Misplaced - Chapter 3
The human doesn’t want to leave its apartment. It is scared of what could happen if other humans see the glow. During the last few days, T’aka has learned about conformism and its consequences. Apparently, humans can be vicious when someone of their kind stands out.
T’aka doesn’t understand why. Humans are a reasonably intelligent species. Shouldn’t they be above this? Shouldn’t they value their intelligence above all else? Instead, they resent everything that is different, and it makes people like the human T’aka is stuck with miserable.
The human also hasn’t acknowledged T’aka’s presence yet. It just dumps more information every once in a while. T’aka wonders if that’s subconscious of if the human knows they’re there and just refuses to engage. Although it likely wouldn’t change much if they both were “talking” to each other. The human isn’t knowledgeable in the sciences, that much is clear from the data T’aka has received.
On the fourth day of the human’s isolation, it switches on the TV. There’s a lot of senseless entertainment that it doesn’t linger on. T’aka is grateful, even though the constant channel changing is disorienting. The human actually pays attention for a while when it comes across a news channel, but loses interest soon and goes back to aimlessly checking out other channels.
T’aka is bored.
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Several days later, something finally happens. The human is channel surfing again - such a strange expression for such a strange behavior, T’aka thinks. This time, when it gets to the news, continuing to the next channel is such an automatic response that it only realizes a second later that it should probably pay attention to what the reporter was saying. It fumbles with the remote but manages to get back to the news channel.
There’s a reporter on the screen who is talking about “the newest lunacy around the city,” which turns out to be a number of humans claiming they can suddenly see auras surrounding some other humans. The reporter interviews random people in the streets, and the majority of them seems to think that’s just a joke, though. Or maybe some coordinated hallucination. They all just shrug and roll their eyes, as if it doesn’t concern them much. One of them says it wouldn’t be surprised if drugs were involved.
T’aka’s human is holding its breath. Because there are other people out there, who glow. There even was one in the background, while the reporter was doing interviews. But nobody paid attention. That must mean that nobody can see the auras unless they glow themselves. T’aka gets flooded with so much relief.
And still, the human refuses to think about why it glows. The only thing that matters to it is its ability to go out again - that people who don’t see the auras won’t bother it, and that the rest haven’t done anything crazy. It would have been mentioned in the news if they had, after all. There’s a lot of denial in this human!
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Being outside - being among other humans - is an experience. There are so many new things to see and to compute that T’aka almost wishes to be back in the apartment, where there are fewer stimuli to deal with. But no, it’s good to be here. It means there’s a chance to meet other glowing humans, who potentially house more of T’aka’s kind.
And maybe that will help them find a way to go home again and leave this strange human behind.
579 words
AN: This is for LuxKen27's 2017 Summer Mini Challenge ( table 2, prompt 3: wish)
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