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Betty Adams's Blog, page 28

October 28, 2022

So...Plants can See...They Literally Have Eyes....This Will Change my Writing

Picture White J, Yamashita F. Boquila trifoliolata mimics leaves of an artificial plastic host plant. Plant Signal Behav. 2022 Dec 31;17(1):1977530. doi: 10.1080/15592324.2021.1977530. Epub 2021 Sep 21. PMID: 34545774; PMCID: PMC8903786
​
As you all know I do have an alien species that builds its body out of plant matter. This information will have a significant effect on how I write their interactions. 
The trees are watching us. 
Trees have eyes. They are not particularly complex eyes. They are in fact the same organs that the plants use to "eat" the light. This allows trees, and other leafy plants to see the general shape of things. The study proved this by having a mimic vine mimic the shape of a plastic leaf. 
Be that as it may, I am quite excited to add another dimension or depth to the science of  my writing. 

In the video below you can see a Boquila trifoliolata attempting this process. 


“ Humans are Weird: Let’s Work It Out”
https://igg.me/at/Humansareweirdbook3
Monty Python meets Star Trek in this third book of human absurdity.
Short story collection
60,000 words
Available on Indiegogo October 2022


Humans are Weird Main Page
http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog
#Scifi #HumansAreSpaceOrcs #EarthisSpaceAustralia #Aliens #shortstories
“ Humans are Weird: Let’s Work It Out”
https://igg.me/at/Humansareweirdbook3

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Published on October 28, 2022 09:54

October 25, 2022

Humans are Weird - Smoke on the Water - Let's Work It Out - Audio Narration and Animatic

Picture Humans are Weird - Smoke on the Water - Let's Work It Out - Audio Narration and Animatic


Original Post: http://www.authorbettyadams.com/bettys-blog/humans-are-weird-smoke-on-the-water


The low rumbling of the combustion engine was oddly soothing, wing medic Twenty-Trills thought as she adjusted the final strap of the respirator on the trembling warrior in front of her.
“You just take it easy… no marine,” she clicked down at him.
She didn’t really understand why using the human term was so universally pleasing to the massive warriors, but it did its work. The warrior gave a weak but sincere tilt to his ears. He was clearly recovering. She glanced around to see if any of the other members of either wing huddled in the center of the spacious storage compartment were free to begin grooming the warrior’s ash-covered fur. However everyone who was awake enough and uninjured enough was already tooth deep in a grooming partner already. She glanced uneasily at her own digit ends and tested the strength of her joints in her mind. As she already knew, everything hurt. Her claws were actually beginning to bleed at the quick. Other Winged’s blood and fluids caked ash, and who could sound what else in her joints? She suppressed a sigh. No point in starting to groom a traumatized warrior if she was just going to collapse on him mid-groom.
“I am going to take a rest now,” she announced to no one in particular.
There was a soft susurration of agreement as the portion of the wings who were awake expressed their approval of her plan. She did a quick headcount of the officers as she moved towards the rounded rectangle of light that comprised most of the front of the compartment. As she had suspected, she was the highest ranking member of her species conscious at the moment. She fought back another groan and staggered to the last set of restraints before the compartment ended. It was a bit disturbing to deliberately distance herself from the rest of her wing, but the frantic loading process when the camp had been evacuated had resulted in the wing being essentially centered in the space, and someone needed to act as liaison with the humans.
The humans were eerily quiet for people who were supposed to be piloting a transport large enough to count as a base in itself with all the piloting AI disengaged. Twenty-Trills stretched up her wing to shield her eyes from the light and peered at the three massive mammalian bodies folded around the control couch. The two passengers, a male and female of about the same mass, appeared to be sleeping. The male leaned his head against his curled fist and said fist against the window and had hunched his shoulders in an effort to center his weight. The female (the youngest of the group by a few decades) had also hunched her shoulders and was leaning back in the seat, her head nodding on her trunk of a neck. The smallest (if that superlative adjective could even be applied here) human, who also happened to be the oldest human female Twenty-Trills had ever seen, had her eyes focused on the optimistically labeled road they were following back to the base. They hardly seemed to be paying attention at all, and Twenty-Trills twitched in irritation.
The entire transport suddenly shuddered as the wheels struck an inequality on the surface, and the medic winced. Fortunately for all the broken bones and dislocated joints in the wing, the compartment they were in was stabilized on gyroscopes. She hadn’t felt a thing, but witnessing the world swerve like that with no physical sensation to match was not a pleasant experience. It did however give her reason to reconsider the humans’ attention levels. The dozing male angled his head and opened an eyelid a fraction to monitor the reaction of the pilot. The pilot had reacted to minimize the disruption to the passengers without taking her eyes off the road but now proceeded to check all monitors and windows. The dozing female glanced back at the compartment, and her eyes tracked the dim space for a few wingbeats as she looked for an officer.
“Hey, you the medic?” the human called out in a soft, deep tone.
“I am the medic,” Twenty-Trills confirmed.
“That bump didn’t jostle you?” the human asked.
“Not at all,” Twenty-Trills replied. “The gyroscopes on this compartment are quite capable.”
The human’s face split open into a grin that exposed her massive rocks of teeth. “Good,” she said. “We’re not a medical transport, you know. It was really lucky we had the crystal carrier handy.”
“Really lucky,” Twenty-Trills replied, unsure of the meaning but more than willing to let the humans offer adjectives at this point. She was so tired.
The male human had turned his head to look out the window now as they rounded a sharp corner in the road, and the local body of water – a loch, the humans called it – came into view. Twenty-Trills shuddered at the wispy cloud of ash that poured over the side of the surrounding hills and spilled into the valley. There wasn’t much material in the air here so far from their abandoned camp, but that there was any at all was a harsh reminder of what they had barely survived. The humans seemed to be having a different reaction. The male straightened a bit as if to free his lungs and emitted a low, musical hum.
“Smoke on the water,” sang out the driver softly.
“Fire in the sky,” the youngest female answered her, drawing the last syllable out in a croon.
The thought that she should probably be concerned about that last line if it was a description of the observed reality crossed Twenty-Trills’s mind, but she was so tired she could hardly find the energy to position her wings correctly, let alone investigate an atmospheric phenomenon that the humans clearly had under control. The older two humans started, and each turned as much attention on the youngest as their situations allowed; the male twisting his body around and straightening his massive spine and the female angling her eyes at her junior. The younger female didn’t seem to notice their contorted faces and changed positions at first, but after a few moments, she turned her attention back from the ash stream and glanced between her companions.
“What?” she asked.
“How do you know that song?” demanded the older female with a laugh.
“Everyone knows that song!” the younger protested, wrinkling her nose in an almost Winged expression of perplexity.
“Do you know the meaning?” the male demanded. The eldest female shushed him. “Or the context?” the male asked in a whisper, glancing back into the compartment.
“To be honest,” the younger female said with a laugh, “I really only know those two lines, but really, why are you two so shocked when I get the most common cultural reference?”
“You just have an air of being innocent, sweetie,” the female said with a grin.
“How innocent do you have to be to not know the proper response to smoke on the water?”
Their voices began to fade out as Twenty-Trills let sleep creep up her wingtips. She probably should stand watch, but what really was the point of having allies who considered the ground pulverizing itself and spewing itself into the air as a topic for cultural debate rather than a natural disaster if you couldn’t let them deal with this updraft once in a while?


HAW Book 3 – Available on Indiegogo October 2022
Humans are Weird Previous Books

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Published on October 25, 2022 13:40

October 20, 2022

October 17, 2022

October 16, 2022

October 7, 2022

October 2, 2022

Humans are Weird - Schadenfreude - Let's Work It Out

Picture Humans are Weird - Schadenfreude - Let's Work It Out
"This is where the text should be but I got my docs to the editor late so I will post the text when I get it.  -_-


​https://youtu.be/1_3DX1sYSk0  

Get the book at Indiegogo!  












​
Please go and leave a new rating and review on my 2nd book! 
Amazon! 
Barnes & Noble
Powell's Books
Google Play Books
Kobo By Rakuten
​
What does it mean when your human friend says “Watch This?”? Why does this simple phrase seem to terrify any alien that has first appendage experience with humans? #HFY #HumansAreWeird #HumansAreSpaceOrcs #EarthIsADeathWorld #EarthIsSpaceAustralia


Hey! The books are moving well on Amazon and now have 300 reviews and ratings! If you bought the book and enjoyed it, it would really help me out if you leave a quick star rating on Amazon. A review would be great but just stars would be a huge boost *****!
​

QUICK NOTE: RE: everyone who asked. The book is avaliable in Amazon regions US-UK-DE-FR-ES-IT-NL-JP-BR-CA-MX-AU-IN. HOWEVER The above link only takes you to the US Amazon site. The one indicated by the .com ending. If it says "not avaliable in your country" that just means that you need to click over to your Amazon region.


Of course if you want a signed first edition you can email me at the email on my website and I can ship you a signed Author copy of the first edition for the same price as the crowdfunding campaign $35 domestic and $60 overseas. I'll do that until I run out of extra books.
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Published on October 02, 2022 13:27

September 26, 2022

Humans are Weird - Boom, Boom, Boom

Picture ​ Humans are Weird – Boom, Boom, Boom


“The air itself tasted of the eternal.
The sky split and opened.
Fire lanced across space itself.
The immortal touched the child, and both cried out for the beauty.”


Prince Triclick rubbed his sensory horns ruefully as he finished chanting the poem and cast a final glance over where the silverwings were stored. The graceful long distance transports normally sat in the open field in tastefully arranged clusters around their maintenance sheds. Each one would be anchored with a graviton tether more than strong enough to keep it on the ground even in its passive mode. That is how he had always arranged his wings on his home colony, and that is how he had lost the majority of this colony’s silverwings. A shame that had nearly cost his family the rights to develop this world.
Now the graceful curve of each leading edge of the beautiful craft was shoved under the trailing edge of the one in front of it. Thick cables that couldn’t help but bite into and damage the sensitive sensors that impregnated the flight surfaces crossed over and extended wing surfaces. Over all this, to protect everything from the chaos approaching from the north, northeast the human had thrown a hyper-insulating tarp. The dullest grey surface you could imagined covered the whole in a tight wrap. Each graviton tether was fully activated and the whole thing resembled some humming isopod that had escaped from a world with far less gravity and peace of mind. Seven such monstrosities were lined up at a respectful distance from the next so that if one line of protection failed the rest wouldn’t be damaged.
“That was beautiful,” Ranger Smith said, the admiration vibrating up through Prince Triclick’s feet and drawing his attention back to the present moment.
At least the power of the human’s voice made his sensory horns stop tingling, Prince Triclick thought with a rueful grimace.
“Who wrote it again?” the human asked.
“When she wrote it her name was Thrity-Five Flaps,” Prince Triclick explained. “The entire poem cycle earned her the right to a smaller name and she recorded her next names as Fifteen Trills.”
The human nodded and grunted as he bent down and with an almost terrifying display of force lifted the remaining tarp and began striding back to the main tent that was sheltered in among the trees.
“So you do get thunderstorms on your homeworld?” Private Smith asked.
“None like that,” Prince Triclick stated, glaring back over his shoulder at the black bank of clouds that was gradually surging towards them from the north.
“But you do have some, or how could What’s her Flap have written that poem cycle,” the human pressed eagerly.
Prince Triclick gave a little sigh of relief as they passed under the dense canopy of the forest proper and the potent electrostatic energy began to dissipate in the movement of the branches. .
“We do,” he agreed, “but they are vanishingly rare. The one that inspired that particular poetry was the result of a meteor shower of heavily ionizing fragments.”
The human bobbed his head eagerly as he listened. Private Smith was clearly enjoying this story immensely and Prince Triclick sound himself getting into it as well despite the ominous feeling caused by the approaching storm. They reached the main tent, the one used as a cafeteria and general meeting place just as he was describing how the meteor shower had disrupted power over half a continent.
“Yo!” a rough voice called out. “Stow the tarps and help us secure the edges! The auto cinch failed!”
“Sorry sir!” Ranger Smith said, carefully but quickly boosting the prince from his shoulder. “I gotta get this!”
Prince Triclick mentally licked down his irritation, he really had been at the best part of the story and it rubbed his fur all wrong to end it there, but duty was duty no matter what your species was, and he flapped up to a handy perch. He considered going back to his office, but it shouldn’t take the humans very long to finish cinching down the edges of the tent manually and perhaps Ranger Smith would like to hear the rest of the story while the current storm raged among the uppermost branches of the forest. Prince Triclick pulled out a portable data pad and began working on a few low priority tasks while keeping one ear perked for the sound of Ranger Smith’s footsteps. However he had finished several tasks by the time Sargent Holt strode in announcing that all the hatches were battened, whatever that meant, and he was getting a drink and starting a fire.
Prince Triclick did not like the sound of any of that, from the metaphor he clearly didn’t know, to the concept of a human mixing alcohol and fire, even if they were each in their proper place, but he knew better by now than to attempt to interfere with a determined Holt. Just then the first flash of lightening came through the transparent sections of the tent and Prince Triclick clenched his jaw to keep from shuddering as the massive rolling boom of the thunder followed it. He almost succeeded. The first crack was louder than the team had calculated and overwhelmed the sound dampening layers in the tent.
There was a general start as the majority of the Winged in the tent took to the air and sought out their particular human friend. A general and gentle murmur followed as the humans opened their outermost layer at the chest to let their particular Winged friends find that extra layer of insulation provided by their bodies and their coats. Holt glanced over at Prince Triclick and lifted a great flap invitingly. Prince Triclick eyed the place uncertainly for a moment, he would rather wait for Ranger Smith. However the lightening flashed again, closer now, and Prince Triclick darted for the protective space before the following sound wave could hit.
The insulation on the tent meant that he couldn’t hear the first drops of precipitation strike the roof and for that he was grateful as he snuggled into the soft material of Sargent Holt’s coat. The engineers insisted that shoving your sensory horns into a natural material to mute the sound of thunders storms was a far inferior method to the sound cancelers they developed, but then engineers were rather thick in the skull in Prince Triclick’s opinion. As soon as the sound rolled away he peeled his still stinging sensory horns away from Holt’s coat and blinked up at him.
“Have you seen Ranger Smith?” Prince Triclick asked. “He wished me to finish a story for him.”
Holt nodded.
“Doubt you’ll be able to finish it before the end of the storm,” Holt said.
“And why is that?” Prince Triclick asked.
“Smith is out in the sheds with the rest of the storm watchers,” Holt said jerking his chin towards the rear of the tent.
Prince Triclick blinked up at him in shock. He almost missed the next lightening flash.
“The sheds are nearly uninsulated!” Prince Triclick burst out. “The noise level-”
“That’s just why they like it,” Holt interrupted, bringing his jar of frothy fermented liquid to his lips before expanding on that nonsense.
“Remember humans aren’t as noise sensitive as you wingy folk,” Holt continued, “and lots of humans like the sound of rain. Can’t hear that at all in the insulated bits.”
Prince Triclick pondered this as he ducked his head once more to press his sensory horns into the material of Holt’s coat. When the wave of sound passed, he thought it took longer this time, he looked up at Holt again.
“You are claiming,” he began, “that more than one human would rather spend a storm in an unheated, uninsulated storage shed having their eardrums blasted and there electroreceptors tingled rather than spend it by the-” he glanced over at the fireplace and the primitive nature of that stopped him.
Perhaps there was a bit of inconsistency in being shocked at the one behavior, and passing over the madness of insisting on having a fire in a forest in a storm. Holt gave a chuckle and gestured with his fermented drink at the fire that cracked and sent out a wave of sparks.
“Hey,” he said, “we ain’t all nuts like that.”
He raised the drink to his lips and took a long drought. Prince Triclick stared up at him and felt his astonishment bleed out into a sigh.
“No,” he agreed. “Not like that.”
Another flash came and he tucked his sensory horns back into the coat.
Please go and leave a new rating and review on my 2nd book! 
Amazon! 
Barnes & Noble
Powell's Books
Google Play Books
Kobo By Rakuten
​
What does it mean when your human friend says “Watch This?”? Why does this simple phrase seem to terrify any alien that has first appendage experience with humans? #HFY #HumansAreWeird #HumansAreSpaceOrcs #EarthIsADeathWorld #EarthIsSpaceAustralia


Hey! The books are moving well on Amazon and now have 300 reviews and ratings! If you bought the book and enjoyed it, it would really help me out if you leave a quick star rating on Amazon. A review would be great but just stars would be a huge boost *****!
​

QUICK NOTE: RE: everyone who asked. The book is avaliable in Amazon regions US-UK-DE-FR-ES-IT-NL-JP-BR-CA-MX-AU-IN. HOWEVER The above link only takes you to the US Amazon site. The one indicated by the .com ending. If it says "not avaliable in your country" that just means that you need to click over to your Amazon region.


Of course if you want a signed first edition you can email me at the email on my website and I can ship you a signed Author copy of the first edition for the same price as the crowdfunding campaign $35 domestic and $60 overseas. I'll do that until I run out of extra books.
AMAZON

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Published on September 26, 2022 18:04

September 19, 2022

Humans are Weird -In a Tangle

Picture  Humans are Weird – In a Tangle


Brilliant sunlight filtered down through the skylights as Private Cutdepth sorted through the box in front of him. He couldn’t help glancing up longingly at the glowing patch of heat on the wall. The cold time the humans called ‘winter’ was finally receding as the revolutions of the titled planet brought the blessed light of the local star to bear on their joint base. However the long cold seemed to have driven the spirit of crystal water into every crack and crevice of the base, even into his own joints, he thought as he flexed his tail ruefully. Again he felt the loose flap of skin rub against the storeroom floor sending a twinge of discomfort into his spine. He thought longingly of the nice thick layer of fat he had displayed on the sides of his tail when he had arrived in the warm time. Growing up in his father’s colony he had never thought about those precious reserves of energy and insulation. Now he couldn’t wait to feel them expand once more as the humans promised they would with the return of the blossoms and fresh growth.
“Grind that toothful when the gears get there,” Private Cutdepth said with a sigh as he pulled his attention from the attractive patch of warmth on the wall and recommenced rummaging through the box in front of him.
He reached over and once more ran a sensitive palm over the odd, human datapad he had been issued that morning. There was no handy texture differential to indicate where the charging surface was though Private O’Brien insisted that a unique texture would soon develop from repeated use of the chargers. There was a slight, a very, very slight color differential. Something vaguely between gray and black. Private Cutdepth was able to see it, in direct sunlight in noonday, but that did him little good here. He sighed and tried to recall the distance from the edge of the charging surface to the edge of the device as a whole. Once the device was charged of course he would be able to feel the electrostatic differential easily on his palms despite the numbness around his two primary fingers.
“But if it had a charge I wouldn’t need to be here digging for a charger,” Private Cutdepth muttered to himself, before licking his eyes in frustration and shoving his hands into the box.
Thanks to the numbness it took him several more seconds than it should have to realize that these were the charging units for the great mechanical devices, far overrated for his little datapad. They would work, but it would be a shameful misuse of equipment. With another sigh he turned to a stack of unlabeled boxes on a higher shelf. His tail twitched as he mentally calculated the vertical distance to the boxes. It was technically too high for him and protocol required that he either call a human for aid or get a ladder. With a huff of defiance in the general direction of the safety manual he grabbed the lowest shelf and pulled himself up.
His own data reading device, a gift from his mother before leaving home, had finally failed. The specially made device had lasted longer than the regulation issue items had, but even it had eventually succumbed to the wild fluctuations in temperature he had exposed it to in the course of nursing their water collectors along. The rupture of the power core that had damaged his palm and left him numb had been, according to the manufacturer, an unprecedented catastrophic failure, and from the way they had so eagerly demanded it back and unparalleled opportunity to gather data. The human datapad, made explicitly to take massive temperature changes would presumably last longer with its shielded layers.
He reached the boxed that he hoped contained the smaller chargers and reached out with his good forehand to grab it. However his numb fingers didn’t quite have the grip on the shelf that he thought and just as he secured his grasp on the top box he felt himself begin to slip backwards. He felt a moment of pure, hatchling panic before the fall was over and he was gasping on the ground, blinking and licking his eyes with a cable coiled around his snout.
Private Cutdepth took a moment to carefully flex, feeling for any injuries. He doubted the short fall would have done any damage but he had lost a lot of his protective fat to the cold. Pawing at that the false stone flooring the humans used was quickly beginning to leech the warmth out of his back scutes. Determining that his spine was still intact he flung himself over. Or rather he made an effort to fling himself over onto his paws. Something was wrapped tightly around one hind leg, something apparently wedge shaped was pressing into the side he had tried to roll preventing movement, and many small things were under his tail, preventing him from getting any leverage from the floor.
He gave a few experimental wriggles and produced a small avalanche behind his head. Feeling irritation building he gave a powerful sweep of his tail, only to hear something give an expensive sounding snap and drive one eyes into something pokey.
“What’s going on here?” Called out the rich warm voice of a human.
Private Cutdepth froze and let humiliation and relief grind out their respective rights while the human approached, the floor vibrating with the double beat of his footfalls.
“My dude!” Private O’Brien’s voice explained, vibrating with suppressed laughter, “my little dude! Are you okay?”
“I didn’t sprain my scutes,” Private Cutdepth replied.
“Do you need a hand up?” Private O’Brien asked, his massive upper body swaying into view.
“If it wouldn’t gum your gears,” Private Cutdepth said.
It was a booted foot that Private O’Brien extended to gently prod Private Cutdepth, tuck under his shoulder, and roll the other onto his belly. Private Cutdepth tried to get his footing on the smooth false stone and found himself scrambling in the cluster of cables and devices.
“Take it easy little dude,” Private O’Brien said with a chuckle.
The human folded himself down and began gathering up the various charging devices and other items that Private Cutdepth couldn’t identify and tossing them back into the boxes without order.
“What are those?” Private Cutdepth asked.
“Chargers, data transfer points,” Private O’Brien frowned down at an oblong in his hand, “don’t know what this is, that sort of stuff. It’s just an odds and ends box really. You know, stuff that is too good to toss or recycle. Here’s the one you need.”
The human tossed a coil of charge cable at Private Cutdepth with the same care that he was tossing the rest into the box. Private Cutdepth carefully disentangled it from around his eyes and tucked it against the data pad as the human swept the last of the assorted items into the box and replaced the box on the shelf. Now that he had a good look at the items he could see that many were damaged and most were worn. Even the one he held, though it would be functional, showed more than acceptable wear.
“Our storage space is limited isn’t it?” Private Cutdepth asked.
“A bit,” Private O’Brien said with a shrug of his massive shoulders.
“Shouldn’t most of those be sent to the mills for recycling?” he asked, indicating the boxes of assorted items that surely only a human would consider related.
“No!” the human exclaimed, shaking his head emphatically. “They are much to valuable for that, and besides, the moment we recycled them we’d need them! And the main supply ship takes months to get here!”
Private Cutdepth blinked slowly up at the grinning human. There was clearly some joke here. The human smelled of laughter even if he wasn’t vibrating with it. Private Cutdepth heaved a sigh and tucked his new datapad and charger under his foreleg.
“Let’s go out in the sun my spinning gear,” he said in a tired tone.
“Sure thing my little dude!” the human replied.  

Please go and leave a new rating and review on my 2nd book! 
Amazon! 
Barnes & Noble
Powell's Books
Google Play Books
Kobo By Rakuten
​
What does it mean when your human friend says “Watch This?”? Why does this simple phrase seem to terrify any alien that has first appendage experience with humans? #HFY #HumansAreWeird #HumansAreSpaceOrcs #EarthIsADeathWorld #EarthIsSpaceAustralia


Hey! The books are moving well on Amazon and now have 300 reviews and ratings! If you bought the book and enjoyed it, it would really help me out if you leave a quick star rating on Amazon. A review would be great but just stars would be a huge boost *****!
​

QUICK NOTE: RE: everyone who asked. The book is avaliable in Amazon regions US-UK-DE-FR-ES-IT-NL-JP-BR-CA-MX-AU-IN. HOWEVER The above link only takes you to the US Amazon site. The one indicated by the .com ending. If it says "not avaliable in your country" that just means that you need to click over to your Amazon region.


Of course if you want a signed first edition you can email me at the email on my website and I can ship you a signed Author copy of the first edition for the same price as the crowdfunding campaign $35 domestic and $60 overseas. I'll do that until I run out of extra books.
AMAZON

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Published on September 19, 2022 09:46

September 12, 2022

Humans are Weird - Off Schedule

Picture  Humans are Weird – Off Schedule


“My concern is, not that a human almost started a fire in the base,” Wing Commander Five Trills explained, speaking in carefully modulated tones, “our fire suppression protocol’s are more than sufficient to prevent danger to wing or lung, no.”
The Winged, an older officer whose sensory horns were starting to wrinkle reached up and rubbed the sensory nubs absently. He should have hung comfortably over his semi-spherical desk in a spine supporting perch that was common to Winged of his advanced years. There he did perch, but his spine was arching in a distinctly uncomfortable angle to avoid the stacks of datapads and piles of papers on his desk. The walls of his office were well padded with tastefully colored vibration canceling hangings. They were almost a necessity for a healthy Winged on a human built base, for an aging Winged with growing horn sensitivity they were a medical essential. As if to emphasize this reality Wing Second Twenty-two Clicks felt the uneven beats of a human walking shiver the perch he was clinging too.
“My concern,” Wing Commander Five Trills went on, “is that there have been no less than five close calls involving the humans and fire in the past week.”
The wing second clicked in concern and felt his wings flare a bit as he gripped that information in his winghooks.
“I was not aware of that pattern,” he interjected.
“That is a compounding concerning factor,” Five Trills went on.
The wing commander cut off the quick apology Twenty-two Clicks tried to make.
“The concern comes not from the fact that you did not know,” he assured him, “rather I am deeply concerned that of the five incidents where something caught fire, or almost caught fire, only this latest one was reported through the proper channels.”
Twenty-tow Clicks gave a low tooth-whistle of unease at that.
“Nor is fire the only issue,” the wing commander went on, pulling up a list of reports on his desk projector. “There have been wingfuls of minor flooding incidents both in the base and outside in the transport yards. There has been a sharp uptick in slip, trip, and fall injuries in the humans, both reported and unreported. Private Psmith cut one hand deeply and is on medical leave as well. While one such serious injury is hardly a pattern in of itself, as part of the larger swarm of issue it is concerning.”
Wing Second Twenty-two trills stuck his tongue out in agreement, in the position that humans described as “blep”. Then he thoughtfully ran his tongue over his teeth to show he was mulling over the issue.
“Do the humans offer any explanation?” he asked.
While there were other species on the base he sincerely doubted that they would have his commander pulling his fur out in the same way.
“I have not yet had time to initiate proper conversational investigations,” the Wing Commander said, wrinkling his nose intently.
“Why not?” Twenty-two Clicks demanded.
“The main thermal of this investigation was Private Psmith’s injury,” the Wing Commander stated, shoving a small stack of datapads to the side of his desk so he could pull up the grotesque injury information in the projection. “I went to the medical ward to sympathize with him, there was no thought of investigation in my mind, but, even taking the effects of the drugs into account, he was oddly reticent to discuss the cause of his injury. At first I assumed this was pride causing him to refuse to discuss a particularly foolish action, however his manner seemed to truculent for that.”
“Truculence,” Twenty-two Clicks interjected with a thoughtful hiss. “Now that you bump me that way the humans on base have been rather over truculent-”
“Over what time frame?” the wing commander demanded.
“Over exactly this time frame,” Twenty-two Clicks responding indicating the increases accidents shown on the graph. “Also they have increased their safety protocols in response to our presence. I had been curious about it at the time, but didn’t feel the need to report a sudden increase in safety mindfulness-”
“Let’s make putting a new regulation in about that on our front teeth shall we?” Wing Commander Five Trills interjected in a dry tone.
Twenty-two Clicks gave a raspy laugh.
“Probably a decent vector,” he admitted. “I’ll add over conscientiousness about safety to the suggested paranoia file.”
The wing commander emitted a tired laugh that trailed off into a sigh as he rubbed his horns.
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever is causing this issue was something they saw coming,” Twenty-two Clicks stated.
“Did they give you any reason for the increased security?” the wing commander asked, shifting on his perch into a more comfortable position.
“I do recall that they suggested a connection between the precautions and the shift change,” Twenty-two Clicks stated.
“The shift change for the observations of the night terrors?” Five Trills asked.
Twenty-two Clicks flicked his ears in confirmation as he pulled up the schedule for the base.
“The spiky-dark moth survey as the humans call it,” Twenty-two Clicks went on. “The night terrors are such a nuisance, even a danger, to us it just made sense to delegate handling them to the humans.”
“Did the humans object?” the wing commander asked.
“Not in the least,” Twenty-two Clicks replied with an amused flick of his ears. “They called it the perfect seasonal work. “Hunting night terrors in spooky season” is what they called it.”
“Could their be a superstitious element to the behavior change?” Five Trills asked.
“Possibly,” Twenty-two Clicks said slowly, “I know humans don’t like discussing their personal superstitions very much, but I don’t think that is a major thermal in the issue. They were treating it more like a physical issue in theirselves. I recall Psmith specifically stating that the shift in schedules, ‘night hours’ he called it, would ‘mess him up until he adjusted’.”
“So there is an expectation that the problem will resolve itself,” the wing commander stated. “Still I would like to find out what exactly it is about shifting from a daylight hour shift to moonlight hour shift that ‘messes up’ the humans so bad.”  

Please go and leave a new rating and review on my 2nd book! 
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What does it mean when your human friend says “Watch This?”? Why does this simple phrase seem to terrify any alien that has first appendage experience with humans? #HFY #HumansAreWeird #HumansAreSpaceOrcs #EarthIsADeathWorld #EarthIsSpaceAustralia


Hey! The books are moving well on Amazon and now have 300 reviews and ratings! If you bought the book and enjoyed it, it would really help me out if you leave a quick star rating on Amazon. A review would be great but just stars would be a huge boost *****!
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QUICK NOTE: RE: everyone who asked. The book is avaliable in Amazon regions US-UK-DE-FR-ES-IT-NL-JP-BR-CA-MX-AU-IN. HOWEVER The above link only takes you to the US Amazon site. The one indicated by the .com ending. If it says "not avaliable in your country" that just means that you need to click over to your Amazon region.


Of course if you want a signed first edition you can email me at the email on my website and I can ship you a signed Author copy of the first edition for the same price as the crowdfunding campaign $35 domestic and $60 overseas. I'll do that until I run out of extra books.
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Published on September 12, 2022 09:40