Chapter 2: Lirrip
Lirrip was feeling upset, and very stressed. For his kind, that wasn’t a good thing, and he was doing his best to stay as calm as possible, to try and avoid any extra levels of frustration that could possibly set him off.
Due to an unfortunate accident a few cycles back, Lirrip was down two members of his engineering crew. It was nothing too serious, they would probably fully recover eventually, but as long as they still glowed in the dark and left a trail of brightly shining footsteps wherever they walked, the Health and Safety department said they ought to take some – mandatory – paid leave.
This meant: replacements.
Usually, an engineering team was put together to cover the knowledge needed for most things, from basic repairs and general maintenance, to emergency contingency plans in cases of impending doom.
Less than an hour ago, Lirrip had been briefed about the two new additions to his team.
Two Terrans. Brad and Lydia. Top of their class, according to the reports.
Top of their Terran class, that is.
This worried Lirrip.
This worried Lirrip very, very much.
He didn’t dislike Terrans, not at all! He often found their blunt way of acting, and their open way of speaking – loud as it may be – actually quite welcoming.
What he feared, however, was their tendency to improvise.
A few years ago, he had been on a small Orion-class ship sent to help out the technicians of a mining operation on Zaforian. There, the technicians had experienced an odd array of issues they couldn’t seem to fix by themselves, severely hindering their mining efforts. The technicians consisted of a few Lindarrans and mostly Zaforians, and they had asked for some out-of-the-box engineering ideas and skills to try and solve this problem. Hence the call for help.
The other engineers beside Lirrip, had been another Rlep, two Korlags, and a Terran.
As they came close to Zaforian, similar odd malfunctions that had been messing with the technicians on the planet, had started messing with the small ship.
Conduits started overloading for no reason, energy drained from vital parts of the ship to locations unknown, and no matter how hard Lirrip and his fellow engineers worked to fix the issues and prevent the ship from turning into a smouldering crater on Zaforian, death seemed imminent. As soon as they managed to fix one issue, something related blew to bits or overloaded, driving the engineers up the walls, so to speak.
The Terran, however, brushed them all aside and started working on systems that weren’t even affected, claiming he thought he could fix a work-around, based on his gut feeling. He had never been on a ship like this before, nor did he have any kind of education based around this specific spaceship’s workings, as most of his previous jobs had always been completely planet-side.
Everybody ignored him, as he could do very little harm to an already failing ship, and they continued trying to find a way to keep the ship from crashing.
Just as they were attempting to come to terms with their upcoming Death, Lirrip barely able to keep himself from spreading all over the bulkheads like his fellow Rlep had done moments earlier, the ship suddenly stabilised.
It turns out, Lirrip heard later as the sudden lurch of stability had him swiftly joining his fellow Rlep all over the interior, that the Terran had somehow managed to bypass some energy relays, crossing some previously hardwired subroutines in through other systems, breaking several laws of physics and mechanics.
It worked, though.
For the everliving lights, it worked.
When the ship made it safely to Zaforian and the crew was brought in for questioning – two of them scraped into containers – nobody knew exactly what had happened, or how the issue had been fixed.
The Terran just replied something along the lines of “It sort of made sense, so I just did what I thought needed to be done, and along with what my colleagues did, it worked, didn’t it? What’s the big deal? We fixed it, we made it, and we landed safely!”
That particular ship was now on traveling display between the Alliance’s most advanced scientific institutes.
Nothing in the ship worked properly anymore, it wouldn’t start at all, most internal systems had either fused together or burnt down completely, and nobody could figure out how it had ever functioned throughout all of it, but it had indeed brought the crew safely to the ground.
Rumour has it that anyone who manages to figure out how it remained airborne, with the modifications made by the Terran and his colleagues, was in for an honorary position on the Science board of any Alliance institution of choice.
At this memory, Lirrip made a mental note to try and find out the name and current station of the Terran engineer who had fixed an unfixable ship. Being scraped into a container and left to regenerate for several cycles doesn’t do much for one’s memory.
“Lieutenant Lirrip, sir?”
Shaken from his memory-day-dream, Lirrip turned around and saw two Terrans stare at him, standing close together and smiling brightly.
“Ensigns Brad and Lydia Thompson, reporting for duty, sir!” the two said in synch.
Lirrip felt conflicted. He had learned to tell the difference between Terrans years ago, even though they didn’t have clan-stripes or patterns. These two, however, were virtually the same. There was a difference in what the Terrans called ‘hair-do’, and one seemed to have a less angular body than the other, but their faces! Their faces were the same!
Brad and Lydia exchanged a quick glance, and smiled even brighter.
“Sorry to confuse you, sir,” Brad said.
“It’s a common occurrence that people have difficulty telling us apart,” Lydia said.
“Especially at first glance,” said Brad.
“Or when we’re still new to people.” Lydia said.
“We’re twins!” Brad prompted.
“Identical twins, even!” Lydia said.
“We won’t take offense though, sir!” Brad said.
“Even our parents had issues keeping track of who was who,” said Lydia.
“We did tend to dress the same when we were younger.” said Brad.
“Although, the uniforms really don’t make it any easier to tell who’s who.” Lydia said, with a smile.
Lirrip, who had been following who spoke with his eyes, was starting to get a headache. They spoke in such a rapid fashion, almost in unison.
“Do you, eh, always speak like this?” Lirrip asked, almost afraid of the answer.
The two Terrans exchanged another quick smile.
“Not always sir,” Brad said, “as it tends to confuse the fuck out of people.”
“But, you know,” Lydia filled in, “we were curious if you really would explode!”
“We heard it wasn’t fatal,” Brad said, “and, well, sorry if we offended you sir.”
“We’re just curious!” Lydia smiled.
“It was for science!” Brad added proudly.
Lirrip sighed heavily. This was going to be a tough pair to work together with. Human curiosity was apparently not just shared between these two ‘twins’, but doubled, added, tripled, and – then – divided between them.
“Welcome on board you two, and glad to make your acquaintance. Make your way to the quarters I assume you’ve been assigned to, unpack your gear, have a run around the ship to get your bearings and I’ll see you at the start of the next cycle.”
The twins saluted, and walked away.
“Oh, and one more thing, Thompsons?” Lirrip bellowed after them before they rounded a bulkhead.
“Do try and avoid trying to make me explode. It’s not worth satisfying your curiosity, as you will be the ones cleaning up! Dis-MISSED!”
Shaking his head and mumbling to himself, Lirrip made his way to the mess hall. He felt like he earned a drink after those exhausting few minutes. He didn’t even want to think about the immense pain in the tail it might be to work with those two.
In the mess hall, Lirrip had gotten his drink from the protein-sequencer, a nice thick bubbling concoction of sulphur, activated carbon, and several other ingredients. He’d never been able to remember what exactly was in it, and some types of plants started wilting if he got too close with his beverage, but it was utterly delicious.
Turning around, drink in hand, he noticed Tch’ri sitting alone at a table with a bowl of grub, and he hastily approached. Tch’ri and him went back quite a bit, and Tch’ri had a lot more experience with Terrans than he had, maybe he could get some advice.
“Hey, Tch’ri! You got a moment?”
Tch’ri nodded, and motioned with a loaded and dripping spoon for him to sit.
“See, I’ve received two new crewmembers today. You know, to replace Glmr and Shkt?”
Tch’ri chuckled, “Yeah, those two glowsticks won’t be back any time soon. How are the newbies?”
Lirrip sighed, huddling down behind his steaming and gently bubbling drink.
“They’re two Terrans, and I think these might be trouble, if not ending up being the death of me. If I didn’t know better, they’re telepathic. They pretty much finish each other’s sentences, they seem to know what the other is thinking, and it’s creeping me out a little. Do Terrans, as far as you know, possess telepathic abilities? Or if it’s possible for one Terran to split into two, like two now complete halves of the same being?”
Tch’ri thought for a second, digging through the collectively shared information stored in Xemhive, that every Xem could access.
“As far as Xem know, no Terran has been linked to any telepathy whatsoever. There’s rumours of some old legends on Terra that could, but none have even the slightest shred of credibility behind it. Although, to be honest, some Terrans seem to communicate with their ‘pets’ in ways we don’t understand. Maybe that has some merit in researching, but no. No proof of telepathy so far. As to the two halves bit, there is such a thing as twins or identical twins, but that’s pretty much all Xem know about it. Why?”
Lirrip relaxed a bit. Maybe it was just two Terrans trying to mess with him. They had, after all, expressed curiosity in watching him explode, and most Terrans he knew had an odd sense of humor.
“Nothing important, I hope. Just a well-made joke. Again, I hope.”
Lirrip got up, grabbed his drink and smiled at Tch’ri.
“It’s probably nothing. But if I discover something solid, you’ll be the first to know.”