Bad Blood

Idiosyncrasies

December 31st 2034

Times Square, Manhattan NY

Frozen, hunger, pain. These were not new words. These were words that had been Aeslir's companions these past ten months, along with confused, disgusted, and impatient. Ten months was really nothing in the span of his existence. But a drop in the ocean and yet... and yet bound within this flesh suit, ten months had been a lifetime. Every last little thing he did had some sort of sensory input. These humans claimed they had only five senses, the problem was they never turned off. It was overwhelming, bewildering, maddening.

Aeslir Bekke watched the multitude of human bodies pack into Times Square with all the ignorance of sheep. People he reminded himself. These creatures did not like it when they were referred to as humans or bodies or even creatures for that matter, despite their fleshy composition. They were delicate beings really; easily offended and just as easily manipulated. It certainly helped matters that they all had the strangest proclivity to announce every facet of their daily lives online.

It had not taken Aeslir long to lure his human counterparts one by one out of Ny-Alesund to a snowy knoll high in the hills. Claude had been first to follow him, then Emerson then Knolte and Gerstadt, Velacruz, Anders, Kristian, Jostein. Wilhem had been last. He had been the most difficult, the most suspicious. Wilhem had watched them all with growing alarm and resentment as one by one his colleagues changed, veins growing black. Though the memories had not yet surfaced, Aeslir had a strong suspicion that Wilhem was in some way responsible for his host's disappearance twelve years prior.

Two weeks after Aeslir's 'return', he snuck around the edges of the tiny village in the middle of the night, pausing by Wilhem's window just long enough to be seen. The man's suspicion proved to be his downfall. Wilhem followed him high up into the hills, not knowing his colleagues were already waiting for him.

It had been a violent transition, he had screamed and thrashed and fought, requiring four of them to hold him down. The lights had pulsed chaotically above them, creeping nearer and nearer. A surge of particle radiation and Wilhem was engulfed in the lights, screaming, cursing, bucking, fighting them with everything he had. Just as the transition was nearly complete however, Wilhelm managed to grab the icepick hanging from Jostein's belt. It was over in seconds. He drove the pick through his own stomach.

It was a learning experience. Aeslir had not realized just how frail human bodies were, how easily they were broken. Unable to reverse the transition, unable to free the comrade trapped in a host body, they left Wilhem to bleed on the slopes. They'd had no choice but to leave him up there. The instability of the human vessel was a factor he had not calculated. It was a factor he did not have to live with for much longer thankfully, a problem that would be fixed tonight.

Ten months he had spent in this fragile human suit, ten months and their ways still seemed strange to him. Warmly ensconced in a thick, puffy jacket, Aeslir watched a blonde headed woman ascend a newly erected stage, microphone in hand. Everything was a spectacle when you possesed a physical form. This planet thrived on it. The human part of him recognized that this woman was young and attractive, someone Aeslir might like to know better under the right circumstances. The other side of him however wondered at the absurdity of english speaking humans distinguishing certain hair colors and skin colors by different names. Who decided that hair was blonde and not yellow, unlike brown or red or black hair? Or that a nerve ending called the olecranon process was instead to be referred to as the funny bone when struck, when it was most assuredly not funny? Why did people emit strange barking sounds when they found a subject humorous?

There were a million little idiosyncrasies of the human condition that Aeslir found bewildering. The desire to alter one's amount of hair growth or body mass or to slather harmful, artificial chemicals onto the skin despite knowing how detrimental they were. The idiocy that kept countries from sharing resources such as food and water, technology and medicine.

The largest shock that had come to them was the discovery that this planet was divided in a thousand different ways. Religion, money, politics, climate, race, gender...having a corporeal form apparently engendered division. Aeslir's species would be long extinct if they had ascribed to any of these tenets. There were hierarchies and agendas even in his world, yet they all served a greater purpose. The need of the individual had been bred out of their society eons ago. One of the many reasons humans were no longer worthy of these flesh suits, or this planet. Their need was greater, much greater. His species' very survival depended upon him. Tonight would be the turning point. Tonight would be a new beginning for them all, for both the human species and his own.

"It's nearly time," Claude spoke softly in his ear. One thing Aeslir would credit humans with was the simplicity of their names. Red-blue-green fourth iridian wavelength function became rather tedious in the human tongue. Claude was a much more succinct designation. They watched for a moment as the 'new year' festivities in Times Square began. People laughed and sang and waved shiny objects and huddled close, watching the giant glittering ball that would soon descend. How oblivious they all seemed, how fragile and innocent. Earth had no defenders against other species, no way of even detecting them. Such a backward, primitive race. That was about to change. Aeslir and Claude descended into the crowd, to await the strike of midnight.