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Ren Hughes

THATS RIGHT FOLKS COME ON DOWN TO THE PAINT DRYING TOURNAMENT OF THE CENTURY. SIT RIGHT UP CLOSE TO SEE ALL THE TIME CONSUMING ACTION. REVEL IN THE SATISFACTION OF A JOB WELL DONE BY SOMEONE WHO ISNT YOU BUT WOULD LOVE TO DO THIS FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT. TRULY A SIGHT TO BEHOLD!

That’s pretty much what baseball sounds like.

Now here’s the thing, Kiera? She loves baseball, and I mean loves it. Really she’ll sit up there, no stand most of the time since Yankee tickets are always standing room only by the time anyone not rich gets to them, and cheer and sing and watch with glee at the wooden stick hit a mass of leather and cotton right into some poor unsuspecting fan’s head. It’s the best thing in the world to her.

But hey, I got a secret for ya. Kiera’s story? Not about baseball, not even remotely. Oh baseball will show up tangentially but only for a short while, only for a bit. Never in any sense of symbolism or metaphors or any of that other crap english majors love.

I don’t got anything against English majors but you’re pretty high up there for snobs of the year, right next to actors and business majors.

Let’s get this fucking bread right? Grind never stops.

I’m getting ahead of myself, I was talking about Kiera. Now, Kiera was a tall girl, around 9’5”, bald like most girls her age, (a young 520), and a very abnormal shade of chartreuse. Very specifically. Do not call her green or yellow she’ll go into a 90 minute lecture on colors that humans can’t see and why you all need to get with the program and evolve already.

Nevermind that humans can see chartreuse.

Kiera is in fact the number one color theologist this side of Drianti (what you all in your nice comfy 21st century might know as Sagittarius A). She finds new colors by mixing old ones in ways humans can’t and will never understand because your eyesight is just so damn awful. Like...whats that one animal you all like...a mantis shrimp.

Except better because Kiera’s eyes can learn.

Her cones can multiply, you know those things on the back of your retinas? Really as great as this is for a color theologist, it isn’t like it’s not common among her kind, she’s simply using it to it’s fullest extent.

So why would a color theologist from Stanga⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛…

...fine planet X…

Be living on Earth? Well you see, there was this war that is way too long for us to get into, but the long and short of it is that humanity sucks at everything, except war. You are all very good at killing things. Like really good. Your analyzation for how best to slaughter is astounding.

You suck at everything else.

And no one likes war mongers.

So when it became clear that you were just going to keep on killing until someone stopped you, we decided to help you understand the universe. By we I mean the other 1500 races on twice as many planets that you somehow missed with your primitive range rovers and, I think you call them satellites?

So each planet sent you one person, and you sent a person to each planet to learn the ways of the universe. Hence Kiera.

Now Kiera was excited to go to earth. Color theology is not a popular field, as most people do not care about a new shade of grey that you just invented, especially creatures that cannot see it or comprehend it. So a new species that might be excited about her life's work? HELL YEAH BRING IT ON BITCHES.

So Kiera left for Earth, and lo and behold, humanity didn’t give a singular shit.

Oh there were plenty of biologists who wanted to study her and geologists that wanted to understand her planet and astronomers who wanted to know its exact location, and cultural analysts that wanted to know her background, but no one gave a singular shit about her color theory. Not even most designers, because they can’t use what they cannot see.

Color is a science, you understand? Like biology or chemistry or physics, it has to be understood for a culture to grasp the meaning of the universe. It was the secret to how Kiera’s people had surpassed all others in the quest for understanding. Color is light, and light makes up everything somehow. You cannot understand atoms or waves or anything until you understand color. Her position and knowledge should make her highly sought after on every single planet.

But no one can see color. Not a single other race has the ability to see color the way her people can, and so they do not believe in its power, because that would mean only her people can get somewhere in the universe.

“But that isn’t true! We just need to finish these damn goggles and then everyone will understand Piera, and it’s not like my people don’t have their setbacks. Like, I’m over 9 feet tall, and I still am the least athletic of any race. Or we are...sorry am I rambling?”

“Oh you and that narrator of yours…”

HEY

“Have been rambling for a solid four pages don’t let me stop you.”

Pauline, which was her actual name, was Kiera’s ambassador to the human race, specifically chosen because she can understand and translate Kiera’s abnormal manner of speaking that I will not show here because it will just be more of that blacked out text since the human mind cannot entirely comprehend it.

Or I’m lazy, you decide.

It wasn’t like she wasn’t speaking a human language to earthlings, she had a pretty good grasp of English, French, all the romance languages really because they were all essentially the same to her. It was just the dialect that Pauline had to translate. Turns out if your tongue is fused to the bottom of your mouth and your teeth are trapezoid shaped, saying “hello” in English barely works.

Pauline was not a particularly good ambassador, she was a shit diplomat. No really, the shittiest of diplomats. She once got into a fight with another ambassador over the color of his shoes and how they were offensive to the people of Endar and their only yellow-seeing eyes. Now that might sound like something an ambassador gets into a fight about, but Pauline’s way of settling disagreements is more of the FUCK OFF I’LL PUNCH YOUR DICK OFF followed by actually punching you in the dick kind.

So yeah, shit ambassador, which might also be why Kiera couldn’t get anyone to take her seriously, but in all reality Pauline could understand Kiera’s super confusing dialect when she did speak, so it worked.

Kinda I guess?

Anyway Pauline was a sarcastic little bitch

“We can hear you.”

Who doesn’t know when to shut her damn mouth and let someone tell her fucking story.

But she understood Kiera’s intent with these goggles, to let everyone see. Pauline understood color as much as a human of limited cone number can. Really, Pauline was more of a test subject than anything in these moments. They’d realized that attempting to convince humanity to take this seriously with their issues in communicating was going to be a huge fucking problem. So, invent something so that you will be taken seriously.

If people understand then maybe they’ll get excited.

Now Kiera had almost finished her goggles, and Pauline had seen more colors than any other human before. Every color Kiera knew, Pauline knew, but learning, learning was more difficult to master.

Kiera could place as many cones in the glass as she wanted, synthesize biology as much as she wanted, but she couldn’t make them grow organically. That was actually an issue for all her people. Like humans and neurology, Kiera’s kind could not understand exactly how their color-learning happened. They knew how they learned, the construction of more cones, but as for how they came to be...fuck if they knew.

Which is the downfall of most science, understanding yourself.

So very obviously, Kiera was frustrated. Pauline was far more easy going, leaning in her chair with her feet kicked up, as she usually was before something bothered her. Kiera was more tightly wound, glaring at everything, taking the goggles apart and putting them back together over and over and over again to try and find the solution, as though it was the hardware that was the problem.

“Maybe you should just sell them now, and just keep making new versions.”

“Does it look like I can afford that Piera, these should be a staple of the academic world, not a consumer good!”

“This is New York, Kiera, everything’s a consumer good.”

And of course Kiera knew this, humanity and it’s western hemisphere in particular had a fascination with commerce and what they called money as a means of putting value to things. War and money, that about summed up humanity.

But hey at least they made good sports!

“Maybe I can...donate a pair to the local college. See if they’ll test it out…”

Pauline rolled her eyes. The local college, (which since this is New York could mean anything from Colombia to CUNY LaGuardia but in this case meant Fordham) had rebuffed Kiera’s efforts to establish a school of color theory multiple times. There were courses on color in chemistry but if you try to convince them color is a science in and of itself, more natural than any other, they laugh in your face. Even if you’re a 9’5” alien from Planet X.

See the second humanity got used to aliens in their lives, they didn’t give a shit about them. Oh there were still like pushes to outlaw aliens living here, but considering each and every species also had a human of their own on their own planet, most feared retaliation too much to do a singular shit about it.

So if you’re Kiera and you want humanity to take your field of study seriously when most of the galaxy doesn’t take it seriously, you’re fucking screwed. Doesn’t help that your shoulders are hunched backwards and your neck extrudes from your chest and you don’t have boobs like males here expect you to (seriously all of the old sci fi comics for humanity have big boobed aliens like what in the fuck is wrong with your species?).

I’m going to skip all of the interlude shit, the conversation Pauline and Kiera had, Kiera bringing her goggles to the head of the physics department, her getting rejected outright because humanity is ridiculous and people didn’t believe her (especially old white man Fordham head), because none of that matters. It would just be to fill pages, and I hate filling pages. Writing just to write is a sin and anyone who commits it should be put away in a mental institution. I have very strong morals.

Or maybe I just don’t care enough, who knows?

Here’s an interesting fact: every single species squabbles among itself. If they have an individualistic mindset, they fight about individual ideas. Hell even the hive mind species squabble inside that hive mind. Arguing is the only way to come up with advancement. Otherwise everyone would be too meek and nothing would ever work. That’s just something I’ve come across in my writings.

Kiera’s people often fight about what constitutes color. Back when wars were a thing (because again only you idiots still fight in wars), her kind fought decades long battles over a new shade of Red and who got to claim they discovered it. It was just that kind of culture until everyone decided the individual who discovered it didn’t matter and the wars ended.

The people of Piolo argue over resources. They’ve never fought a war, not once. Not in a million years would they think to raise a hand against a fellow Piolin, but the people there survive off of helium as a resource, and while there is a lot of helium in the universe, each planet only has so much. For instance, a while back in your 21st century, people were worried you would run out of helium because of the balloon industry.

Like I said, earth, very into its commercialization.

Kiera didn’t get her goggles off the ground until 20 years later when she finally caved and started selling them through the almighty Amazon who rules our hearts and souls. All Hail Bezos.

Ahem, anyway..

Once the goggles were on sale through the GLORIOUS AMAZON, they sold super well. Fordham, Columbia, NYU, all the New York colleges wanted a pair, and Kiera finally felt like her dream of having her science recognized had come true.

Now I’d like to tell you some different endings to this story.

One: Kiera remained a huge success and sold her work all across the world and eventually the galaxy, becoming one of the biggest success stories in color theory of all time and living to the ripe old age of 7000 with a big family and plenty of wealth and satisfaction.

Two: the same thing but she felt horrible about it.

Three: she was murdered at a baseball game.

Four: Jeff Bezos bought her out and she died alone and nameless at 4000 (young for her kind)

Five: She and Pauline get married and she never does learn to say her name correctly.

Which do you think is better?

Because really I hate the real ending, where Pauline marries some random baseball player and Kiera becomes a noteworthy name in the color theory academic world but never achieves the success she deserves, and continues living a normal life where she goes to baseball games and Pauline’s children and grandchildren and great grandchildren translate for her for the rest of eternity.

I would go with that but it’s so boring. Kiera and Pauline are such characters. I didn’t even mention how Pauline has a way with puns, and Kiera was an avid fan of epic strenions (kinda like westerns mixed with opera and aliens) and made a club where she showed them to humans for fun.

All those things really happened, and the boring ending life provides just doesn’t sit well with me you know?

I know you all have some sort of exisistential crisis about life and what it all means every ten seconds and 1500 schools of thought and religions and shit, other races do to. It’s part of having a neurology competent enough to parse out your own existence.

But what about other people’s lives?

See I know as an Aec I’m supposed to chronicle life as it happens, but life never cooperates into a story worth telling.

I realize I’m not supposed to tell you these things but humans die so quickly I’m sure none of you will notice.

No one who’s important anyway…

Oh and Baseball? Still sucks.