Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee

  Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

  “Look,” said David, trying futilely to calm me down. “It’s really not as big a deal as it sounds.”

  “This literally could not be a bigger deal, David!” I shouted. My voice was taking on that odd tone of panicked half-laughter that was the only appropriate way to respond to world-shattering revelations, delivered casually. “This is like… like… I can’t even think of a fucking analogy! What else is even in the same plane of existence as ‘Oh, by the way, Chiri, no big deal, but this one time, I brought a world-devouring space demon to fucking tears’?!”

  David coughed to try to cover a laugh. “Okay, first off, my voice doesn’t sound that growly.”

  “You’re just used to hearing it!”

  “Secondly,” said David, trying even harder not to crack up, “I promise you, it was under extremely unique circumstances. I probably couldn’t replicate it.” He shook his head. “Most of the other Arxur I ran into that day were honestly kind of dickish.”

  “Most Arxur are dickish,” I repeated through clenched teeth. “You don't say! Oh, and it turns out the ocean’s a touch damp. See, I’m learning a lot today!”

  David sighed. "Look, Chiri, nobody on Earth is particularly proud of the fact that the Arxur seem to weirdly like us. Their approval frankly horrifies us. But I am never going to apologize for talking to someone. And if I'm being honest, it sounds like the only reason my planet is still here is because someone up top held the same opinion."

  My eyes twitched. "That's not what I'm upset about! I mean, yeah, if the Arxur were willing to talk things out with fellow meat-eaters this whole time, sure, it would have been real fuckin' nice if they'd shown the Gojids the same courtesy before they ruined my entire homeworld. But I guess we're only owed the dignity of kill or be killed!" I nearly growled. “I’m not going to judge humans for being… the chimerical fucking wood waifs with the quicksilver tongues that you are. Bewitching words is like half of what you people seem to do! But Gojids are supposed to be protectors.”

  Oh, get off it. You’ve never fought before in your life. And if you had, you probably wouldn’t be here. You’d be in pieces orbiting one of the military outposts the humans blew up.

  Fuck you! I’ll learn to fight better than any Gojid before me!

  Fucking… why, though?

  David blinked, and looked at me in confusion. Understanding suddenly dawned on his face. "You just want to know how I did it."

  I growled a little. "Yes!" I took a deep breath, and downed the rest of my martini. I needed to stay calm. This many drinks in, I was going to wreck my throat if I kept shouting. "Look, either the monsters who took my family from me have some secret weakness, or else I'm hanging out in the apartment of a deranged torture hobbyist. Either way, yes, I would like to know the details!"

  David took a deep breath himself. “Alright. It’s the first option: I found and exploited a secret weakness.” My heart soared in my chest. This was an opportunity! “I’ll happily tell you what I did, but I promise you, you’re not going to find it all that satisfying. Are you ready?”

  A weakness that a chef stumbled upon? the critical voice mused. It’s probably some Terran food that’s a non-lethal but debilitating poison. Oh, but there aren’t any obvious delivery mechanisms besides tricking the Arxur into eating it. That’s what makes it unsatisfying.

  The odd voice just sounded disappointed. The cadence is all wrong. We’re starting to pick up on David’s mannerisms. That’s not where he’s going with this.

  I socially braced myself for impact. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and my breathing steady, and I nodded. “Tell me what you did. I can handle it.”

  “I was nice to her.”

  My eyes shot back open. “What.”

  Ah, now I get it, said the odd voice. The Arxur are literally demons. There’s a mystical component. They’re deathly allergic to acts of kindness. That must be why they won’t talk to us! It must pain them even hearing us being kind to each other.

  The critical voice felt like it shook its head in disbelief. The cadence is all wrong, she echoed back to her counterpart.

  “I don’t think anyone had been kind to her before, ever,” said David. “It was like watching an abused child have her first experience with an authority figure who wasn’t planning on hitting her or taking her food away.” He sighed, and finished his martini as well. A victory for the light over the darkness, however small, but David didn’t look happy about it. He looked haunted. I didn’t know how to make sense of it.

  “Sorry, just…” I rubbed my eyes. Fatigue was starting to pull at me. “Take it from the top. What happened?”

  David sighed, and tried to drink from an empty glass. There was a flicker of annoyance like he blamed it for not containing more. He got up and headed towards the fridge as he spoke. "Alright. Day after the attack. I sail back to the city. Poke around to see what the damage is. Turns out my building is fine, so I settle back in, fix myself lunch and glass of whisky, and just kinda stare at the wall for a while as I try to figure out what the hell to do with my life." He picked up two cans from the fridge, and a pair of larger clean glasses. "In walk two U.N. Peacekeepers and an Arxur. They're exhausted from doing search and rescue all morning. So I offer them food. I mean, why not? They're helping. Seemed polite."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  He poured himself the fizzing pale yellow contents of one of the cans, and handed me the other sealed can to do likewise at my leisure. It smelled alluringly fruity even from across the table, but I held off for the moment.

  "So we get to talking," David continued, taking his seat back. "The two Peacekeepers are on edge, but the Arxur, Sifal, she's peppering me with questions. Just insatiably curious, and I can’t quite put my finger on what… flavor… of curiosity I’m looking at." He shook his head. “And then, partway through, it hits me: she’s acting like it’s First Contact.”

  Oh there’s just no part of this conversation that’s going to make any damn sense, is there?

  “The Arxur have been…” I took a deep breath to try and stay calm, and started fiddling with the lid of my canned wine or whatever just to have something to do with my paws. When I continued speaking, it was through gritted teeth. “I’m going to very charitably say ‘starfaring’ for several centuries, David. This was not their ‘First Contact’. In fact, I might point out that they ‘visited’ the Cradle before they visited Earth.”

  David sighed. “Trust me, I know. This is a woman who’s probably personally eaten more aliens than I’ve ever gotten the privilege of speaking to, and she’s sitting there with that look of wide-eyed wonder you get when you finally realize you’re not alone in the universe anymore.” David took another sip of his pale sparkling wine and shook his head in disbelief. “And she’s been happily rescuing humans all morning, trying to help, and we’ve been spitting in her face, because, you know, we’ve all seen The Videos.” David sighed. “Given our chilly reception with the Federation, it was hard not to empathize, a little. We all think she’s a monster, and the weirdest part is, she literally didn’t understand why.”

  Arxur are cruel monsters who know exactly what they’re doing is wrong.

  Arxur are thoughtless beasts who lack the self-awareness necessary to understand what they’re doing is wrong.

  If they’re beasts, and it’s all instinct, how can they be evil?

  If they’re people, and they have a choice, why do they all choose evil?

  How does a monster not know it’s a monster?

  My can of wine popped open loudly, and began to fizz over. I frantically tried to slurp down the overflow by reflex. It was light, unaged, and easy to drink. Sweet and tart and a touch tannic… made from some kind of crunchy tree fruit. The incongruity of the flavor against the topic of conversation almost brought me to tears. It tasted like the home I’d lost. “She didn’t understand why?” was all I could muster in confusion.

  “No!” David said, laughing sadly. “That’s the weirdest fucking part. She was just lost and hurt and clueless. I figured I’d give her the benefit of the doubt and just go ahead and explain it to her. See what happens, you know?” He shook his head. “She was astonished and flabbergasted. Full-blown ‘Wait, THAT’S what you’re mad about?’, like she’d never heard the concept before. The idea that humans don’t acknowledge the predator-prey divide was a world-shattering revelation to her.”

  Good and evil, light and dark, predator and prey.

  My eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, you fucking what?”

  David’s face fell. He looked disappointed in me. “No. We don’t. Like, you’re familiar with the shitty version of our history in the official Federation databanks? Yeah, humans have invented a million different stupid fucking reasons to argue why people don’t count as people, and we’re honestly, as a species, really fucking tired of it. We thankfully, finally, mostly wore that shit out before we ever met a non-human.”

  Sorry, said the critical voice, all neurons dedicated to the predator-prey divide are currently misfiring, on account of your dumb ass still trying to convince yourself that you’re a predator. You’re just gonna have to fall back on your hatred of the Arxur in particular, and try not to think too hard about why.

  I scoffed. “So what? She was lying. That’s what Arxur do.”

  David chuckled sadly. “Chiri, if I can be blunt for a second?” He swirled a finger in the air, like he was gesturing at the entire night sky. “Speaking as a… what did you call us? Silver-tongued fae folk?” That wasn’t quite what I’d said, but the translators weren’t perfect along weird mythical lines. “You’re all phenomenally terrible at lying. The Arxur barely talk to each other, let alone to outsiders. They’ve had no practice at deception. I basically had to explain the concept of reading body language to Sifal. She had no poker face.”

  I squinted. “Sorry, she had no what?”

  David shook his head. “Ehh, poker is a card game. You guys do card games, right?”

  I reared back, and looked at him like he was daft. “Who the fuck doesn’t know what a card game is?”

  “The Arxur, apparently,” he said wryly. “Nevertheless, poker’s a popular old Terran card game about strategy and probability… but it’s actually mostly about lying. Convince the other players your bad hand is good, or your good hand is bad, while trying to suss out from their body language if they’re doing the same to you.”

  “Poker sounds fun,” I said noncommittally, nodding suspiciously. I was trying to wrap my head around what sort of people would popularize a game based on competitive lying. Strange magical forest folk, as I’d initially suspected, probably. “I’m sorry, you think the rest of us are bad at lying, though?”

  We're supposed to be. Lying is predatory.

  David shrugged. “Yeah, you guys are far more sociable in general, but when it comes to deception? You’ve got this huge blind spot along that weird predator-prey divide. Seriously, have you seen social media? You’re taught to be afraid and vigilant of predators, but to trust all fellow herbivores implicitly.” He shook his head. “We spent months trying and failing to make peaceful diplomatic inroads into the Federation, to no avail because we’re 'predators', but five fucking minutes in a room with a U.N.-backed Gojid and a Harchen journalist, and Nikonus himself just blabs everything and then some.” He sighed. “Which is why it stuck out in my mind when he denied responsibility for killing off the Arxur cattle.”

  My brow furrowed. “Wait, where are you going with that?”

  David shrugged. “Taking Nikionus at his word. Again, no poker face. Nikonus admits to everything and more, but that’s where he draws the line?”

  I scoffed, but something about this itched, and I couldn’t quite put a claw on why. “Herbivores don’t harm each other.”

  Fuck off, you won’t even admit to being an herbivore.

  Don’t you swear at me!

  You first, bitch.

  “Your colonization protocol begins with antimatter bombs,” said David, raising an eyebrow. “You harm anything that might be a threat, and several other things besides, just to be sure.” He rubbed his eyes. “But that’s kind of irrelevant. The long story short is, I’m fairly sure that the Arxur as a people might not be evil, but their government, religion, and society absolutely is. And, at least for the rank and file who don’t get a say in their government?” David winced, empathetically, and the strange concentric white-brown-black of his eyes was bewitching. “Those Arxur were excited to meet us, because it was the first time they were permitted to hear an outside opinion. It was the first chance they'd had to hear that the lies they'd been taught since birth might be lies.”

  Oh hey, we've been taught lies since birth, too! said the odd voice, helpfully, as I stared at nothing.