The Care and Feeding of Humans (Fubsyverse) part 1

There are a number of expeditions that are classed as dangerous enough to need humans on the team. This book is designed to walk you through caring and feeding humans so that when you arrive at your expedition, your humans will be happy and healthy enough to keep you safe.

Dybbuk Review of Ontological Species Studies. The Care and Feeding of Humans, "Introduction.", published by Glass and Steele, The Care and Feeding of Humans, translation engine 3.14159

Nerif scrolled through the catalog of "available to hire". The long, thin alien tried to act as though she'd done this many times, while at the same time enjoying the bubbling of excitement she felt inside. She was finally getting to work with a human! She'd been fascinated with them since she was a child, and had read everything she could find about them, but this was her first time going on an expedition that required the hiring of not one, not two, but three humans.

She marked her selection, while watching her total change in the corner of the page. Higher skill set humans cost more, obviously. She needed to balance the needs of her team with the budget she'd been given. She finally settled on two males with average skill sets. Well, average for humans. And one female with a really excellent skill set. The only reason the expedition would be able afford someone with her skills is that she was damaged. The catalog didn't go into details about the damage, only indicating the loss of the right arm and some personality damage from previous assignments.

Nerif shivered in secret delight. Truth be told, the opportunity to work with a damaged human was even beyond her dreams. That she could explain to the team about the value she'd gotten and not have to reveal how this fell into her own plans made it perfect.

She sent the request, along with the funds, and the ship berth designation, and then headed back to report. She held herself with her long fingers wrapping around her waist. She felt like she might explode with excitement and held herself together in case her imagination became reality. She was a highly imaginative being and liked to imagine that her thoughts could make things be so.

The next morning, she stepped into the hold holding her morning stimulant. She didn't need it this morning, but sipped anyway, trying to look as though this morning were no different than any other run. The two human males showed up first, and Nerif could feel any chance of playing it cool just slipping away.

"Hi, I'm Nerif. You must be two of our new humans."

She could feel the feathers on her head raising in excitement, and hoped the humans didn't know as much about her species as she did about them. The two humans smiled and nodded in agreement.

Smiled! She got to see a smile! If it hadn't been so undignified in a being of her age and status, Nerif would have made the 'squee' sound of delight that very young Limniads made.

While the humans did pull their lips back and exposed their teeth, she noticed the skin around their eyes didn't wrinkle, so it wasn't a true smile. Just a polite gesture. Her hair drooped a little with disappointment, but she reminded herself that this was only a first meeting, not a true meeting.

The humans didn't seemed to be armed, which was also a disappointment after hearing so many stories about how they loved their weapons, but Nerif mocked herself and pointed out they could be hardly be expected to walk around with their guns waving in the air.

"I'm Allen, and this handsome guy is Nate," one of the humans said.

Allen's coloration was unusual for humans, according to Nerif's research. He was so pale that she suddenly understood why humans had labeled this skin color as "white". His hair was a color that she couldn't quite place, but didn't qualify as "red" unless humans had more color deficits in their eyesight than her research had taught her.

Nate's skin was also called "white" by humans, though much darker than Allen's skin color. She began to lean toward the color deficit theory. His hair was a more common brown, the color of a kivi-bird's wings after a molt.

She held her hands out in excitement (Finally! A chance to participate in a human greeting ritual!) and said, "Pleased to meet you."

Allen shook her hand as she'd expected, but Nate took a little longer and switched his bag from his left hand to his right so he could shake her left hand. Allen and Nate exchanged discreet glances and small smiles that did actually reach their eyes and Nerif was delighted that their greeting had attained true greeting status.

After shaking their hands exactly two and half times, she released their grips and said, "We have one more human that should be arriving soon. After you have a chance to unpack your goods in your quarters, the entire ship will be meeting for a final briefing in the common area."

"Oh?" Allen raised one eyebrow at her, and Nerif found herself fascinated over the facial muscle control that allowed him to do that. She dug through her memory of human facial trivia and remembered that an uplifted eyebrow could mean curiosity, doubt, or sometimes humor. "Who else is joining the team?"

"A human female named Zoe. Do you know her?" Nerif asked.

Allen shook his head. "Never heard of her."

"But you're both human," Nerif said. Not quite a protest.

"Us and few billion other people," Nate cut in. He swung his bag over one shoulder. "Not all of your people know each other, do you?"

Nerif hesitated, not sure how to reply. She could name any of her people on sight but that didn't mean she had met even a small percentage of them. And it was rude to name people before you'd had a true greeting. She wondered if "never heard of her" was a human expression about not having had true greeting yet. "Ah, of course," she answered.

"Now, could you show us to our bunks?" Nate asked.

"Bunks?" Nerif repeated the odd word, savoring the way it felt as she said the word. Her people prided themselves on their linguistic skills, and it hadn't occurred to her that she might need a translator. Her feathers flattened in embarrassment.

"He means our quarters. Nobody calls them bunks anymore, except space cowboys," Allen put in.

"Space cowboys?" Nerif repeated, a little hesitantly. "Cowboys are an archaic job of guarding cows from thieves and predators, like the dire wolf. Why would there be cowboys in space? Cows and their predators can't live there."

"Exactly!" Allen said, as though she had proved a point he'd been making. "But, dire wolves? They died out a few thousand years before cowboys started working."

"But I had read in the novel "The Old Man and the Call of the Wild" about the author's battle with dire wolves on the plains and mountains of Canada," she protested.

"Oh, Canada," Allen and Nate exchanged those small smiles again. "I wasn't thinking about Canada."

Nerif felt a moment of relief that her research hadn't let her down, and her feathers responded with a small lift. She turned and gestured one of the droids over. "If you will please give this unit your bags, it will take you to your quarters. Your bunks." She added the new term carefully.

She waved "good bye" to Allen and Nate as they left the cargo hold, an energetic gesture that involved flapping your hands back and forth, according to the videos she had researched.

"Seems like a good kid," Nate said as they walked away.

"And she loves her some human pulp fiction," Allen agreed.