The Most Dangerous Gamer, part 2: The Adventures of Human Gina

Jajaqin stared. He may have squealed a scream of alarm, he couldn't be sure.

The human bared its teeth at him, swooping down from the branch and, planting a foot on his thorax, wrenched his hunting implement out of his grip in one swift tug. Dancing about him like a qinqabet, it snatched his knife out of his belt too. It squeaked something at him, so high pitched it almost hurt his ears.

His translator laughed, "I got your gun!" How did the damned gadget impart the amused tone?

Jajaqin stared as Human Gina leapt gracefully back into the tree. Graceful, not like a dancer or a waterfall, but graceful like the flight of that same qinqabet, a hungry blade slicing through the air, strong and sure.

The creature was talking to him. In his life's experience as a professional hunter, that was a new one. His translator made sense of its ear-tingling chirps. "What's your name, friend?"

"I am called..." he rattled off his name, then remembered how the creature had abbreviated its own designation. "...but just 'Jajaqin' is fine."

Human Gina looked around herself. Her body conformation was terrible, she seemed to have a front and a back and if that was indeed the case, was entirely blind to her rear. Right: rocky world. His own species had spent the first half of its evolution floating. Danger might come from anywhere, and his own shape and sense organ arrangement reflected that.

And she had surprised him anyway.

"So, Jajaqin. Are you wearing cameras or are they trailing you?"

"Wearing."

"Can you turn them off?"

"Briefly. There is a privacy interrupt available, but it is temporary and turns itself back on, if I don't turn it on myself." Human Gina turned around again, scanning the distance and apparently satisfied that no danger lurked.

"How are you enjoying the hunt so far?"

Wretched creature. "Not much." He peeked at his locator and noted that, indeed, no other hunter was close. They were alone.

"I have you and your companions at a disadvantage, you know. Because of how our respective species evolved, I'm far denser than any of you, generally stronger. I'm also faster on land than any of you."

"What is your point?"

"My point is that in a contest of strength and personal combat, I have evolved advantages that are extremely difficult for any person native to this system to beat."

"You are boasting."

"Nah. It's a fact. Not trying to be rude. I mean, a couple of people I have met in the system are actually from one of the Jovians, the big gas giant planets."

"You met a," and he heard the human's translator make a sound he couldn't describe.

"Yes, that's them. Wonderful people. Absolutely astounding singers. But if I were to try to visit them in their home, I'd just die. It wouldn't even take long. I would be at the disadvantage there."

"Again: what is your point?"

"I wanted to really challenge myself. The blob guy I fought a while ago, Algo - he was a serious challenge, at least at first. But one-on-one contests just aren't getting it done, so I decided to put myself out in front of a hunt."

"Why?"

"The payday is just too good, Jajaqin." She grinned at him again, a tiny mouth full of even tinier teeth. How did these creatures get enough food to stay alive? "I mean, you're not doing this for free, either. Are you?"

"I could have. I am a popular contestant in the hunts. I would be rewarded regardless. But no, I put up money for the privilege of hunting you."

Human Gina made an expression he hadn't seen before. Its eyes got wide and the corners of its little mouth turned down. "Really? I'm flattered!" She turned around again, scanning the distance. Jajaqin stole another peek at his locator. Still alone. "May I make a suggestion?"

He was perplexed and let it show, turning a deep magenta in his extremities. "I'm listening."

"Gang up on me."

"Excuse me?"

"Turn off your camera for a moment."

Wordlessly, he did so.

"How much time do we have when you do that?"

Jajaqin told her, pausing while her translator provided converted units.

"About five minutes. Plenty of time. Okay, listen: you hunters have spread out so that each of you might have a chance at taking me down on your own, right?"

"Of course. The purse is far larger for an individual than for a team."

"What is the purse for bringing back nothing?"

"Not much. I will make a decent profit, but only a fraction of what a successful hunt yields."

"Less than being a member of a successful team?"

"Much, much less, yes."

"So gang up on me. If you don't gang up on me, I'm going to use my natural advantages against each of you hunters, one at a time, and nobody is going to have any fun."

"You don't believe one of us can take you?"

"Do you remember the first words I said to you?"

Jajaqin seethed, embarrassed. "I do."

"I got your gun. I will get all your guns, I will get all your knives, I will throw all of your hunting animals into the trees. One. By. One. If you each come at me independently, I will take each of you out, nobody wins a big purse, the viewers get disgusted and nobody has any fun."

"Fun?"

"Nobody's in this to try to actually eat me, are they? Nonlethal weapons, right? I volunteered for this for the challenge, for the contest! So come get me! All of you!"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because this hunt is a game! And what's the point of playing if I can't lose? What's the point of playing if you can't win? Change up your strategy, all of you, because one-on-one, you won't get me."

Jajaqin considered. "Okay. That makes sense."

"Good." She looked around again. Clearly humans had evolved with their blind spots; Gina's regular check of her surroundings was natural and thorough. "You want your gun back?"

Jajaqin's camera beeped, warning him that whatever privacy he had needed was about to come to an end. "Yes."

Human Gina plucked his hunting implement up from the branch and tossed it high in the air. He followed its arc and moved to be under it, catching it deftly with his dorsal arm. But by the time he had clicked the safety off, the human had already leapt from the branch and was receding into the distance, far too fast for him to follow.

The Most Dangerous Gamer part 1: The Adventures of Human Gina

 Jajaqin looked around. The forest was absolutely silent.

The hunting party was spread out, keeping in touch by translators and locators so they weren't likely to fire on each other, but still. A hunt was always a risk. The hunting implements deployed today were supposed to be nonlethal, but hunting is hunting. People get hurt. It happened.

Some hunts against particularly dangerous prey, they used live ammunition and the buy-in was far higher, safety not guaranteed but the rewards could be tremendous. They never hunted anything that wouldn't be eaten, and of course the most dangerous food was the most highly prized, so the hunters' greater risk-adjusted share was of a naturally larger total. A skilled hunter could attend an eight or two of hunts and retire for the rest of its life, comfortably wealthy and revered as a celebrity.

Or it could wind up dead. It happened.

This hunt was not with live ammunition, however. This hunt introduced prey that had never before entered the consciousness of the greater community, and it wasn't a food animal. Of all things, this hunt was...a demonstration? Or an exercise. He hadn't made up his mind exactly how to view it.

The creature called itself human. In Jajaqin's own language the sound was gibberish; in a couple of other hunters' languages the sound was quite rude and in another one yet, a subtly erotic exclamation of pleasure. Privately Jajaqin guessed that the rude translation was related to the pleasure translation, but he was only moderately curious about languages, not skilled enough to actually pursue the idea. No, his pursuit was far more visceral.

Jajaqin knew of the promoter Booj by reputation since they moved in similar circles, and had wondered if the human Booj brought to the public consciousness was fully sapient. Watching it in the news feeds, Jajaqin had concluded that it indeed was. So he had been astonished when Booj had announced that the human had offered itself to be the target of a hunt.

The idea of a sapient prey was...decadently fascinating. Even the smartest prey were never more than animals. They didn't plan; they fled or attacked. Always Jajaqin's skills in hunting were about contending with those two circumstances. How did you hunt something that might do something different? And how different could it be?

The human had been the startling contestant in a number of combat sport bouts, beginning with a few bar fight-level contests consisting of rough-and-ready shiphands in dockside bars, to a few increasingly strenuous context matches that drew large numbers of viewers from across the entire system. Booj's reputation as a promoter had grown exponentially and so far, the human had proven unbeatable.

He would have to stop using the word human in his mind. It was making him vaguely aroused, linguistic indifference notwithstanding. Jajaqin had entered the bid lottery early, certain he would never luck out on a chance at the bidding round as the lottery round was a recordbreaking size, but his name had come up and he had entered his top bid immediately. A few heartbeats later, the system announced that all bids had been evaluated. His own and seven other names were announced.

He didn't wonder how the system had evaluated the bidders. Obviously highest bidders got first consideration, but the system was well known for its process. Jajaqin could have entered an empty bid and been on the short list of contenders; he knew he was a popular contestant with skill, integrity and just enough style to be a fun watch. Even offering no money up front, Jajaqin would draw in the paying viewers and be a sure moneymaker.

The silence of the forest was unnerving. Usually that meant that there was not a large predator nearby, but a swarm of smaller, nimbler ones that could easily chase down the usual sources of noise. Little brachiators would usually stay close and fuss at Jajaqin for straying too close to their nests. This quiet, however, was just eerie.

Jajaqin fired up the info screen of his locator, looking up more details on the human. Some general descriptions of the species - singularly unappealing to look at, and some of the arousal around the word went away - though the tuft of cilia around the topmost appendage was at least interesting to look at. He flipped through entries to examine notes on this specific human.

"Terran Human Gina Rassmussen," the entry read. It went on to specify that the creature was female, originally from a far distant solar system and only here by an accidental meeting, an orbital miner by trade - interesting, a miner who worked alone. That spoke to her skills and resilience, mining was not for the weak or stupid, and gamely exploring far from home suggested she was uncommonly fearless. Height and width, not big at all. Body mass...damn. That much?

That much. Human Gina weighed at least as much as Jajaqin himself, while being only about one-fourth his volume. Ah, there was why. Her planet of origin was a rocky world with...damn again. She was from a very heavy gravity planet. Where the human came from, the surface gravity would squash him flat. And she stood erect under it. Ah, there it was: bones. Muscle. Fascinating. If rendered for her meat, the human GinaRassumussen - no, wait. He remembered this from the news vids. "Just 'Gina' is fine." Human Gina represented a mass of meat that would feed him for nearly two turns, and that would be if he was eating only meat. He couldn't do that in any case, his digestion got bad if he didn't have a salad once in a while.

Hmm. Nonlethal hunt, though. I wonder what human tastes like.

Never mind. Don't eat sapients. Don't hunt...well, okay, this time we do. Probably too tough to eat anyway. You'd die of starvation, still chewing the first mouthful.

A brachiator squeaked from the massive tree branch directly above his head, startling him badly. He jerked and looked up.

Human Gina was right there.

End of Part 1

The Diva and Her Daughter, Part 2: Aftermath

*note: if you are new here, read Part 1 first

A sound outside.  It’s kind of late, certainly wouldn’t expect anyone.  Not on a school night.

Sheila’s in bed.  She went padding down the hall wearing a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt, my beautiful little girl.  She had accepted the discussion of how it’s important to eventually let up on an opponent, but I could see that we would have to revisit that topic soon.  It’ll need some repetition to really sink in.

But what is that sound?

Both bikes put away.  Bungees across the trash cans because raccoons, car doors all locked, no windows open even though it’s cool enough out that it would be nice to flush the house with some fresh air.  What did that sound like?

Creak.  Ah, okay.  That’s the steps by the kitchen door, right next to the garage.  The lock on that door is a good one, and the door itself is too.  Normal people won’t come through that in a hurry.  But I know a lot of people who are far beyond normal.

Getting outside silently is easy.  Getting around the house silently, not quite so much – the euonymus by the garage is overgrown and really needing a trim – but then I’m behind him.

Not him.  Her.  Under this full moon, those hips are clearly female.

Everything I did earlier today, especially the Kaplan, left me a little raspy but pulling hard I crank up the ultrasonics and give her a blast of a rusty Costa – Mary Costa is still alive, the voice of Princess Aurora, would you believe it? – and she goes down.  While she’s dazed, wrap her up in some ziptie cuffs and drag her into the yard, away from the house.

Dogs up and down the street are howling and yarking.  They’ll settle in a minute.

“How the hell did you find my house?  Who else is coming?”  I give her head a shake with one fist tangled in her hair, but not too hard.  A Costa at close range is pretty disorienting and I want her to get her thoughts in order, quickly.

“Yearbook.”

“Longer.”

“We got pictures of your kid as you were riding away from the bank.  You got the whole crew and just rode away.  But we got pictures of your kid and my IT guy had the idea of shopping her face onto a neutral background and Googling for similar images and it came up with a name.”

“Longer, some more.”  But I think I could put it together from there.

“The name came up from the Facebook page of her preschool, and from there we got into their records and found your name and address and Jesus don’t pull so hard.”

Give her another little shake, but then relax the grip.  “Keep it down.”

She had the gall to laugh a little.  “If I’d known before now that The Diva lived on a quiet cul-de-sac in the ‘burbs I might have just not bothered with this.  But we needed that crew, we needed that score.  What did you bring out of there?  We need it.”

“Nothing.  We just walked away.  Biked away.”

“Nothing?  Are you sure you’re The Diva?”

“Are you daring me to yell at you?  At this range?  I could explode your eyeballs.”

She blanched.  “I’m sorry.”

“Is that why you’re here, you’re trying to salvage something from that botched job?”

“That branch was supposed to be staging a delivery, we were going to gaslight a snooper into their system to backdoor access for the real job.  The smash and grab was just to front the disruption.  Two of those guys were patsies, the one whose fingers you destroyed was the real operator.”

“And the other one?  There were four.”

“Well, that was my cousin.  He wanted to come.”  Her face turned dark.  “He might not be able to have kids now.”

“He had a gun at my baby’s head so I’m not very sympathetic.”

She writhed in her restraints.  I had ziptied her wrists together, and her thumbs, so that her hands were back-to-back.  With another ziptie around her elbows, it’s a really uncomfortable position but the important thing is that she can’t put her palms together.  She’s not an adept fighter but makes up for it with a kind of power move.  She has to be able to put her hands together to make it work though, so it always looks like she’s beating everything to pieces with a Spock chop.  It’s the worst fight move ever but when you can knock a hole through a Buick with it, “worst” isn’t really relevant anymore.   As long as she can keep her palms together, she’s incredibly dangerous.

But I can keep out of her range, no problem.

“You didn’t take anything out?  No haul, not even intel?”

“Even if I hadn’t gone straight I wouldn’t help you, you’re going to get yourself and others hurt, you know that?”  I can’t remember her name.  What does she call herself? Doesn’t matter.  “You need to get the hell out of here.”

“I’m coming back.  You can’t do this to us.  The boss wants into that system and he’s going to keep sending others, more like me, to try to get intel on the bank out of you, or else just to eliminate you as a possible leak on his plan.”

“You didn’t really do enough research on me, did you?  Got the name and address and just ran over here?”

She doesn’t want to look like she’s been caught but she looks caught.   And curiosity gets the better of her.  “…why?”

“When I was still…her…I had a different name.  Did you know that?  Maybe not.  But did you notice my little girl’s last name?  Did you think about that?”

“What about it?”

“That name sound familiar to you at all?”

My beautiful little girl is my daughter, and so has inherited some natural gifts that are very special.  She has a superhuman voice, capable of cutting right through sheet steel – have the two pieces of baking pan to prove it – and will probably one day have even more control than I do.  But the other thing she has is her father.

He is the only non-super superhero I have ever met, and the only one who was ever fired.  It was quite the news item.  His secret identity was never revealed, but through a ridiculous onion of layers of obfuscation, it was – and nobody believed it was real.  Genius and shrewd.  Never surprised, contingency plans for every possible circumstance, an utter master of gathering and compiling information, of misdirection and manipulation, and a relentless hand to hand combatant.  What he lacks in intelligence is difficult to determine because there’s almost no one who can think on his level. 

That’s the other thing Sheila Judge has inherited.  She’s a genius, and she’s shrewd.  Fortunately she’s still a little girl or I would be completely outclassed.  So far she still believes me when I tell her to ease up on bad guys, not to use her skills to outwit other kids in games that are far beneath her.  To give them a chance.

Her father had been done with giving chances at one time.

“He’s the Judge.”

That took a moment to sink in.  “The Judge?”

“The Judge.”

The only hero ever fired.  Fired, because he went over the line.  His moral compass had been getting weaker, he’d become more implacably pragmatic.  The Judge’s constant exposure to evil was making him less good.  Not evil, not quite…just indifferent.  So when it came time for him to pass judgment on a bad guy, he did.  With great finality.  The contingency plans had started to look like entrapment, like railroading.  Okay, the bad guy could have simply stopped…but he hadn’t been given the chance.

That had also been the incident that drove me to retire.  It was pretty bad.

That had been ten years ago.  It had been nearly four years getting him back out of his head, and about forty-five minutes getting him to marry me, and the years since had been so good.  So good.

If he heard about this ignorant twit coming around the house on a mission of petty retribution, it would get so bad.  Unpowered or not, he would eradicate this chick, her boss, her cousin and his finger fragments, all of them.

It was pretty much just me and Sheila that kept him from going over that line.  Mostly Sheila.  She made him want to be a good person.

“If he knows you were ever here, it will go badly for you.  I’m the only thing between you and…you know what, I’m not really sure exactly what he would do.  But you need to understand this, and listen close: he loves me.  And as much as he loves me, he adores that child.”  I started to get up.  “For the sake of your life, you should see to it that nothing bad ever happens on this entire block, and most certainly not to me or her.”

I still can’t remember what she calls herself.  It isn’t important.  She’s gone as white as a sheet.

“Is it true he doesn’t actually have any powers?”

“How badly do you want to find out?”  Might as well butter the muffin a little bit.  “He beat Maximus into submission by himself, did you know that?”  Maximus has been cooling his heels in the ultramax in Nevada for over fifteen years, word has it he has crippling arthritis now.   With great power comes great joint pain.

“I’ll leave now, if you let me.”

“You should quit while you still can.”  Standing up, I motion for her to get up and turn around so I can cut the tie around her elbows.  “That’ll give you some leverage so you can free yourself in a little bit.  Don’t try to do it here.  If I start to feel threatened I’ll defend myself and you don’t want that.”

“I’m going.”

I never even saw it happen.  From one moment to the next, nothing and then something, boom.

Whatsername turning to go, splat right into his chest.

He’s not as tall as the bad guys think.  It’s the wig.  But he’s wide, as wide as a bank vault door.  And if you walk into him, about as soft.

“Banger.”

That’s her name.

She can’t make much sound beyond a stifled wheeze.

“Call your mother when you get home.  She’s worried about you.”  The Judge looks at his watch.  He has a cup of coffee in his hand, and it is strangely sinister.  “She’s still up.”  With four steps and a flickering snick he’s circled behind her, cut her remaining zip ties and returned back to in front of her.  He’s not a super, I swear.  But it was so relaxed and yet so quick, you can be excused for thinking he is.  The coffee steams.

Banger’s hands come together, clasped tightly before her face.  Palm to palm.

The Judge raises an eyebrow.  For a moment, everything stops.  He sips from the cup.

“I’m sorry.”

“Go.  Now.”

Banger whispered a hoarse “thank you” and ran away into the night, rustling through the damned euonymus until we could hear her sneakers slapping pavement, receding.  After a couple of minutes, there was an engine roar but then even that too was gone.

“Well,” he said.  “That went about like I expected.”

“Good.”

Sip.

“Wait, what?”

A Fog of Magic

 If you read in the older stories, the fictions handed down and recopied and retold and even embellished, the word they use is "magic." Making things happen that natural science cannot easily explain, reversing harms, undoing actions: "magic."

It appears I can do this "magic." It isn't like the fairy tales in the ancient libraries though, muttering nonsense words and waving sticks and invoking deities. It requires a significant investment of personal energy. It takes concentration and time. And like the oh-so-unreal Sorcerer's Apprentice and his wayward broomsticks, a practitioner can do it wrong, set in motion events that can turn bad or even disastrous. Magic is useful, yes...but like a spring rain that you need, you can have too much of a good thing.

But if you spend more time in the ancient libraries, you find other things too. Not just the fairy tales or lesson books but engineering texts. Operators' manuals. Dry, academic tomes dusty with disuse, describing a world far, far more sophisticated than the one we live in now, and yet it was the one we live in now.

And amongst these least fanciful books a whole section that seemed to delve into the metaphysical: meditation. Concentration of will, developing your spiritual confidence. Even a couple of extremely esoteric, nearly impenetrable books on psi powers, which I couldn't make much sense of...

...except I could.

The magic I was taught begins and ends with concentration. Proper concentration requires establishing a mental state not too dissimilar from that of dreaming, the drowsy, free-floating, nearly awake dreams of an afternoon nap on a warm, sunny day. You know you're dreaming and can observe the wanderings of your imagination like a spectator. But achieving this dreamy state while maintaining focus on goals is not something you pick up in an afternoon; it takes a few years of training and practice and, like I said, it can go horribly wrong. The spring rains can come and keep coming until every garden washes away.

My father taught me, he and my grandmother. Among their lessons in concentration of will, they also taught me that it will take two generations to teach the next magician, that it always takes at least two generations of magicians to initiate the next one. The talent is partly inborn but there are occasional sports, children of families with no magic who have the capacity despite their parentage. My own great-grandfather was one such.

So it was with something like recognition that I found myself in this section of the library, and struggling to decipher the foreign words of the books around the willpower section. Environmental manipulation? Repercussional forecasting?

Nanomachines? "Machines" I know well enough, but "nano" is a gibberish sound you coo at small babies.

The books are both a blinding light of revelation and an equally dazzling blackness of mystery. Some are so far out of my context that they are nearly a different language. Others, particularly the ones describing guidance of will, I could almost have written myself.

You prepare yourself, set the trance and focus on circumstances and goals. You envision the current state you want to change, and how the changes will look and feel and smell. You do this for quite a long time - sometimes it takes days. And sometimes you have to stay entranced in order to bring the spell to an end, too - spring rains, remember. Usually you don't want to completely upend the way things work. Simply tweaking things is generally sufficient, subtle nudges.

Magic is at its best when you don't realize it's working. There have been some who went in for grand effects, enormous, brash displays of power that rattled everything around them - not least of which, their neighbors. Those kind of magicians don't stay in business for long and sometimes meet a sudden, sharp end.

And there's another section of the library, quite small actually and leading into the peculiar section involving environmental manipulation: "terraforming." This section is the one that set my mind almost on fire.

It turns out that we are not from here. I am, of course, and dozens of generations before me have all been from here. But there was a generation, centuries or maybe even millennia ago, that wasn't. They were from somewhere else.

This book doesn't talk about that other place, not directly. It cites examples taken from the other place but doesn't talk about the place itself. It appears to have been a whole other world and we, humanity, are originally from there. We came to this world so long ago that nobody alive remembers anything else, and being from there, upon arriving here, set out to make here, now more like there, then. What happened along the way that made us forget our own past?

These books are very strange. They are nothing like modern books with their leather, wooden or cardboard covers, pages of sturdy, stiff paper. No. These most ancient of books, in addition to being constructed of materials I can barely even describe, have no dust on them whatsoever. A little raised dam of dust has formed around them on the shelves, but no dust lands on them directly.

At least our language hasn't changed much. I can read these titles well enough, even if the words are strange:

"Terraforming: Bending Circumstances."

"Terraforming: Finer Points and Enduring Changes."

"Human to Machine Interfaces."

"A Fog of Magic: Practical Application of Nanomachines."

That last one seemed especially pertinent, and I took it down from the shelf, opened it, and began to read.

Haute Couture

 Angela, Nakia, Angela (the other one) and Jules stepped out of their limo. The two Angelas tottered on their heels, cajoled into taller than usual platforms by their designers and now gamely trying to make the best of it. Nakia, at over six feet tall and with the broad shoulders of a WNBA power forward, wore sandals with hardly any heel and Jules, counter culture as always, wore sneakers. At only five feet tall, her height was perfect for Nakia to drape a casual, friendly arm around her shoulders, which she did.

Each young woman was wrapped in a shiny lame', not noteworthy in itself, not daringly cut or extravagantly accessorized. But the four women together presented a striking group, and they stayed together to make the most of it.

On the red carpet, flashes popped in staccato lightning as the women's massed style garnered more attention, and of course the cable entertainment channel reporters started asking the perennial question: "Who are you wearing?"

The women tried to slip the question, but one game presenter crowded in, practically holding the microphone at Nakia's breast and shouted the question over the clatter and roar of the onlookers. "Who is that, Nakia? I don't recognize them at all!"

What followed was bizarre. The strap over the tall woman's shoulder slipped off even though there was no breeze and...changed.

"We're discovered! Thompson, you said we would be safe!"

Nakia hissed at the strap, "Be cool! You'll be fine!" She tugged the strap back over her shoulder but it leapt back off.

"They are asking who we are! We are discovered! We must flee!" The strap continued to wrestle against her grip.

Jules' entire outfit parted right down the middle and immediately flapped straight up into the sky. The crowd cheered at the sudden, striking display of skin. This was what they were here for, a little live theater and some straight up attention-hungry exhibitionism. Jules' petite, muscular cheerleader body was now clad only in a modest pair of black panties. For her part, Jules looked more annoyed than embarrassed.

The Angelas were struggling with their clothes, and arguing with them too. "Calm down, you'll be fine! You're making a scene!" But each of them soon lost their battles and, like Jules, found themselves abruptly disrobed as their dresses fled straight up into the sky. Unlike Jules though, they were completely naked and again, the crowd cheered. Angela tried to hide - not easy on the red carpet where being seen is the whole idea - but Angela (the other one) put her hands on her hips and glowered. Despite being on the Hollywood scene for only a couple of years, self-confidence clothed her like armor.

Nakia's beautiful gold lame' outfit, which had draped over her like a lover's embrace mere minutes ago, shot away with the others. Now she stood on the red carpet in her sandals and a coral teddy, a striking coffee-colored athlete who appeared to have misplaced her volleyball - and her beach.

Jules stepped forward and indicated a young man on the other side of the velvet rope. "You. Give me your shirt." He didn't argue, just peeled it off and handed it over. Jules tugged it on efficiently. Nakia approached two more along the line.

"Gentlemen, please help my friends, here."

One of them leered, even as the other was quickly unbuttoning. "No way! This is the best show I've seen in a month."

Nakia smiled gently, a sadness in her eyes. But Jules stepped up, "Do you want to be kicked in the balls on national TV?"

"Never mind him." The buttoned-up guy had already gotten his shirt off, and also handed over a windbreaker he had tugged out of his backpack. "He's an ass. Here," he said. He even ducked under the velvet rope to bring the garments over to the Angelas. "I, uh, even have a pair of warmups in here, Miss." He was even taller than Nakia, and his T-shirt hung all the way down to Angela's (the other one's) knees. Meanwhile, Angela stepped into the warmup pants behind the massed front of her companions, her back turned and face blazing...but when she pulled the windbreaker on, she only zipped it halfway.

Jules held the reporter's mic hand. "We're wearing..." and she looked over to the people who had offered clothes to herself and her friends. They named themselves for the cameras, to general cheers from the onlookers. She smiled her best medals-podium smile. "We're wearing these guys."

The reporter was still gaping skyward, in the direction the women's clothes had gone. "But what..."

Jules followed her gaze. "Fast fashion, what can I say."

The reporter clearly wanted to follow up with more questions, but Jules, Nakia, and the two Angelas made their way into the venue and out of sight.

Field Experiments in Communicating with Other Species

 Field Experiments in Communicating with Other Species*

"They are NOT telepathic. None of the samples exhibited any such capability, no matter what kind of test we put them through. Sexual arousal, somnolescent states, extreme fear - no circumstance enables interpersonal telepathy."

"There have been examples in their entertainments."

"Do I need to remind you that most of their entertainments are 'fiction?' Not representations of real things, past or present. They are pretend."

"Ah, right. The Galaxy Quest paradox."

"Precisely."

"So how did they detect me?"

"As the humans say, let's go to the tape." Tar'Van operated his console and the video display lit up. "Here's you, approaching the group."

"In retrospect, such a large crowd of humans was not a good choice for social insertion."

"Analysis strongly suggested that missteps would be missed by the individuals, against the greater noise of so many other humans' behavioral signals to confuse them. It was a good plan."

"That did not prove to be the case."

"Indeed. Humans have a consciousness we had not anticipated. But it is not telepathy."

Nel'Gor and Tar'Van watched as the video progressed. Nel'Gor tried, in the recording, to navigate a few inconsequential interactions, minutiae in the day-to-day interactions of humans. He met one person, talked to it briefly, spoke to another. He answered questions - correctly, he knew, with the right jargon and even accompanying gestures, very amusing according to their research. There was a brief pause...

And then suddenly both humans lunged at him. With his Ordan reflexes, Nel'Gor was able to evade them and, despite the encumbering human garments, ran like the wind. A few more humans joined the pursuit but only halfheartedly, not knowing what the chase was about. The video changed viewpoints a few times, as other secreted pickups about the facility were able to provide a record. Nel'Gor shot past one, then another. By the time it moved to the third camera, Nel'Gor had opened a gap and the humans were losing inclination to pursue him further. Once he gained the open space where the humans all left their vehicles, Nel'Gor was able to open his stride even further and the humans were left completely behind, and abandoned the chase.

The humans spoke to each other briefly. "I did not hear what they said. Can you increase the gain on that?"

Tar'Van twiddled a few more controls, and background noise faded as the humans' speech gained prominence. He backed up the recording a few seconds.

"...and you don't know that guy at all?"

"Hell, no!"

"Where the hell's he get off, making a crack about your mom like that? Guy's looking for trouble. Damn near found it but damn he's fast."

"Some people, man."

Nel'Gor said, "the joke about the man's mother is at timestamp," he showed his notes to Tar'Van, who backed the recording further. "Magnify this individual's face and let me observe."

At the crucial moment, the human's face froze. Nel'Gor had encountered the word "stony" in descriptions before, and had not appreciated its aptness until now. The expression on the face became blank in a way he had not understood in the moment, when he was stumbling through his Innocuous Conversation In A Social Setting repertoire, trying to remember all the rules and their myriad exceptions. The human's eyes clicked to the side.

Tar'Van expanded the view to take in the other human, and sure enough his eyes glanced toward the first's. This nonverbal contact lasted approximately one point two seconds, and both humans initiated pursuit. It was only the sudden, enormous surge of pheromones dumping out of both humans that alerted him sufficiently; one human nearly made contact.

"That was it? That? That's all? They just looked at each other!"

"I suspect that no matter how much time we spend studying human modes of communication, we may never fully comprehend everything they do to communicate. They have been evolving with each other for millions of years, they have a head start."

"Let's throw away the Innocuous Conversation Starter pack from the Discord subcategory. It appears to contain unacceptable cues for in-person conversations."

"Agreed. Let's try the Starbucks pack and start over. Those are all face-to-face."

"Agreed."

*Inspired by, and orignally published on r/WritingPrompts on Reddit