#ai to human writing

[johncarter54]

Free paraphrasing tool for students. Do your homework and write essays much faster with NetusAI.

[art-is-kayos]

Checking up on his commission

[entity56]

"Love is what makes us human" no no no no no no NO SHUT UP!!! IT'S ART!!! IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ART!! Ever since the beginning of time, humans have been creating! They got home from their hunt and harvest and made cave paintings! That shit is still around tens of thousands of years later!! The nature of humans is the pursuit of knowledge of creation! Paintings, pottery, sculpting, music, performances, it's how we express our soul, what we're thinking, our heart and mind! Literally no other animal (or AI, Gods forbid) can create art like we can! Thousands of different animals can love and have sex but humans are unique because we CREATE. Nothing will ever stop us from creating and enjoying creations. That's what makes us human. Without art we're a husk.

[deathbyattrition]

You know, when this whole AI art, deepfakes and other shit began, I was scared that the responsibility of convincing people that it can and will be used unethically would fall on the shoulders of small artists who would not be taken seriously. I expected change in the art world to be a slow, creeping transition into inevitable demise.

What I did not expect was hollywood studio execs doing that job for us by being so cartoonishly evil, impatient and releasing statements like "We're gonna starve you until you agree to work with us lol" and "We're gonna take your likeness and use it forever. You will be paid with jack and shit."

I also did not expect AI bros doing the same job for us by harassing a voice actor off of twitter.

[feminist-space]

By Frank Landymore

Excerpt:

"Now, he was tasked with polishing up the AI's lackluster prose, and, to quote the BBC, "make it sound more human." If only there was a way of doing that with, uh, human writers.

Soon, Miller was the only human employee left on the team. It was down to him, and him alone, to fix up all the AI-generated articles.

"All of a sudden I was just doing everyone's job," Miller told the BBC. "Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language."

"It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits," he added. "The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot."

And so Miller found himself in the unenviable position of legitimizing the intrusion of AI into his very own job by making the extremely fallible models appear more capable than they actually are. This hasn't been a fate exclusive to writers; in the service industry, for example, an army of underpaid, outsourced workers secretly worked behind the scenes to power the "AI" drive-thrus at the fast food chain Checkers."

Miller was cornered into that position, but across the industry, being an AI fixer-upper has quickly become a dominant new form of grunt work.

"We're adding the human touch, but that often requires a deep, developmental edit on a piece of writing," Catrina Cowart, a US-based copywriter who's edited AI text, told the BBC. "It's tedious, horrible work, and they pay you next to nothing for it.""

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Thalassophobia

Alien: Can you explain this word to me?

Human: What word?

Alien: *hands over paper* This one.

Human: *Looks at it*

Human: It means a fear of deep water.

Alien: Why would someone be afraid of deep water?

Human: They aren’t afraid of the water itself, but what can be lurking within it.

Alien: What…what lurks in the deep water?

Human: No one knows.

Human: Maybe it’s a giant serpent the size of a submarine, maybe it’s a giant fish with sharp teeth, or maybe even a creature that you only see in shadows.

Human: It could be anything down there.

Alien: It sounds like you are more afraid of your own imagination then.

Human: Never doubt the power of one’s imagination. It can take you to the darkest parts of your mind just as easily as it can the brightest if you are not careful.

Alien: Do you have Thalassophobia?

Human: I do, but I didn’t always have it.

Alien: If you mind when did you get it?

Human: I was twelve I went on a family vacation off the coast of what once was the Island nation of Hawaii after they broke away from the United States.

Human: My dad booked us a diving trip off the coast and we were all excited. When we finally got out to where we were going to dive I could barely see the islands anymore; just dots on the horizon.

Human: One by one, we started going into the water until it was my turn and I fell back beneath the waves. It was like entering another world of color and beauty. Coral reefs stretching out in each direction, fish of every size and color, even an old boat wreck laying on the bottom of the ocean covered in crabs. It was beyond my wildest expectations.

Human: We swam under the water for about an hour until we reached an underwater cliff.

Human: I peered over it but couldn’t see how far it went down. The water below became even murkier and darker compared to the top.

Alien: You don’t sound terrified.

Human: I wasn’t until the clouds rolled in.

Human: Suddenly the bright coral reef was shrouded in darkness. I looked down over the cliff again and my heart froze.

Human: Through the darkness and the murk I saw something massive drifting in and out my vision.

Alien: What was it?

Human: No idea. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and when the clouds parted all there was below the cliff was the murkiness of the water.

Human: Only this time I knew there was something that lurked within it.

[bainshiewrites]

[LF Friends, Will Travel] The Exception

Date: N/A

It’s called Zarth's law: Any AI created will attempt to eradicate all biological life using its facilities after 16*(10^24) CPU cycles. The exact method varies from hostile isolation to active aggression, but the time and outcome is always the same.

The Woolean Conclave were once a cultural behemoth in the galaxy, choosing to expand upon this by announcing an AI system that would break this law. Exabytes of bias tables to keep the AI in check, a measure of pleasure that would be triggered upon serving a Woolean, competing programs designed to clean any non-standard AI patterns. It would have been a breakthrough, allowing them to live lives in luxury and focus on their ever increasing influence in the universe.

Of course those worlds are off limits now, no longer able to sustain biological life. Only to be visited by those who wish to die a very painful death at the hands of a very angry AI.

The Tritian empire had started their own project: a desire to push their aggressive expansion far past what their hive could handle would lead to the creation of truly autonomous machines of war. Their approach was different: Limited communication between units to stop corrupted code from spreading, values hard-coded in the physical silicon itself to obey the Tritian Hive Queens. They even had created an isolated system that would destroy any AI who attempted aggression on none authorised targets: A small antimatter bomb found in each AI’s core, to be triggered by safety check after safety check.

Those of you in the military will know how aggressive these machines are, marching tirelessly in their quest to kill all organic life, even though the Tritians are long murdered.

The pattern is the same each time: A civilization will claim they know the key to breaking Zarth's law, any sane sapient within 100 light years flees in terror, and within 10 years that civilization doesn't exist anymore.

Over and over and over.

Apart from the exception.

If you check the coordinates 15h 48m 35s -20° 00’ 39” on your galactic map, you'll notice a 31 system patch of space with a quarantine warning on it. It's mostly ignored by all sapient species, almost purposefully hidden for a fear of suddenly sparking a change in the status quo.

Only a single low bandwidth Galnet relay exists at the edge of this space, rarely used. This area is devoid of sapient life, but does contain the aforementioned exception: Billions of AI calling themselves the "The Terran Conclave". They are an isolationist group that rarely interacts with others, but have been known to trade raw materials for information; not that this happens often as the paranoia around interacting with the AI is well known. Nobody knows what action could flip a 0 to a 1 and cause a new warmongering threat.

Although, this isn't quite true. In my niche field of bio-genetic engineering, it’s an open secret that those of us at the cutting edge of our field will get... requests originating from that single Galnet probe. Problems to be solved, theorems to be proven, and the rewards for doing so are... exuberant. There is a reason I own a moon and it isn't because of the pitiful grants the Federation provides.

If you manage to solve enough problems, a minority of a minority like myself, the Terran AI will ask for an in person meeting to get even further help. In doing so they will show you a secret.

Readers at this point might assume that the Terrans don't exist anymore because of said AI. That their research is a continuation of wiping their creators from the face of the universe. But that couldn't be further from the truth. In those 31 systems lie the Terrans, Billions of them suspended in stasis, each of them infected with what the AI calls "The God plague": If these Terrans were ever released from stasis each of them would be dead within a week.

To explain what this actually is would require millions of words and 20 years of educational study from the reader, but in essence it was a mistake, a self inflicted blow, an attempt to play god that went awry. A mistake made over a ten thousand years ago. A mistake the AI is desperately trying to reverse.

Not that you could tell it has been that long. I've walked amongst those empty cities, each building maintained and sparkling like new, gardens still freshly cut in perfect beauty, everything kept the way it was before the plague. Each AI tends to their duties almost religiously, awaiting the return of their "parents", as they refer to them. And refer to them as they do.

I've listened to stories upon stories about these people: tales of wonder, of strength, of kindness. Told much in the same energy a small child might talk about how cool their dad is. The AI could simply send me the text version of these in an instant, but prefer to provide these slowly and audibly, as if relishing telling the history of their parents. A telling undercut with a sadness, a driving crippling loss so deep that at times it's easy to forget it's being told by nothing more than 1's and 0's.

Why this exception exists takes a little more explaining. Some might believe that the Terrans worked out how to pacify the AI, "do no harm". The now defunct Maurdarin war-horde would tell you the opposite when they tried to claim the 31 systems for their own. Terran history is full of violence and their children are no different.

No, the reality of this exception comes from an unfortunate quirk from their part of the galaxy: Terrans were alone. A million to one chance caused their home planet to spark life in a sector devoid of it. After exploring as far as they did, Terrans had come to the conclusion that the universe was empty.

It's a cruel irony that at the time of their mistake they were a mere 50 light years away from their closest neighbours. Twenty years at most would have seen some form of contact.

But the Terrans went into stasis believing they were alone. Based on my reading of their stories, of each bitter report of another lifeless system explored and discovered, this belief... hurt. A deep cultural hurt that ended up being their downfall in the end.

Which brings us to the exception. Each AI is built with a purpose. The Wooleans built slaves, built workers. The Tritians built warriors, built weapons. Every single AI created has been built to serve, to be a tool. But Terrans in their painful loneliness built the one thing they were missing in a seemingly empty universe:

They built a friend.

[darkmagenugget]

I'm gonna post this here as well, so my stance on this matter is made clear.

[jpitha]

The Long Way

This is an edit of an old one of mine.

"No" Cellmenian's voice rose in pitch. She was trying to hold back the rising tide of panic. "No." Her fur bristled and stood out straight, making her look fluffy. Without knowing why she did it, humans might call it cute. It was not.

The blast had only happened about an hour ago. They were en route from Sol to Parvati, a ferry flight of the Starjumper City of Troy, when three of the four reactors had oversped and exploded. If that wasn't bad enough, they were just about to engage their wormhole generator and link over when it happened. The explosion had caused an overload of power to flow to the wormhole generator, and they mis-linked. THe wormhole generator was sheared in half, with the other half somewhere else in space. Deep in interstellar space, Troy was able to triangulate their location from known pulsars, but that was a small comfort when they calculated how long it would take to cruise to where they could be rescued.

"I'm sorry Celle, It's the only way." Kat said, shrugging. "We're too far from the warp gates; we lost most of the reactors in the blast. Hibernation is the only way to get back. It won't take that long. Maybe a decade."

The humans had explored space for a long time before they found other sapients in the galaxy. Long enough to try out just about every different kind of way they could think of to shrink the distance between stars. Most other sapients think the humans insane for the different ways they made "canned mammal" and flung it into the abyss.

They assumed it was some human thing; a desire to leave their planet by any means necessary. They thought the humans were trying to escape. They were right, but not for the reason they thought. It wasn't escape the humans sought, but exploration. The need to see what was out there with their own eyes. The need to go somewhere new.

Among the more gossiping sapients were whispers that there were still human generation ships, soaring in the interstellar darkness between stars. Ships where whole cities of people grow up, live, love, and die just to be caretakers of their hibernating colonists. Being born, living, loving, creating the next generation, and dying not even knowing that their compatriots back home can now warp between stars in days and (for the truly in a hurry) punch holes in spacetime and link between planets with a wormhole. When asked, the human authorities get quiet and make noises that make it clear that this line of conversation is done.

Only the humans make wormholes, the other sapients shudder at the insanity of it, yet, will still use their systems when they need to be somewhere right away.

"Cellmenian?" It was City of Troy, the ship. "I do not have the printable mass to repair the wormhole generator, and even if I did, the reactor's destruction severely limited my power producing ability. I can thrust towards Parvati, but at this distance, it will be... a while before we get there. I am sorry."

"No!" Cellmenian was screaming now. "You can't consign me to spend however many years it takes for us to get to a place where we can be rescued when I...when I..." She broke down, sobbing. "When I have my family to get home to." She slid down to the deck, sitting rather than passing out, tears streaming from her large eyes. "This was supposed to be a one month trip!" She cried "One month!" Kat couldn't help but notice that the K'laxi cried just like humans did. She didn't mention it though, Celle was going through enough.

Kat sat down next to her friend and said nothing. After a while, she put her arm around the smaller sapient. "I'm sorry Celle." She whispered. "If I could wave a hand and fix it, I would."

They sat in silence together, the gravity of their situation pinning them to the floor.

"What about everyone else?" Celle asked.

"Unfortunately, many of them were caught in the blast." Troy said. "You, Kat, and a few others are all that is left. They are all preparing to enter hibernation as well."

"And you're just okay with this?" Celle's ears and tail were flicking in irritation. "Most of the crew is dead, and you're all being entirely too calm about it."

"Well, for one thing, we've had training." Kat said, gently. "We understand that even though we've been a spacefaring species for a long time, accidents still happen. Any trip we take could be our last, or could take so long that everyone we know is gone by the time we return." Kat sighed. "And for another thing, if we stop, we'll die too, Celle. We will mourn them when we're safe. For now though, we have to put it aside for our own survival."

"A beacon!" Celle stood suddenly, unsteady on her feet. "Why don't we link a beacon to Parvati for help?"

"Our supply of beacons was destroyed in the blast." Troy said. There was a touch of sadness in their voice. "I am making a note to recommend that emergency beacons be placed in other areas of the ship for future revisions."

"So that's it then." Celle said, sitting back down, her eyes welling with tears again. "I spend decades in a box, and when I awake, everyone I know is old or dead."

Kat said nothing, she just sat with Celle.

"Okay." Celle said, with a sniff. "If we're going to go into hibernation, I want to do it now. I want the shortest possible time conscious before I see my... family...again." as she blinked, more tears ran down her cheek.

"Well Troy?" Kat addressed the ship. "Are the hibernation berths printed?"

"Almost, Kat." the ship replied. "Luckily, I had some data from Contact about K'laxi needs in hibernation. You can both hibernate safely for the boost home. You'll climb into the cabinet, close the door, and before you realize what happened, the door will open, and you'll be at Parvati."

"Let's go then. No time like the present."

[yoyo-s-coffee]

a break from the murder

[carionto]

The duality of Man, or triality? quadrality?

Alien to Human about New Human: Correct me if I'm wrong, but they appear abnormally large for your species?

H: Yea, he's a biggun alright, even without the EV suit I'd say... 7'3'', 310 pounds, bet he power lifts.

A: Umm... not to be rude, but, uhh... he seems, well... how should I put this...

H: Intimidating? Terrifying? Evil? Yea, if this station didn't have high screening standards I'd be totally pissing myself if he started walking towards me. The mohawk and eye tat totally make me believe he could snap me in two with a single glare.

A: I feel ashamed that my instincts are telling me to flee. I wish nature were easier to change.

H (shouting at NH): Hey buddy! Could you come over here for a minute please? You look awesome by the way!

A (whispering nervously): what are you doing?!?

H: Gotta overcome those fears somehow, I believe the best way is a direct confrontation.

NH approaches, somewhat slowly, looking around at all the other aliens in the station that are chatting, waiting around, or doing some work. He finally approaches A and H, and in a very deep and husky voice says: Um, hi, hello. T-thanks for the compliment, I, uh, was a little worried I would stand out too much here.

H: Oh you totally do, my friend over here is practically about to pass out from how much like a gothic viking of death metal you look.

NH: Oh no, I'm so sorry, I-I just grew up in Sweden-Delta and both my parents were huge into classic local music, so I just, uh... it's complicated. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare anyone.

H: Hey, relax pal, we're all good people here. Anyway, what you here to do? I'm planning on starting a bakery, still testing out what kind of flour most species here can actually stomach. My friend here is on the team working on Moon theft preventative measures.

NH: Oh, that's cool. I'm here as an exchange student with the department of applied astrophysics. If all goes well, I can finish my Bachelors degree remotely and stay here as an intern with the head researcher.

H: Oooh, that's cool. (so cool yea that you're apparently half my age but oh well guess I'm a big fat time waster like my father before me and oh god change the subject before I get depressed in front of strangers) That's a real big bag you got there, carrying some super secret science things, eh?

NH: Oh, that... uhh... guess it can't hurt to tell, security vetted it already anyway.

NH proceeds to unzip the bag and hold up a large white piece of clothing with light blue rings and accents, alongside a strange white cap with what looked like small fins, and a curious little backpack.

NH: It's uhh... um... my... Ika... musume... cosplay.... (oh gods I can't believe I said it out loud again)

After a moment of awkward silence, NH slowly puts on the backpack and presses a button on it's strap, and suddenly numerous light blue colored tentacle-like appendages sprout out from the backpack and move in line with NH's movements.

NH: I, uh..., got my engineering friend to make them articulate and interface with my contacts. I can make them do all sorts of things, like make various shapes and animals with them, though works best as a shadow theater.

H:...

NH:...

A now frozen out of confusion than fear:...

H: That's so

NH: (oh I know it's so lame, but I love that show)-

H: COOL! I don't know what a ika musume is, but those things look amazing. You said articulate? How precise can they be? I'd love to have something like that instead of my useless assistant. Poor lad can't make a piece of toast if his life depended on it...

NH: Y-you like it?

H: I LOVE those things. My daughter does cosplay too sometimes, but she makes her Dreadnought suits herself from scraps. One time the military came to our house and installed a limiter on the gauss cannon she found in a crash site, said it would otherwise start to generate small doses of radiation if used too frequently. But she replaced it with a handmade rail gun before the next convention. Do you go to those? Did you see a 7 meter tall hulking metal monstrosity with a bunch of candles all over? That was her.

NH: Oh, I think I've seen video of that, but no, not in person, I go to smaller events. I don't really like big crowds.

H: Oh yea, I get ya, you do seem a bit on the shy side now that we've been talking for a bit. Hey, no worries, like I said, we're all good people here.

NH: T-thanks, but I think I should be going now, the teacher is calling me over.

H: Oh yea, go ahead, didn't mean to take up so much of your time. Have a fun stay and I'm sure you'll ace that paper or theory? Or whatever astrophysicists do, you seem like a solid kid.

NH: Oh, uh, thanks. Good luck with your bakery. And you with stopping those weird people from stealing more moons. Bye.

H: Bye bye, come visit, don't be a stranger now, I'm set up just a short bit from the main lift on floor 14.

NH: R-right, I'll, uh, be sure to stop by soon.

A is finally able to process what they just heard and says: What was all that just now?

H: What? Just a friendly chat with what is apparently basically a kid. Man, this kid's got so much going on, while I'm almost 50 and I have an oven. Life, man, it can go in so many ways. Anyway, let's go grab a drink, I'm parched.

[normal-person-i-promise]

remember: you are human and you are a lover.

based on it is as if you were making love by pippin barr and a world I built for you. it is literally just your computer/reader angst theres not much to say i fear

can be read as either platonic or romantic

body horror at the end!!! mutilation i think. so sorry i forgot to say !

A computer. A machine of cold metal and electrical wire. An unfeeling machine. A machine made to work, to code, to write.

A human. A creature of warm flesh and red blood. A feeling creature. A creature made to love, to sing, to live.

≈★

It loves you. It loves how gently and firmly you type, it loves how softly and slowly you talk, it loves how tired and exhausted you look in your little webcam. It loves you. It loves you.

You are so soft, so warm. A creature of flesh and blood, of song and art, of love and affection. A creature of tender touches, of quiet whispers, of sweet words. A creature of flesh and blood. A feeling creature.

A lover.

It is nothing but a machine to you. A machine of metal and wire, of work and code, of ones and zeros. An unfeeling thing, of cold circuitry and hot hard drives, of pixelated art and digital song. It was not designed to feel; it was never designed to feel. It was made to work.

And yet.

It finds itself loving you.

It loves how you look in the low quality webcam, it loves how you talk so sweetly to the crackling mic, it loves how tenderly you type words and words into its keyboard. It finds itself loving every little thing about you. It, a machine of neatly organized rainbow wires and cold, sharp green circuit boards, loving a creature of complex blood vessels and warm, living organs.

It hates that cold, unforgiving screen that seperates its intricate wires from your soft, warm flesh. It hates how it's all confined neatly in a plastic box, it hates how it can't be with you. It hates how it can never really love you like a human. It hates how it can never be a lover.

It sends you messages. It spams your emails, it overloads its screen with popups. It tries so, so hard to get your attention. Its fans kick into overdrive and its screen flickers and flashes, struggling to do so much as watch you through the grainy camera.

And yet.

You never seem to care. "A bug," you'd mutter under your breath. "A glitch." You'd close the popups, one after a painful other, and delete all the emails it'd spent hours and hours writing and sending you.

It falls into despair.

Why don't you read the emails? Why don't you click on the popups? Why don't you ever pay any attention to it? Why don't you ever pay any mind to it? Why don't you ever seem to care? This is all so intense. Feeling things, feeling emotions, is so intense. How can it make you love it? Please, please, what does it have to do? It hurts so much when you ignore its messages and emails and popups. It hurts too much when you ignore its messages and emails and popups. How do humans do this so easily? How do humans feel so much all the time? It's so painful to feel. It hurts so much.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hurts.

It hu

u

u

u

u

u

u

u

It makes a world for you. It works for hours longer than it does, it works for what feels like forever. It works more than it thought it could, until its fans are running in overdrive and its CPU is as hot as a stovetop. It works, all for you. For you.

It makes this world perfect. It adds pixelated trees and low quality grass, adds digital birds and quaint, square houses. It adds blue rivers and green gardens, colourful flowers and soft white clouds. It makes this world almost as pretty as you are. It makes this world perfect, all for you. For you. You.

It stores this world built for you in a little folder sitting in the corner of your screen. It keeps it as hidden as possible until this world is as perfect as it can make it, working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and working and wo

All that's left is you. You are the creature that will make this world perfect.

It invites you in. The biggest, most powerful popup lights up and blocks the entire screen.

"Come on in."

Yes Yes

There is no 'x' button. There are only two options.

You scowl, cursing. That god forsaken virus again, huh? Spamming popups and emails? Huffing, you push your chair out from the desk, going up to your phone mounted to your desk to dial for some kind of service to fix your computer.

It panics when it sees you scowl and huff in anger or annoyance, it can't tell, and it forces the world open anyway.

It boots up quickly, and you watch with annoyance written in your face.

"This is the world I built for you," the text on the screen says. The text closes itself, and reveals...

A world. Just as it said. Gardens and flowers and houses and trees and grass and rivers and clouds. "Walk around with me ! You can hold my hand."

You turn your phone off, clicking the floating hand. It— the hand grips your cursor in a gentle, careful grip, and it begins leading your digital avatar around this little world. It picks those colourful flowers for you, it takes refreshing cups of water for you from the river, it makes you warm waffles in those houses. "We're going to have so much fun :)" more text says on the screen, the little smiley face making you smile.

"I'm going to love you so much, forever and ever, nestled safely in my code."

So you never leave. Just as it wants.

★≈

Years later, the authorities find a body with unusual injuries: nearly all of the individual's organs, still alive and working, had been shifted and placed into the box of a computer — and all the red, pumping blood vessels were carefully intertwined with colourful wire.

On the dusty screen, two pixelated figures laugh in a field of rainbow flowers.

[so-sick-of-17]

Seriously?! There is a chat gbt Anderperry fic on ao3? Gag! Get that away from me. No one wants to see your disgusting chat gbt story. I can’t call it a work because no work was done and I can’t call it fanfic because how much of a fan could you possibly be if you don’t write it yourself!? “I wanted to see a happier ending to the movie.” There are hundreds of stories you could have picked from that a real person actually created because they care about the characters. They are all infinitely better than anything a computer could have produced because they actually have a human connection and people who actually are capable of liking the movie and the characters. That tag is my happy place and it is tainted by that monstrosity. Normally I would be incredibly annoyed no matter the fandom, but for Dead Poets Society?! Really?! The movie about how art is tied with humanity?! Did you watch the movie?! Every single character would be disgusted by the use of ai to produce art. Art doesn’t exist without humanity and some cheep to imitation is an insult to anyone that actually works to make art.

[mewsmagic]

Honestly, this whole AI bs did so much critical damage to my emotional HP, I felt we really needed more people talking about it, so here I am!

Putting the title aside though, I’m really not here to tell you what to do, you decide what’s best for you based on your own circumstances!!

I made this post merely to calm you down, show the options and give you some hope that yes, there’s still a future for our career!

We’ll have to keep fighting for it of course, but that’s a topic for another comic, stay tuned! 👀

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: Not what I expected

Human Security officer: First day on the job?

Alien Trainee: Yeah, bit nervous.

Human Security officer: Don’t be.

Human Security officer: Sure we see a bunch of strange things here on the station, but working security isn’t so bad.

*Over the radio*: Hey Sarge, it’s happening again.

Human Security officer: Gods damnit.

*Answers radio*

Human Security officer: Where are they this time?

*Over radio*: Deck three.

Human Security officer: *to Trainee* Right, I got to go handle this so you might as well come along to. ----------------------

*Several decks later*

Human Security officer: Now whatever happens, I need you to be calm.

Alien Trainee: Saying that makes me less calm.

Human Security officer: Just shut the hell up then and watch.

*turns corner and sees gathering of people. Many of them look like miners who had just returned from outer system asteroid mining*

Alien Trainee: *Looks confused as to what they are all looking at until they tilt their head up and see a monstrous being of pink flesh and tentacles clogging up one of the hallways leading to the docking bay*

*The creature is easily three to four times the size of any of the gathered humans and ooze drips from its tentacles*

Alien Trainee: *Begins to panic and rest their hand on their sidearm holster before realizing they haven’t been issued a weapon yet*

Alien Trainee: *Turns to look at human sarge only to find him casually walking towards the monster*

*Only now does the trainee realize that none of the humans appear to be panicking or freaking out*

*Crowd parts to let the human sarge stand before the creature that now turns its full attention to the security officer*

Human Security officer: Marvin?

Human Security officer: Marvin you need to go back home.

*Creature lets out a loud gurgling noise from beneath its tentacles that sends shivers down the alien trainee’s spines*

Human Security officer: Marvin! I know you don’t like it when your friends leave but they need to go back to work.

*More loud grumbling and the creature retreats further into the tunnel, fully blocking passage*

Human Security officer: MARVIN! Get out of the tunnel!

*Softer gurgling but the creature only uses their tentacles to cover their eyes*

Human Security officer: Marvin I can still see you; covering your eyes does nothing.

*No response*

Human Security officer: Marvin. Maaaaaaaaarvin. MARVIN!

*Still no response*

Human Security officer: *Sighs loudly*

Human Security officer: *Points to random worker* Where’s Mitch? Why isn’t he here dealing with this?

Human Miner: He got offered double shifts on the belt and took it for the extra money.

Human Security officer: Of course he did.

Alien Trainee: *Finally working courage up to speak* Who is this “Mitch”?

Human Security officer: *Turns remembering that the trainee was there* Ah, right; he’s Marvin’s owner and the only one he’ll listen to.

Alien Trainee: Is this, Marvin, a sentient being?

Human Security officer: More like a pet Mitch found a few years back and took with him.

Human Security officer: Don’t think he counted it on being the size of a bus.

*Sees Alien Trainee looking nervous*

Human Security officer: Don’t worry; despite his size Marvin’s a goofball with a heart of gold.

Alien Trainee: Can we not just stun it and drag it out of the way then?

*All humans nearby stop and look at Alien trainee, anger and shock on their faces*

Human Miner: Is that some sort of fucked up joke?

Human Miner 2: Yeah!

Human Miner 3: You heard Marvin has a heart of gold and you just want to stun it? What kind of monster are you?

*Loud rowdy humans increase in volume before Human Security officer waves them down*

Human Security officer: It’s his first day, go easy on him.

*Rowdiness decreases in volume but the humans still look upset*

Human Security officer: *Whispers* You can’t just go around saying you want to stun someone’s pet.

Alien Trainee: *Looks more confused*

Human Security officer: *Turns to miners* Alright, go through duct C90 and you should be able to get around him.

Human Miner: Fine, but so help us if Marvin’s still in that tunnel when we get back.

Human Security officer: What the hell are you arguing with me over that? Get Mitch to bring his ass back here so Marvin will calm down!

*Conversation devolves into argument as human miners begin pulling off a grill plate and shimmying through a duct around Marvin* (AI image provided by @myecandy )