The Strange Story of...

The Strange Story of the New Creature

         Nothing like this had ever happened before. There had been stories, yes, of such creatures existing, dating as far back as 1982. But no one, not scientists nor politicians, believed they really existed. 

         But in the summer of 2507, one was found. It had been in an unconscious state, seemingly from the wrecked foreign ship it had been in. A couple had reported seeing it crash into a forest just a few miles from the city. It had awoken several hours after its capture, and had been placed under permanent surveillance. A debate had been going on between the science community as to whether or not the creature should be vivisected, but eventually this was shot down. 

       After several months of study, the creature was deemed aggressive, but ultimately harmless. It spoke, if you could call it that, often, in noises that were sharp, grating and and sounded like the senseless babbling of a young child. It was after several weeks that it seemed to name itself by pointing an appendage towards its body and spitting out a word. Many thought the creature was hideous, and thus kept it shadowed from the public. But, after nearly a year, the public was finally told of its existence, and a group of juvenile students were allowed access to the labs to view the creature. 

       "What do you think it looks like?" TJ had been asking the same question for several minutes, and his teacher had simply had it. 

       "I don't know, now please be quiet." They were being escorted through the halls of the lab, with a security guard leading the way and another following the group, making sure no inquisitive eyes went where they weren't supposed to.

       The class had been selected out of hundreds of others to be given the tour, as the children in that class specifically had the highest test scores out of any others that applied for the tour.  TJ remembered the issued test; he studied for weeks so he'd have a chance to see the creature.

     "Right this way." They were led through numerous passage ways, each one looking the same. Finally, they came to the door of a surveillance room, with red signs indicating that only those with special access would be allowed in.

        "Behind this door is a creature that you couldn't dream of in your wildest nightmares. Now, take a breath, and try not to scream." Several of the students chuckled at the guard's over-dramatic delivery. TJ, however, was filled with apprehension. 

      The door was swung open, and students nearly trampled each other in an attempt to see the creature first. Then, when the creature came into view, there was a collective gasp. The teacher gagged. 

      "What is that thing?" TJ asked the scientist watching the creature.

     "We've had our top linguists analyzing its language for months, and we think its been calling itself a human."

     "'Human'? What the globbleshray is that?"

     "LANGUAGE!" The teacher's eye rolled, and her tentacles touched the area above her slime pouch in annoyance.

     The scientist laughed, his tentacles flailing. "There's no need for that. We think that this "human" came from a planet a few galaxies from here. They seem to be a pompous, yet primitive race, as this one seems to threaten us every time we inject something."

   "You see, it was injured when its ship wrecked, and it was secreting a red liquid. We modified our own liquid clotting technology to the human's physiology, and then applied it through injection. Apparently, while painless to us, the human found them extremely uncomfortable, and used one of its appendages to smack a young doctor across his ecaftnorf."

    "It sounds dangerous," said a worried student.

    "Nonsense. We give it a steady diet of neerg, which we believe it calls fruit, a mixture of two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, and it remains mostly docile."

    "Hydrogen and oxygen? Isn't that poison?"

     "To us, yes. But the human seems to need a lot of it. But, and this is almost too good to be true, it inhales the oxygen in the air, which you all know is poisonous, and exhales carbon dioxide, the rare power source. So, as you can see, we have a very good reason for keeping it alive."

    "Is it intelligent?"

     Here the scientist paused before answering. "There are still many things we don't know about this creature, but we'll do our best."

     TJ stared at the camera screens. The creature was a meager five and a half feet, nearly a half of the size of him. It had brownish-yellow strands that seemed to from the top of its body, had only four fleshy appendages, the top two ending in five more small appendages. It had two eyes, twice the amount he had, and they had icy blue irises. There were so many oddities about the creature that it would take hours to name them all. 

    But while the other students stared at the human, some making fun of it, something gnawed at him. He saw something in the human's eyes, something he couldn't process. It was something so much more than sadness, more than anger, more than all five emotions known to his kind. He rationalized that the human must have been feeling two emotions at once. But, he thought, how can something so small and unintelligent feel two emotions at once? 

   His species, the Sensusans, thrived on their ability to focus on one emotion at a time, and they built a perfect society that focused on every group of young learning one skill, and dedicating every ounce of energy and time to perfecting and performing that skill. Feeling more than one emotion at a time did happen, but it was viewed as an infectious disease, and the carriers of such disease were quarantined until cured.

   As they left the lab, he pondered the human's situation. He'd heard that some creatures on other planets were "born", whatever that meant, in litters, and held feelings of respect, or something like it, when near the members of their "families". Was the human harboring feelings of sadness about being away from its "family?"

   TJ was clueless. Yet, at the same time, sad. He realized that he was experiencing two emotions at once. But it didn't feel like a disease. Not at all.