Humans: An Alien Perspective

[WP] Humans are cute, wear bright colors, are 1/3 average height of galactic standard, and they love tinkering. Humans are space gnomes.

*****

Sheila knew she was in trouble. There were a couple of reasons why. The weight of her crumpled report on Venetian geological structures, speckled with angry red marks, felt unbearably heavy in her subspace, floating about in her digital consciousness behind a looping video of the time Mr Erteda tripped entering the classroom. The same teacher had been the one to transmit her report to her subspace that afternoon, red lips twirling around 720⁰ degrees into a pout of dignified disappointment. Yuck. It's as if he knows about the deal.

The deal was her parents allowing Sheila to enrol in the Studies of the Sol System and Endangered Star Cultures unit, with the provision that she would maintain high grades across all her subjects, and still make time for some extracurricular studies in interdimensional consciousness transportation.

"It's for your employability, Sheila," her father had said.

"For college," her mother had added.

"What are you going to do with a unit on something like the Sol System?" her brother had asked more abrasively.

"It's not about what I'm going to do with it," Sheila had retorted angrily. "It's about studying an endangered species."

"It's so niche." Greeg's face had contorted into a sneer. "Who cares about Star Cultures anyway? They're all going to probably go extinct in the next million or so years."

"You don't get it! It's an art!" Sheila had punctuated her exclamation by slamming every door in the house shut with her mind — which cued a lengthy lecture from her father about misusing the HomeComm and "respecting the community subspace".

But now, Sheila was in trouble.

Trouble because she was coming home with yet another failed grade. Trouble because the HomeComm had informed her on the SlideFar home that her uncle had made a spontaneous visit.

Trouble because she had found something.

Sheila drew to a halt in front of the pneumatic tube's glass door. She arched her head backward to peer up the length of its glistening side to her home, floating in the atmosphere above. It dotted the sky amid many other similar floating houses — a general, Wemurmurian suburbia. As if her life couldn't get any more basic. Around her, the lavender hued ferns of the ground trembled and shook in a breeze, as if imploring her to disappear into the woods.

Run away from home? It was an option — but now she had something in her backpack she had to take care of.

As if on cue, the something inside stirred and prodded her back, between her shoulderblades. She swallowed nervously.

She hadn't intended to find it, curled up and despondent beneath the thick, wide leaves of one of the park's ferns. She had taken the short cut through the park from her SlideFar stop to her street many times before. She also knew she couldn't leave it.

From what she knew about basic human anatomy, it was either "unconscious" or "asleep", except she always confused those states. She knew, though, that humans were particularly fragile. It would probably die in the freezing temperatures of the Murmur woodlands.

So, she... carefully scooped it up in her school jacket, buried it into her backpack, and started on her way home.

Mum is going to flip.

She would. Because they had a "no pets, no gnomes, no astra-fae" policy. And according to her father, a human was a gnome — no matter what scientists said.

"They're short, wear bright colours, and speak goobledy-gook. Their consciousnesses can't even connect!" As if to prove his point, he slid a video of a lecture about interlaced mindfields into Sheila's subspace. "You should watch Hum Sterling. He talks about this a lot."

"Hum Sterling is a radicalised asshole!" Sheila tried to protest, but her "progressive" ideas fell on deaf hearing holes.

"It's okay, dear." Mum would always pat her cheeks after another heated dinner table discussion. "Maybe the humans are endangered now, but there's talk about a Star Cultures reserve being created in the Molpher System."

"They'll die in the Molpher System!" Sheila cried.

She screwed in sealant into every hearing hole on her flesh, and then, in act of wild protest, blocked her parents' consciousness from interfering with her subspace.

There was another stirring in the backpack. Sheila's thoughts whirred.

She could probably make a cosy little nest in one of her old shoeboxes, and nestle the human in there. They liked warm burrows, building close to the ground. She could find some kind of material to resemble their special sleeping mats, although she still wasn't sure if the human was "sleeping" or comatose. How could she tell?

There was a little noise: a groan? a moan? It sounded like a muffled Wot-the-shmuck? coming from her backpack.

"It's okay, little gnome," Sheila whispered, reaching out with her subspace and then remembering humans didn't have one. "I'll look after you."

Somehow. She tried to think back to Mr Erteda's lesson on human diets. What did they eat? Ground things. The little insects they called "ann-ee-malls". Shit. I should have paid attention in third grade human languages.

Sheila gripped the straps of her bag and stepped into the pneumatic tube, zipping herself up to the front door. She could almost hear her mother's condescending voice echo in her subspace. You should always pay attention in school, sweetheart. You never know when you might need your lessons!

*****

THE END.