Aye-Aye
The fallout of the first contact had ravaged half of the planet. They had come in peace and kindness, but hadn’t counted on what their spacecraft and the sight of aliens for the first time would do to Earth and its inhabitants. There had been a retaliation, and from that on, things had gone to shit.
I was part of the first crew to land on Earth, and now I was part of the crew fighting the human factions who saw aliens as monsters and the alien factions who saw humans as monsters. It was a clusterfuck, as my human friends would call it. Friends who sometimes recoiled when I came up unannounced. It wasn’t like I thought they were that pretty. I would choose a hammerhead bat anytime over humans. An aye-aye or even a naked mole rat would do compared to what humans were like. But there was no negotiating with them. Humans, unfortunately, were the planet’s dominant species.
A scream rang out as I stepped into the room. I had been told I looked like a shark mixed with a lizard with fur. Then there was the odor. It wasn’t bad, but it was odd to their senses, igniting anxiety in them. It seemed like we were biologically incompatible. More from the human side: while they weren’t beautiful, I found them harmlessly ugly, and they smelled like mole rats. However, some of them masked their natural scent with something that made my eight eyes water.
“Good morning,” I said in a perfect human tongue.
I was the first of my kind to arrive, but the eight humans we were working with were already monitoring the com-systems and the aerial streams. Currently, the rebellion group of my kind was the bigger issue. They were hiding in the most populated area of the New Earth Coalition, disguising themselves as humans to fit in. They were destroying the settlement within, and we couldn’t go in guns blazing. Another human term that I liked.
The rebellion group’s leader was my brother. We came from the same litter, but he had gone bad after the human missiles had taken down one of our crafts, carrying our babies. He couldn’t put it past that humans had done it out of fear rather than callousness. He saw humans as a dangerous species that would harm the entire universe if they ever left their planet, and now that we had arrived and shown them that space travel was possible, they would.
“Morning.” I got a reply when the initial terror had died down.
It was a marvel how human bodies worked. It took hours upon hours of re-education for them to function on a biological level with us. Their cognitive capabilities had been able to accept us, but still the body remembered. I was told that they had issues in-race too. That seemed like an odd thing to have.
I took a step closer to the screens. Interpreting human images took all my concentration. My eyes struggled to adjust to the mixed use of dimensions in a flat space. I had to push my head close to the screens to follow the patterns painted on them. I glanced over the neighborhood, looking for my brother and those who had followed him. It must take great effort for my brother to stay in human disguise. I refused to use the technology with humans. It was dishonest. We had used it in the past with other alien contacts, and it had created friction. Friction, we refused to introduce into our human relations.
“There.” I tapped the screen with my long aye-aye-like finger.
My human colleague selected the street view and magnified the image. I could step back and follow my brother, moving among the humans.
“He’s carrying a nerve-paralyzer. Show me where the street leads,” I commanded.
Arjun made another screen follow the street.
I pressed my head close to the screen again, following the stream of humans. The street led to a hub of little shops. I suppressed an urge to curse in my own tongue. My human friends reported that our language made the hairs on their backs stand up. It was clear that we could be the Earth’s apex predators if we wanted to. I could easily rip Arjun’s head off his body, but I didn’t. That was not my mission or my wish.
“My team needs to go in,” I said, knowing that I needed to bend my rules about using disguises. We stayed away from human settlements as much as we could, especially on hostile, uncontrollable missions. If my team went in with our full tactical gear, there would be dire consequences for future cooperation. But we couldn’t use humans like we normally did. My brother would kill them.
“There isn’t enough t…” Arjun was about to say.
“It has already been done. My team will be here in seven seconds. We will use a portal and stop my brother.” I stepped away from the screen, and my team came in, looking like humans. My commander-in-chief handed me a disguise plate, and I turned into a smallish dark-haired woman.
—
I rebelled today. What I got today was a lyrical magical-realism rebirth story written in the first person. All I kept was the first person. This story somehow emerged, and I needed to follow it, even though I’d planned to head to the sofa after raffling the parameters. Stories sometimes sneak in, and there is nothing one can do to stop them. I had fun exploring the concept and my main character in this one. It would be fun to see where this could lead.
Thank you for reading! Have a day full of aliens and stories, and see you tomorrow ❤
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