My name? Not important. I'm a Xenobiologist. But some people know about my family. Sure our name's changed over the years, thankfully, but you can see old movies about them sometimes. I was born with an unusual gift. I can talk to animals. No, I'm not crazy, yes this has been very thoroughly been tested even with telepaths. I can talk to animals and they can understand me, and I can understand them. How is this possible? Good question, we never did figure that one out. But it sure helps when you're trying to convince an 800 pound behemoth you ended up meeting up with during a survey mission not to chew on you or your crew-mates. -- LetsTalk
Technically speaking, we're a family of Espers. It's a unique gift handed down in a peculiar mutation from a who-knows-the-numeral grandfather who became the inspiration for a famous work of fiction. I'll tell you what we can do and you'll know what one it is. Instantly.
My family and I can understand and communicate with animals. Yes, just like Doctor Dolittle. Yes, I've heard it a billion times or more, I just roll my eyes like that automatically. It's like a habit. No, the family name is not 'Dolittle', and it never was. Besides, the mutation's spread a bit since then and there's like ten families who have it by now.
No, we don't have conversations. Animal language is a little less... structured. Survival's generally hinged on eat-mate-flee priorities with little side-trips involving whether or not the creature in question looks after their young and how invested they are in parenting. Animals have no sense of 'test' or 'trial'. Everything is either a danger or it's not. In the cases of the new and strange, it's safer to assume something's dangerous.
Curiosity is not often rewarded in the realm of instincts. Therefore, even the advantage of being able to understand and communicate with any creature is not always a smooth journey. Take the latest encounter from PlanSurv, for example.
We'd been doing the usual things. Cataloguing plants, setting up trail cameras, trapping things for scan, tag, and release. Not anticipating a lot of trouble. We weren't attacked by a carnivore. Those things prefer to run away unless you actually look like prey. No, if you're out in a wilderness, you have to watch out for the big herbivores. Those things give zero [EXCREMENT]s. Trust me on this.
First things first. We don't actually talk. We communicate. There is a huge difference. Talking involves structure. Communicating involves companionship, and it is a lot harder to achieve.
For instance, the transcribed though format, "My baby!" is actually closer to, "Threat? THREAT! Baby! Protect baby! ATTACK!" The message is the same, but the short form is easier for the poor soul reading my field reports. Communication between myself and the creatures of any given world are in brief, easily-understood concepts that are repeated frequently and also -this is important- very quickly.
For reasons that quickly become obvious the longer you have this job, it is far, far safer to be a vegan or low-meat vegetarian. If you smell like a herbivore, there's fewer chances of being mistaken for a carnivore
Also, creatures don't have names. Not even in the Hunts-in-the-Night or Stalks-the-Shadows stuff we love to put into fiction. Creatures don't bother about who anyone is. They're not that introspective. Hell, most of them are barely self-aware. Therefore, any and all names that make it into my reports are the products of anthropomorphising.
We good on this? Cool, because I flakking hope so.
The 'conversation' during the attack can be written up like this...
Junior: What? What this? What? Where's Momma?
Me: Good baby. Stay quiet, baby. Safe baby.
Mom: (angry) MY BABY!
Me: (desperate) Me happy friend! Good baby. Very good baby.
Junior: This fun. Hi Momma!
Mom: My baby... Mine!
Me: Yes, yes. Happy friend, me. Good baby. Baby go to Momma, now.
Junior: Happy play fun times with new friend! Yay!
Me: Happy friends. Yay.
Mom: (grudgingly) Happy baby. Good. I will smash you to paste if you flakk up even a little.
At which point I advised the survey team that it would be smart to pack up all our toys and move away in the least-threatening manner possible. When a large herbivore decides to temporarily not flakk up the rest of your life, it is very wise to get the heck out of dodge.
You do not, and I cannot emphasise this enough, DO NOT attempt to put "just a locator tag" on Mom after she's grudgingly let her baby play with the strange critters. Darren.
You especially do not try this after a bacon and egg breakfast. DARREN.
Anyway, that's why Darren's now getting all his bones reassembled by nanites in the medbay. At least the rest of the science team was willing to listen to good damn sense and not mumble something like, "Hey, the baby's playing between your feet, how dangerous can the mom be?" before whipping out the tagger gun.
Honestly, asking a question like that? Darren's lucky I'm a fast talker and pretending to curb stomp him actually flakking worked. We can only hope that Darren's learned a valuable lesson from all of this.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / mb_fotos]
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