worry your fuzzy little head.”

Jim finally responded. “We... uh... we should be fine as long as we’re south of it.” He looked to his right at the setting sun. To his right. At the setting sun. The sun setting in the West. The West that was currently to his right. Then ahead 90 degrees counterclockwise from the West, at the writhing column of wind and debris, appearing to stand still in the field. The field that was to their South, which, simple logic demanded, meant they were in fact North of the tornado.

The monkey burst out of the closet.

“If it’s not moving, it’s coming toward you.”

“If it’s not moving, it’s coming toward you.”

“If it’s not moving, it’s coming toward you.”

What had started as an insistent voice in Jim’s head had escaped his lips, repeating like the mantra of a madman.

Tod noticed Jim's crazed mumbling and scented the air again. Now he was sure that was urea he was smelling. He hopped off the branch onto the ground, his tail coiled a little tighter around the mystery cube.

The sound of Tod’s movement broke Jim out of his meditation. he turned down to look at the little quadruped standing beside him. They were absolutely going to die. Tod was going to go down in history as the first alien to die on Earth, and Jim was going to be the nobody who died alongside him. And they would not be going gently. Their skin would be sandblasted away by the dust, their bones shattered by larger debris, their screams drowned out by the roar of the wind.

Jim’s monkey brain finally took control. Must protect tribe! Must protect little one! He grabbed Tod by the scruff of the neck and draped him over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

Tod let out a trilling hiss of surprise. «What in the Blind Void are you doing?!»

“Trying to save our skins!” Jim shouted as he quickly darted hither and thither, trying to choose which of the objectively terrible sheltering options was the least terrible. Flee in his car? Nope, the twister was currently blocking the only dirt road out of this trailer park. Go back inside? Of course not. Mobile homes are a tornado’s staple food source. Where was the lowest point they could get to in time? He looked back at the twister. It was definitely getting closer, and was that a cow up there?

Jim’s mind seized on the only option they had. “The ditch behind our trailer. That’s all we’ve got. Not gonna lie, Tod, we’re probably not going to survive.”

Tod squirmed his way out of Jim's grip and hopped back on the ground. «We might have a chance, if this thing still works, that is.» He flicked his tail holding the cube.

The din of the tornado was steadily getting louder, and its wind began to pull against their bodies. The two turned and ran to the drainage ditch behind the trailer, Tod gripping the cube in his tail as though their lives depended on it. Jim went prone, covering the top of his head with his hands. He turned his eye to look at Tod, but he wasn’t there. In his place was a vulpine sorcerer, executing the verbal, somatic, and material requirements for a powerful warding spell to protect them from the wrath of a god of destruction.

Tod stood on his hind feet, manipulating that powerful arcane focus with his outstretched forepaws, tail and ears blowing dramatically in the wind, hind claws digging into the wet ground for purchase against the gale. He was mumbling something as he rotated the cube, twisting the freely rotating corners of the device, The mumbling stopped as he quickly glanced up toward their approaching demise. He hastily traced an arcane rune onto one of the cube’s faces with his writing claw. The ink beaded up slightly and then was quickly absorbed into the cube without a trace. The spell’s requirements met, a metal stake extended from one of the cube’s corners. He jammed the device into the wet soil, and…

…critical failure…

The device glowed blue for a split second, then went dark again.

Tod often wondered what thoughts would be going through his mind in his last moments. Would he think of friends and family? Would a holy canticle be in his throat? Or would he utter some blasphemy against the Light that had created him? Whatever he thought would be on his mind in his final hour, it wasn’t this.

Tens of thousands of years ago, on a rusty planet neighboring their homeworld, there developed among the first wave of colonists and terraformers a strange animist cult. The spirits that this cult revered did not dwell in the wind, for their world lacked an atmosphere, nor in the water, for their planet lacked a hydrosphere, nor in the trees, for their new home lacked a biosphere. The genii worshipped by these heathens dwelt not in natural things but in the artifices of mortal paws. Within every machine—the cult believed—dwelt a fickle spirit that must be appeased with various arcane rites. The most sacred of these rites was the holy sacrament of Percussive Maintenance, where a shaman would deliver a ritual knock with a blessed wrench upon the chassis of a misbehaving machine. As subsequent waves of colonists arrived, the cult was diluted and pushed out of the collective memory, but traces of their beliefs lingered on, especially among the rank and file of the military. Ask any of Tod’s fellow soldiers, and they would dismiss such superstitious nonsense. But sometimes… sometimes an engine wouldn’t spool up, or a fabricator leasemind would refuse to boot. All the normal troubleshooting steps would be followed: Identify the problem, Establish a theory of probable cause, Test the theory, blah blah blah. But every attempt would fail. Then, out of desperation, the frustrated tech assigned to fix the problem would utter a prayer to the heathen spirit dwelling in the machine, whack the offending mechanism with a wrench, and it would spring to life, the spirit within evidently pleased with the ritual.

Tod looked up again. The roaring hell vortex was almost upon them. He saw a giant beast, hoofed and horned, careening through the air toward them. «What’ve I got to lose?» he thought as he picked up a rock and bashed the cube with it.

The machine spirit was appeased.

In an instant, the cacophony was quieted. Jim noticed the sudden lack of noise and risked an upward glance. Just as he did so, a cow slammed into an invisible barrier above them. Bright blue scintillations blossomed from the point of impact, arcing like the flashes of a detaching retina. The light cascaded down, tracing the hemispherical outline of their ephemeral shield. The cube emitted a subtle whine as the hypercapacitor within absorbed the kinetic energy of 1800 kilograms of bovine mass traveling at 134 meters per second. The cow’s trajectory halted, it slid down and landed on the leeward side of the barrier. But the twister would not be denied its quarry. The cow let out a plaintive moo as it was quickly sucked back into the swirling mass.

Other missiles collided with the forcefield, repeating the light show and increasing the pitch of the cube’s whine as they did.

SLAM! A stop sign.

SLAM! A tractor tire.

SLAM! A transformer coil.

The chaos only lasted thirty seconds, but to both Jim and Tod it felt like an eternity.

Finally, the air cleared. Jim sat up and looked at Tod. His claws were digging into the meat of his forepaws, rills of blue-black ink matting the fur on his front legs.

«By the palms that nursed me, what was that?!»

“What on earth was that?!”

The pair said simultaneously, Tod indicating the retreating funnel, and Jim looking at the cube, which had stopped whining and begun a quiet low-pitched beeping.

Jim spoke first. “A tornado. Never seen one before. Don’t want to see one again. What… what is that thing?”

The cube’s beeping increased in pitch and tempo.

«It’s supposed to block relativistic projectile weapons fire. Absorbs the kinetic energy, then you—»

The cube arrested Tod’s attention as the beeping became urgent. In a single swift motion, Tod wrapped the end of his tail around the cube, spun on his heel, and slingshot the cube into the air, then lost his balance, falling backwards onto his back. The cube traced a ballistic trajectory, flying much further than Tod’s mediocre strength could account for.

For an infinitesimal fraction of a second the cube hung at the apex of its arc, then a pillar of light and concussive force burst forth from the cube and rocketed upwards, punching a large hole through the mammatus pouches glowing red in the last rays of the sunset revealing the purple twilight sky above. The pillar of light evaporated quickly, leaving no trace of the cube behind.

Jim stared open-mouthed at the hole in the clouds until he was alerted by the sound of tires on gravel, unmuffled by his now nonexistent trailer. A police cruiser and a pickup pulled up to the remains of Jim’s home.

An officer exited the car and walked toward the two survivors. One of the survivors was a man in his 20s, and was that his dog?

Tod executed a formal greeting, rearing up and patting himself on the abdomen with a forepaw, leaving a blue-black stain on his belly. «Ink sacs are probably dry,» he thought. «It’ll be a few days before I can write again.» He looked up at the uniformed human and attempted an introduction.

“Chuff! Yip, yip! Huff, bork!”

The cop's demeanor immediately changed. “Ah! One of our little visitors from out of town.” He jogged past Jim and attended to the little arboreal canid. “You OK, little guy?”

“Yip, huff, wuff!” Tod responded.

“Tod, I don’t think he can understand you,” Said Jim.

«Well tell him I’m fine.»

“He’s fine, officer.”

“And you, sir?” asked the cop.

“I’m OK, I think.”

“That twister was ripping up the road. How on earth did you two survive?”

Jim looked at Tod, then up at the hole punched in the sky.

The cop turned back to Tod. “That huge laser thing, that was something of yours?”

“Bork!”

The cop squatted down and looked Tod in the eyes shielded by crimson bandpass membranes reflecting the flashing lights of the cruiser. “I’m very happy you were able to save yourself and your friend, but you need to be careful with your fancy little doodads in the future. I just hope you didn’t hit anything with that.”

«A retribution field generator isn’t a ‘fancy little doodad’.» Tod mimicked the stress and tone of the officer’s admonition, but all his cynoid vocal tract could manage was “awAAA ohOO OOwaah”

“Anyway,” said the cop, standing back up, “We need to get you two checked out by a doctor to make sure nothing’s wrong.” He looked at Jim. “Well, we need to get you to the doctor. I’m not sure what we can do for our little guest, but I’d hate to think we’re leaving something untreated.”

«I’m fine, really. But if you need someone to give me a clean bill of health, we can have Sunshine take a look at me. All her medical stuff is stored on the Dewfall.»

Jim relayed Tod’s suggestion to the officer.

“OK, I’ll take you to the clinic, and we’ll have Mark take your friend to his ship,” said the cop, gesturing toward the pickup.

Just then, the driver’s side door of the pickup opened. The beeping cadence of a CW repeater ID and the smell of decade-old second-hand smoke drifted out of the cab. Tod slid back the bandpass membranes covering his eyes and tilted his ears forward in the yinrih equivalent of an excited grin. He recognized that smell. The truck belonged to one of the radio club members, the first group of humans the crew of the Dewfall set eyes on after arriving on Earth.

An older man got out of the truck and ran up to the group. He looked at Jim and the officer, then down at Tod. “Hi, little man, haven’t seen you in a while. Glad to see your OK.”

“Chuff! Yip!” said Tod.

“Ah, sorry I haven’t learned the lingo yet. You need to come to the club meetings and teach me.”

Mark looked back at the officer.

“You’re taking him to his ship. He’ll contact their medic and have her meet you there,” said the cop.

“Will do.” Mark looked back down at Tod. “Let’s get going.”

Tod slid another pair of bandpass membranes over his eyes and surveyed the remains of their trailer. It didn’t take long for him to find the little trunk he was looking for. It was impossible to miss, for him anyway. The humans probably thought it looked dark gray, but to Tod it was painted in the Allied Worlds standard safety color, far outside the human visible spectrum. He scampered over and delicately opened the lid, trying not to smear ink on the contents of the box. He pulled out the two objects he needed: a paw keyer and a pair of HUD specs.

The HUD specs looked like a pair of reading glasses designed by a dog: two frameless glass lenses connected by a bridge designed to sit on the muzzle. The keyer looked like the rubber grip on a bicycle handlebar. Four keys lined the length of the device, sitting in shallow grooves sculpted to fit a yinrih’s four middle digits. Two clusters of buttons capped each end where the inner and outer thumb rested. The HUD specs and paw keyer together filled the role of portable computer.

Tod wrapped the keyer and specs in his tail and hopped into Mark’s truck. He laid down on his back in the rear seat of the cab, gripped the keyer in his left rear paw, and put the HUD specs over his muzzle. Squeezing the two thumb keys together started the boot process. The two lenses frosted over, obscuring the roof of Mark’s truck. Reams of boot text, glowing a comfortable infrared, flowed down Tod’s field of vision. After a few seconds, the screen cleared and the login prompt appeared, the square cursor blinking expectantly.

Localhost login  
Username: tod  
password: ********  
tod@localhost:~$ omnichat  
connecting...  
connection successful  

4 users currently online:  
 
tod  
stormlight  
iris  
sunshine  

==========

tod> Jim and I caught in some sort of windstorm. Both OK but our friends insist I see a healer. Currently on my way to the Dewfall. 

sunshine> It’s true you red-pelts really are unlucky.

tod> shut up. Your fur is just as red as mine, remember

sunshine> What fur? I'm a healer. I was just kidding, Tod. I’ll be there ASAP

<sunshine has left>

tod> /quit

<Leaving chat>

tod@localhost:~$ humansynth

Experimental human speech synthesizer interactive prompt
Enter phoneme string or /h for help

>>>

Mark looked down at his little passenger lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, left rear paw barely twitching as he entered chords on the keyer. Inky paw prints covered one side of the bench where Tod had pulled himself into the cab.

“Sorry I got my ink all over your vehicle,” Said a tinny bloodless voice coming from the input device Tod held in his paw.

Mark inhaled. The smell of a welcome rain after a long drought filled his nostrils. “Don’t worry about it,” Mark responded. “I believe we’ve seen each other before but I don’t think I know your name. I’m Mark.”

Tod uttered a few more opaque yips and grunts. “It means 'Steadfast Friend', but that's a mouthful in English. Just call me ‘Tod’. That’s the name Jim gave me.”

“’Tod’, that’s clever, you look like a little tod fox with your red coat and black ears.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Sure. Foxes are sly little critters.”

“Interesting. This pelt color has some bad associations back home.”

“Is that so?”

“Having a red pelt is supposed to mean you’re unlucky, and having black ears means you’re dumb. I’ve got both, so I’m constantly the butt of jokes. Nobody actually believes that, for sure, but the teasing gets really old really quick.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that.”

The topic of conversation wandered here and there as the pair drove down the road. As they were nearing the Dewfall’s landing site, the subject of Tod’s military service came up.

“So you’re a vet, then?” Mark asked.

“Yeah. Never seen combat, but did a few peacekeeping missions. Relief supply deliveries, helping refugee camps, that sort of thing.”

The truck pulled up to the landing site. A small car pulled up shortly after, a bumper sticker proudly identifying the driver as a student at the veterinary school at the nearby college. A woman got out of the driver’s seat and opened the back passenger door. Another yinrih, completely hairless with black splotches on the bare skin of her paws and muzzle, hopped out and ran to the truck.

Mark and Tod also disembarked.

Sunshine looked up at Mark and executed the customary introduction, rearing up on her hind feet and patting her belly. «Light shine upon you, friend. My name’s Sunshine.»

Mark looked pleadingly at Tod, who was now incommunicado, having removed the specs and keyer.

“She’s saying hi,” said the woman.

“Howdy, ma’am,” said mark.

“Sunshine filled me in on the way here,” said Sarah. “I’ll take Tod back to Jim at the clinic when she's done with her little checkup. You can go if you want.”

“OK. Thanks for your help." Mark climbed back into the cab and started the engine. “Seventy-three, Tod. Come see us at the radio club so we can start talking for real.”

“Yip, huff!” said Tod.

Mark closed the door, but quickly rolled down the window for a few parting words. “Tod, Thank you for your service,” he said as he put the truck in gear.

"I really wish you wouldn't wear that thing on campus." Sarah plucked a sticker from Sunshine's back reading Fur is murder! "Last time I took a whole can of red paint for you."

Sunshine looked at the sticker Sarah had removed from her fur cloak. «I wouldn't be showing the saint proper respect if I let her hame sit around and gather dust. I'm blessed to wear her holy pelage.»

"Yeah, and that's another thing, most humans don't regard wearing the skin of a dead person to be honoring them."

«But WE do. You'll just have to explain it to them.»

"Next time bring your keyer and you can explain it yourself. I'm sick of talking about Claravian funerary rituals to literally everyone that walks by."

Sunshine looked back at the field. The teams were filing out for half time. «This is an interesting game. What's it called again?»

"Football," said Sarah.

«But they aren't using their feet very much, except for all the running.»

Sarah shrugged. "Honestly I don't know why we call it that. There's another sport that's also called 'football', well by people from other countries, anyway, that involves a lot more kicking."

«What's THAT!» Sunshine barked, gesturing with her muzzle down at the field.

"Oh that's just the college mascot, the Erickson College Coyote." A man in a coyote costume, wearing a baseball hat and T-shirt with the school's logo on it, was capering around the field.

«And why... is it on its hind feet?» asked Sunshine, a nervous tremor in her voice.

"It's just a guy in a costume. Wait, are you afraid of it?"

«No, it's just--" Sunshine gestured with her forepaw at her whiskery muzzle and erect motile ears, "And then he has--» she pointed at Sarah's arms and legs. "It's... Unsettling."

"This coming from the woman wearing a three-thousand year old dead person's pelt as a winter jacket."

«Hey! Don't forget you're as strange to us as we are to you.»

"Fair enough," Sarah sighed. "We humans have this thing that happens when we see something that's almost human but not quite. It's a feeling of revulsion we call 'The Uncanny Valley.' Basically, if you take a creature that isn't human and gradually make it more and more human-looking, it gets more and more appealing, but when it's almost but not perfectly human, there's a fear reaction because we think it SHOULD be human but we know it isn't. Maybe you're feeling the monkey fox equivalent to the uncanny valley."

«Maybe you're right,» said Sunshine, building up the courage to examine the mascot. «So why does his hat not cover his ears? Why cover your head but leave the most sensitive parts exposed? Ears need the most protection from cold and sun.» She gestured with her tail at the loose part of the hame wrapped around her ears against the November chill.

"I don't know," Sarah admitted.

«And why is he wearing a shirt if he already has fur to keep him warm? And why isn't he wearing pants, or shoes for that matter? Why cover only the upper body?»

"I told you, it's just a guy in a costume, a guy who goes to the same veterinary pharmacology class as I do. So you know what, Next Monday you come to class with me and you can ask him yourself."

«Maybe I will,» Sunshine huffed.

part one

---

"Hey," the greeter stepped in front of the pair. "No shirt, no shoes, no service," he said pointing down at Pascal.

"But--" Fr. Shaheen protested.

"--Nah, Just kidding, go on in. I've been wanting to say that ever since you little guys landed."

The two entered the store proper. "It'll just be a minute, My cigs are right over there--" Fr. Shaheen gestured toward one of the checkout lanes. A line of shoppers, at least 20 deep, snaked around the surrounding displays.

He swore in Arabic under his breath. "OK, it'll be longer than a few minutes."

"Short-staffed tonight," said the shopper at the end of the line. "Let me guess, Cigarettes? That's what everyone else is here for."

He glanced down at Pascal. "First time at Wally World?"

Pascal bobbed his head up and down in an exaggerated nod.

"He needs to see the other side of humanity," said Fr. Shaheen. "Those ivory tower folks at the college are showing them Olympic athletes and firefighters and renaissance masterpieces, and I want to give them the whole picture."

"Hoo boy you're in for something alright," the shopper chuckled. "Hey between you and me, if you wanna blow up the Earth after this I won't even blame you."

As they talked, a large woman in a scooter rolled up to the end of the line. "Aww!" she cooed between breaths of exertion. "So cute." She reached down and scratched Pascal behind the ears. "Whosagoodboyyesyouare!"

«I'm a person and I have personal space!» Pascal barked, ducking out of her reach.

The shopper glared at the woman. "Seriously, lady? You been living under a rock the last two months? What makes you think that's OK?"

"He's got fur, ain't he? And four legs and a wet nose. If God didn't want us to pet 'em then why'd He make 'em fuzzy?"

"You must be from Austin," said the shopper. "I thought we chased all you weirdos away weeks ago."

The pair's argument gradually increased in volume. The woman rose from her scooter and began gesticulating. Fr. Shaheen stepped between them. "Let's be charitable--"

"Cram it, fish eater!" the woman snapped.

Pascal slipped down an aisle and out of sight, anxious to avoid the melee that was surely brewing.

He stared up at the shelves and scented the air as he walked. Away from his human host everything seemed intimidatingly tall. Suddenly he felt something wet under his right front paw. He looked down at the yellow puddle underfoot and sniffed, the unmistakable odor of human excreta.

An elderly human was waddling around the corner, more of the same odor wafting off of him. "Better clean that up, sonny," he said to a passing employee.

"Clean what up?" A adolescent male voice approached from the other direction. The lad came into view and looked down at the puddle. His face flashed with frustration and then to embarrassment when he noticed Pascal's paw marinading in the mess.

"I heard over the walkie that one of you guys was here." he sighed, pulling a wad of sanitizer wipes from a cleaning cart behind him. "So, ready to nuke us from orbit yet?" he handed the wipes to Pascal. "It's the only way to be sure."

Pascal shook his head as he wrung the towelettes between his forepaws, wiping under his claws and between the pads on his palms.

"No?" The boy said as he mopped up the puddle. "You will be when you get out of here.

"I'll take those," he put the spent wipes in a trash bin on the cart. "All good?"

Pascal jerked his foreleg forward and gave an unpracticed thumbs-up along with an awkward affirmative bob of the head.

"Cool," the lad said. "Name's Jeff, by the way."

"Pascal," he synthesized, patting himself on the belly in greeting.

"Pleased to meet you," Jeff said, copying the gesture. "I'm gonna say sorry on behalf of my entire species for all this." He waved an arm vaguely indicating their surroundings. "Walmart's one heck of an anthropology lesson."

Pascal flicked an ear in goodbye and turned to walk back to the front of the store. He heard more Arabic oaths in the direction of the tills, and judging by the clamor more nicotine-deprived humans had joined the fracas. He did a 180 and trotted past Jeff finishing up his cleaning.

"Wise choice," Jeff said as Pascal turned the corner and headed deeper into the bowels of the store.

He continued walking, nose to the ground making sure not to step in any more surprises, until he heard two more humans approaching.

"Honey, why did you grab so many cans of beans?"

"It's those damn monkey foxes, Dave. I'm tellin' you they're fixin' to invade. And when they do, we'll be prepared."

"With beans?" her husband sighed. "There's only six of them. They don't mean any harm. One of them's even been coming to the radio club meetings. He's been trying to teach some of us a word or two of their language."

"It's all an act, Dave." The couple emerged from around the corner.

"There's one now!" the woman shrieked. Startled, Pascal jumped backward, knocking a few items off the shelf behind him with his tail. After gathering himself, he looked up at the woman, gawking at her spray-on tan and bottle blonde hair.

«I didn't know humans could be orange,» he muttered.

"What was that? Speak up, space coyote!"

Pascal reached into his wallet and pulled out his keyer, but the woman snatched it out of his paw.

"Ha! You're not brain-washing anyone tonight!" She hurled the keyer to the ground. Pascal dove after it just as the woman brought her foot down, intending to smash the keyer but catching Pascal's paw instead.

Pain shot up his foreleg. He stifled a bark and looked up at the male human as he massaged his paw, determined for this inter-species interaction to end peacefully. "You friend smell familiar. From radio club?"

"You got me," Dave smiled.

"Don't talk to the enemy!" his wife said, moving between him and Pascal.

Dave began tugging at her arm. "I'm so sorry," he said with a frown. "She's on some new meds; we're working on the dosage."

"ARE YOU CALLING ME CRAZY?!" the woman yelled, her eyes darting around wildly. "I'M THE ONLY ONE WHO'S NOT CRAZY AROUND HERE!"

"I'm so sorry," Dave repeated, steering her down the aisle and out of sight.

Pascal cocked an ear toward the tills again. The din had only gotten louder. He limped around for a few minutes until he caught the unmistakable smell of sugars and lipids on the air.

"Ma'am, this is a bakery, but not a BAKERY bakery." Another young human, female this time, was being accosted by an older woman. "If you want a premade sheet cake, we got premade sheet cakes. You want me to put 'Happy Birthday' on it? I'd be more than happy to, but we can't bake a cake in the shape of a Stanley cup."

"The Customer is always right!" snapped the woman.

"in matters of taste," the girl muttered under her breath.

"What was that?!"

"I said 'Is there anything else I can help you with?'"

"No! You've just lost yourself a customer."

"oh no..." the girl whispered sarcastically.

The woman spun around, nearly tripping over Pascal's tail, stabbing it with a stiletto in the process.

He yelped in pain but the woman stormed off without looking back. His cry caught the attention of the girl behind the counter. She leaned over to peer down at Pascal. "You OK?"

«Honestly I've been better,» he grunted, probing with a padded finger at the maroon stain spreading over the white pelage of his tail.

"This tail fine," he said via the keyer. "Not much this blood. Hurt worse before."

He stood there for a moment, nursing his tail in silence as the girl looked on.

At last he curled his tail tight against his back and put his paws up on the sneeze guard. "You friend sell what?"

"Cakes and cookies," she said.

"Those C A K E S and those C O O K I E S what?" He drew out the unfamiliar words.

"They're food, you eat them. You want to try a sample?"

"Not want," he wagged his head from side to side. "Might kill me yinrih. maybe that human food this yinrih poison."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," she said.

Pascal peeked over the counter. "No chair? What way you friend sit? All day that boss make stand you friend?"

"Yeah," she sighed. "They say it makes us look lazy if we sit. Such is the life of a wage slave. But I guess that's not a thing where you guys are from, huh?"

"We yinrih have," said Pascal. "some place we yinrih go buy this thing or that thing. Some place eat some food. When pup at that place me yinrih work, bring those food, take away those dirty bowl."

"You were a waiter!" The girl said.

"Me W A I T E R," Pascal nodded. He had set his HUD specs on his muzzle and was hastily skimming a poorly organized English lexicon for words he couldn't recall, occasionally jotting down new ones as the conversation unfolded.

"Where we come from, this place call--" he grunted the word in Outlander before finding the correct English translation. "Litter of moons. It call because planet big made of gas, have many moons, they follow planet like pups follow dam."

"That's sweet," said the girl.

"anyway," Pascal continued, "at moonlitter, it part of E D U C A T I O N of pups, they make pup work at store or at R E S T A U R A N T. They say it make pup E M P A T H I Z E with those worker in C U S T O M E R S E R V I C E when grow up."

"Ah, so it's part of your schooling, then? They make you hold down a job?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Teach F I N A N C I A L L I T E R A C Y too."

"I wonder what alien Karens are like," the girl said half to herself.

"K A R E N?" Pascal queried.

"That--" she pointed at the wound on Pascal's tail. "--that woman who stepped on your tail, that was a classic Karen."

"Yes yes," he bobbed his head. "Those we have."

"We call them..." here he paused while digging through the lexicon. "...It hard to say. "My language Outlander have thing English not have. English say 'you' for everyone, but Outlander have different 'you' for different people."

He uttered a few melodic grunts and whines. "That mean, 'you' but only for you sire or dam or litter mate. It called--" he rummaged for an obtuse grammatical term. "--it called F A M I L I A L form."

More growling, "and that mean 'you' but for friend only, That is A M I C A B L E form."

A chuff and some whining, "and that mean 'you' for everyone else. And that called T R A N S A C T I O N A L form."

Recognition dawned on the girl's face. "Ah! English doesn't do that but Spanish does. You say 'Tú' for friends and family but 'Usted' for everyone else."

Pascal flicked an ear in acknowledgement. "yes yes. Like that. When you talk to customer or when customer talk to you, It proper use transactional form. When you worker talk other worker use transactional too, maybe amicable if good good friend. But you never never use familial form at work. It considered V U L G A R."

"That bad?"

"Yes yes." Pascal geckered in amusement. "When foreigner learn Outlander they make this mistake much. Sunshine does this all the time. You see her, yes yes? Other missionary, no fur and big ears, she is from other part of Focus, planet called Hearthside. When Hearthsider learn Outlander, they think familial form mean 'I like you, you like my family, so I call you by that'. But that not right. Well, that not only meaning. Yes it mean 'I think you like family' but it also mean 'I expect you TREAT ME like family. So obey like pup obey sire or dam, or give special treatment like between litter mates. When customer use that form, it make them sound E N T I T L E D. Like you owe them respect, like they are one of your sires or your dams.

"Anyway, These Karens, they like to use familial 'you' to workers, So we have a word, it means 'one who uses familial pronoun'. Long in English but much shorter in Outlander. So I put 'Karen' in our lexicon."

The girl smiled.

"You show your teeth. That is good, yes?"

"Oh yeah, sorry," she said. "Humans show our teeth when we're happy."

"Like this?" Pascal slid his lips back, flashing his fangs.

The girl laughed. "Yeah. You know, I didn't realize how much like us you guys were. We have all these stories about aliens, some want to kill us, some want to loot our planet, sometimes we kill them. Sometimes they're so different from us that we can't even communicate. But it rarely ends well when we meet. But here we are, two veterans of the customer service trenches trading war stories. It makes the universe feel a little less lonely."

Pascal cocked an ear toward the front of the store. "The argument has stopped. I go back."

"Nice meeting you I'm Lupe, And your name?"

"Pascal," He said, rearing up on his hind feet and patting his belly.

"Bye, Pascal, Oh, and your English is great, I think you got better just while we were talking."

"Thank you. I talk more, I get better." He started off toward the front of the store.

"Got my cigs!" Fr. Shaheen, sporting a black eye and fat lip, held the carton of carcinogens aloft like a video game protagonist after acquiring a new item. A few of the other patrons were being hauled off by cops. "The bishop's gonna have some questions for me in the morning. I'm sure this'll end up in a few YouTube videos at least."

"So," he said as they walked back to the pickup, a lit cigarette already between his lips. "You've seen Man the angel and Man the ape, what do you think about us now?"

Pascal took stock of his injuries, his smashed paw and lacerated tail, then slid back his lips and looked up at the priest.

"You're showing your teeth. Is something wrong?" Fr. Shaheen asked.

«No, not at all. I know you can't smell our pheromones, so I thought imitating you're teeth-bearing gesture would let you know I'm happy.»

«I see that humans can be violent, greedy, disgusting animals.»

"And that makes you happy?"

«Because yinrih are also violent, greedy, disgusting animals. You think these claws are just for climbing trees? We didn't set out to find perfect creatures to admire on a pedestal. We want others who can walk down the hard road of life together with us. We want friends, and that's what we found.»

Alien speech is indicated by Italian quotes («»).

---

Fr. Shaheen took a drag of his cigarrette as he stared up at the night sky. A few stars were just bright enough to shine through the gray haze cast by the street lights in town.

Just at the edge of the trailer's porch light sat an old foundation where a sizeable rectory once stood. It had been far too large for a single resident, so he had it torn down and was now living in a much more modest mobile home. At one point a youth center was planned to take its place, but the number of heads devoid of gray hairs that could be found in the pews of Our Lady of the Cedars could be counted on both hands.

Rare was the night where the priest couldn't be found puffing away in front of his trailer. Restful nights were few and far between. Maybe his smoking habit was to blame. His new housemate did comment frequently on his snoring, loud enough to be heard from the other end of the house.

That new housemate was awkwardly lying on the bench across from him, a haphazard jumble of limbs. He was covered wet nose to prehensile tail in black and white fur. He broke the silence with a cough. "Why you cleric breathe that smoke stick?" came a tinny robotic voice from somewhere in the tangle of legs. "That smoke make cough. Smell bad bad." While the little quadruped's English was improving by the day. The intonation was off, with stressed syllables appearing everywhere but where they should.

"We all have our vices," sighed Fr. Shaheen. "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

"You cleric friend, ask ask."

"Why'd Iris insist on you staying with me?"

After a long pause, "She iris think you human maybe follow Light more good than us yinrih. Maybe again you cleric make me friend believe."

"I think Dr. Staples has been giving you guys the wrong idea about humanity."

"He doctor show us how strong human, how fast human. Show us beautiful arts. Show us human help other and not think self."

"Yeah, that's what we aspire to be," grunted Fr. Shaheen as he rose to his feet.

"Where you cleric go?" asked the creature as he oozed down from the bench and planted his hexadactyl paws on the wooden porch.

"Come on. We're going to get more cancer sticks." The priest walked to a dust-caked pickup truck parked next to the trailer. After a deep bowing stretch the alien trotted behind him.

"Turn off that synthesizer," said the priest as he turned the ignition. "I need to work on my Commonthroat comprehension."

The alien complied, slipping the small chording keyer from his wrist and placing it in a pocketed band around his right foreleg. His real voice came in quiet melodic whines and growls, as though a dog were trying to speak Mandarin in its sleep. The priest had to strain to discern the subtle shifts in volume that were just as meaningful as the underlying sound.

«When are you going to give me a human name?» the alien grunted.

"Eh? Don't you have a perfectly good Commonthroat name? ring...light, isn't it? So like moonlight, but from a ring around your home planet?"

«Yeah, but I want a name humans can pronounce.»

"What's wrong with translating your name as is?"

«This planet doesn't have a ring, and none of you humans have been on a planet that does. I feel like the name falls flat. I want my name to mean something to those around me, not just to the five other yinrih who are with me.»

After a long pause, "Back there before we left, you said you didn't believe anymore."

The alien hesitated, then tilted his muzzle up, a rough equivalent to an affirmative nod. «I was a devout pup. I went to liturgies daily, poured over hagiographies, could quote scripture as easy as breathing. Faith helped me back then. I was...am--» The next few words were lost on the priest.

"Maybe rephrase that last part, Those are some new words for me."

«Well... I'm not sure if you humans experience this, but some of us have something wrong in our brains, a condition that keeps us from feeling happy. I have that condition.»

"Depression," said the priest. "We've got that over here alright. I struggle with depression, too. A lot of humans do. My faith keeps me afloat. Sounds like it helped you, too. But what happened?"

«I always needed something solid I could stand on, something tangible that vindicated my faith. Through my puppyhood I thought I had that something, but I turned out to be wrong.»

"What was that something?"

«Persistence,» said the alien. «For a hundred thousand years the Bright Way persisted. It survived threats from without and from within. It managed to survive so long despite the often profound stupidity of its leaders. I thought only a divine mandate could keep such a mess from foundering.»

"And...?"

«It was a lot of little things. I noticed other Wayfarers could be just as rude and hateful as anyone else, and that made me wonder if the Bright Way is no better than any other group of people, is it really special? Surely the organization that claims to be the bastion of truth and virtue should be BETTER, right? Not just not any worse.

«But the tipping point was when the High Hearthkeeper tried to shutter the missionaries, the whole purpose for the Bright Way's existence, you know? 'Go, dearest little ones, spread your light to the stars, and ye shall become brighter yourselves.' That's the Great Commandment. That's our most sacred precept, that we're not alone in the universe, that we should seek out the Light's other creatures among the stars. So what? We're just going to abandon it now? Than what are we? What is our reason for being?

«That's when it hit me. If our own leader doesn't care, why should I?»

"You sacrificed a lot. It took you 250 years to get here, and it'll be at least that long before you see others of your kind again. If you think this mission from God, this Great Commandment, of yours is just a fairy tale, than why bother?"

«As for me,» said the alien, «I'm not a very gregarious person. The other missionaries with me, they're all I've got. If I didn't go with them I'd likely never see them again.»

"But still... dropping everything knowing you may never return, that's a heavy choice to make, friends or not."

«Well, you can blame Iris for twisting my ear. She said if I were right, and this is all nonsense, I will have lost nothing by coming with them. It's not like we age while in suspension, and it wasn't like I was pulling up roots by leaving home. But if the Bright Way is right, I will have gained everything by obeying the Great Commandment, so--» He quickly flicked his ears back in a cynoid shrug.

The priest was beaming.

«You're showing your teeth. Is something wrong?»

"Pascal!" the priest proclaimed. "That's your human name!"

«I don't follow.»

"Blaise Pascal, he lived 400 years ago. Most people today know him as a scientist, I'm pretty sure there's a unit of measure named after him, but he also talked a lot about faith. Pascal's wager. What Iris told you. We call that Pascal's wager. Lose nothing or gain everything."

Pascal looked out the window as the pickup pulled into a sprawling parking lot. At its center was an equally sprawling monolithic building.

«So why'd you bring me here, other than to get more of your foul-smelling smoking sticks?»

"I told you what Dr. Staples showed you was what we humans want to be. That's all well and good, but you also need to know what we are." The priest got out of the pickup and Pascal followed.

"You're definitely going to need that synthesizer."

Pascal positioned the keyer in his left forepaw, then looked up at the large illuminated sign above the entrance and attempted to sound out the letters.

"W A L M A R T"

To be continued...