Our New Human

7

Elsie sits down with her spacesuit on. She is smiling more severely than usual.
   "How is your spacesuit?" I ask, noticing the thick black clothing she has put on. It covers her hands and arms, down to her legs where some heavy looking human shoes cover her feet.
   "Well, it could be better, but hey, whatever's going to keep me alive."
     "What is the difference between normal attire and the spacesuit?"
     Elsie picks up a large sphere. It is white and a large portion of one side has shiny mirroring black across it.
     "The suit is to protect my body from the lack of temperature in space. If it gets too cold there are tiny micro heaters that will keep me from freezing, but mainly my body temperature will keep me warm. This helmet is white to keep my head from overheating and safe, but this part here I can see through, but it's reflective so I don't get blinded or too hot."
    "You cannot get too hot or too cold?
"No. I also have this tank of oxygen I have to keep on me. I'm like, actually a dying old dog."
I put my hands on Elsie's shoulder. I heard when humans have unfortunate occurrences drawing near that they cannot change, they want to feel comforted and affection.
"It is okay Elsie. I will make your time until your inevitable death very comfortable because I am your friend."
Elsie makes a face that she usually reserves for when she has a question.
"Attention crew! We will be landing on Embassy Planet 1034."
    "Ohhh man. I'm not ready. I'm not ready." she says quietly.
   "Would you like to stay in the spacecraft?" I ask her.
   "Oh no, I'm just nervous."
      "Nervous? Is that an ailment?"
Elsie picks up a cylinder the length of her arm and hands it to me.
   "Can you put the top of this into that glowing blue hole in my helmet?"
     I do as she says as she pulls a small circular piece of fabric out of her bag and pulls her head through it onto her neck.
   "Helmet, please."
Elsie pushes the lower edge of the neck thing onto a small dot on the suit. It beeps and the fabric adjusts itself. Then she pulls it over her neck and puts the helmet on. It beeps again.
"Thanks!" she says. Her voice sounds different from inside the helmet. Suddenly, everything shakes as we make our descent.
"We are following standard embassy protocol today! Would a representative from each planet come forth please to make the standard entrance?" Commander Grim announces, standing up near the exit.
    Elsie gets up but doesn't leave.
"Xil, who all from engineering is going up? I want to walk up with them." A little weird, considering she's more than capable of walking herself.
"We all have our specific representatives, but Darl represents me." I look at Darl, who's rubbing his shiny orange head with his muscular blue arms and a white glinting smile. It is times like these when I remember I clearly am a member of the superior subspecies.
"You should go up, Xil. I believe you were successful in meeting Elsie." Darl replies. I look down and remember he is not allowed to represent us anymore after he accidentally insulted the ambassador from Kanfeti. Everyone stares and I reluctantly stand up. Elsie smiles and waits as I make my way over to her.
      "I didn't know you and Darl were the same species!"
       "It is hard to tell if you do not know much about Fieng culture. Many crew members were very confused when the two of us joined the fleet as to how we were biologically similar."
     "It's strange how he has an orange head and you don't, isn't it?"
     "If you don't understand it is. He simply has a different heritage and set of traits than me. Every Fien has a biological factor that determines how prominent a feature is in comparison to another's. Everyone is different, but if one's individual feature strength was much greater than another's their offspring would have the stronger one and their own trait strength."
     "That is very interesting. Humans have something a little bit like that, but traits are dominant or recessive and it's quite hard to explain," Elsie replies. We step out of the spaceship and onto the isolated grounds of Neur.