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Twenty Four Shadows on the Earth
In the far distant past, before our history began, another species’ history came to a monumental turning point. They called themselves the Ni’so, and their favorite pasttime was advancing science and shooting drones at planets to see what they could see.
The previous one hundred and eleven planets they’d shot drones at were barren rocks, all iron and silicates and nothing even remotely interesting.
The one hundred and twelfth planet they shot a drone at was earth.
To this day, the first image the drone beamed back paints the cover of history textbooks. The Ni’so carved it into their monuments and tattooed it on their bodies and framed it in their art galleries. Their annual holiday, Discovery Day, cements it in their calendar.
The picture is pastoral, if not a bit bland. It depicts a lush Mississippi river basin, circa one million years ago. Trees dot the landscape. A tributary runs along one border of the image. Two bird-shaped blurs tease the opposite corner of the image.
It took six months from the time the drone captured the image to the time it was received on the Ni’so home world. In under a day’s time (days on the Ni’so homeworld are equal to four of our days), the government organized a crewed mission, packed with the world’s finest scientists and educators, the curious and the able.
The trip would take six hundred and twelve years. The average Ni’so lifespan was a mere two hundred.
The first generation aboard that rocket went forth bravely, without complaint. The second generation, the ones born en-route, who neither got the glory of their heroic sacrifice upon departure nor the honor of setting up the future base on that strange new earth, the proverbial middle children, the Moseses--they mutinied.
Lucky for the mission, the rocket was computer-guided. Its destination couldn’t be changed. The middle children slaughtered their aging parents, dumped them out the airlock, and established communist rule in the rocket. All communications equipment was destroyed, along with all the guns and weapons of war. The mission became one-way.
Their little utopia lasted approximately one hundred years, until the third and final generation of the voyage came of age. Then, cyclically, they turned against their parents, killing them to the last and dumping their bodies out the airlock. They then declared the rocket back under the control of the Ni’so world government, and continued on with the mission. Anyone who dissented was thrown out the airlock.
The rocket arrived exactly six hundred and twelve years later, having left in its wake a trail of floating corpses three generations long.
The children of those who arrived in the rocket knew nothing of its claustrophobic terrors. They grew up in habitats with windows that opened to scenic expanses of untouched wilderness. They breathed deep the air of the new Ni’so world and were happy, for a time.
These children grew to be the first generation of explorers and scientists. Their days were strictly regimented, but they were loved by the older generation, who were so terrified of being killed like the previous generations of Ni’so travelers they resorted to loving their children instead.
It worked.
One of the children showed a particular aptitude for biology at an early age. His name was Them. Them was placed under the direct tutelage of the Ni’so biology team. For ten years, he slept with them, ate with them, studied with them, and shadowed them on their excursions outside the base.
These excursions were unique for their own reasons. The Ni’so colonizers only brought with them enough supplies to make a single habitation consisting of several dorm-style buildings, a main assembly hall and cafeteria, and a wall running around the length of the perimeter.
Unless otherwise authorized to, no one was allowed to go outside the wall.
Them’s peers were endlessly fascinated by his tales of the outside world. He told them between classes about the strange rock formations, the trees with their alien green leaves, and the strange variety of apes living in the nearby woods.
“We leave most of it alone,” he said to his friends, “except for the apes. The biologists say their brains are plastic, and we can mold them with the right chemistry.”
“Are their brains really made of plastic?” one of his friends asked.
“No. It’s just meat, same as the rest of them.”
The whole group of young Ni’so hummed in disappointment.
When Them was a young adult, he and the rest of his peers witnessed a sight they never expected. One day, without any warning at all, a rocket descended from the sky. Painted on its side was the flag of the Ni’so world government.
It circled the camp once, then moved off to a clearing in the forest a mile away. All day and all night it stood there, silently watching.
All expeditions outside the walls were cancelled. Them, along with the rest of the adult Ni’so, were called to the assembly hall to deliberate. There was a lot of shouting and hurling of words Them had never heard before.
Eventually, it came to a common consensus that the two oldest colonists should go to the rocket and ascertain their intentions.
Several hours later, the two elders returned, grim looks on their faces. They said they had met with the rocket’s pilot, a military commander from the Ni’so space force. He and his attachment of troops had been sent from the Ni’so homeworld following the second generation of colonists’ communist uprising. The mission of the soldiers was to reclaim the wayward expedition, or destroy it if it was deemed unsalvageable.
“How did they get here?” Them asked.
“What do you mean?” one of the two elders asked. “They flew a rocket, same as us.”
“But it would have taken six hundred years for them, too. Three generations.”
The elder shrugged. “Their grandparents must have been firmer of heart than ours.”
The elders continued speaking. They had tried to explain to the commander that all the communists were long dead, and that they were loyal to Ni’so and to the original intent of the expedition. But the commander didn’t believe them. He proclaimed he would tour the colony the following morning to determine whether or not they were still fit to continue the expedition.
“What if they think we’re not fit?” Them asked.
“We’ll get airlock’d,” the elder said, fear in his voice.
The collective unconscious memory of a string of bodies three lifetimes long overtook the assembly. No one spoke. The air was as silent as the vacuum of space.
The commander arrived promptly at sunrise.
The alien single sun made the ribbons on his chest shine. His uniform looked unsuited for the alien world. The dozen or so guards he brought with them had armor plating much more appropriate for the occasion.
The camp was utterly silent as the commander and his cadre took their tour. He inspected the scientific instruments, noted the perimeter defenses, and shared a cup of coffee with the two elders in the assembly hall.
The tension ebbed slowly from the camp as it became clear he saw no harm in them. He concluded the tour by chatting amiably with several of the colony’s adults in the outdoor area by the assembly hall.
As the commander was wrapping up his tour, he passed by Them and a few of his friends.
“What do you do?” he asked Them.
“I’m studying to be a biologist.”
“Very good. A necessary and noble profession.” The commander’s tone became softer. “If you could go home right now and say anything you wanted to the people of Ni’so, what would you say?”
Them noticed the elders tense up. He considered his words very carefully before responding.
“I wouldn’t say anything. I would show them all the data we’ve accrued. The neural malleability of these animals is astounding. Just last decade, we chemically manipulated some primates’ brains to grow larger frontal cortices. Now they’re fishing with spears. It’s remarkable.”
The commander smiled and nodded. Them’s heart swelled with pride. The impossible distance between him and his ancient home seemed a little less, if only for a moment.
Them and the others followed the commander and his guards to the gate to see him off. Just as he turned to walk through the gate, however, Them heard a strange whistling sound fill the air.
He looked at the commander just in time to see a spear slide into his face.
His eyes darted one way, then another. Then he collapsed.
Them fell to the earth and closed his eyes. More whistling sounds came from all around him. Awful, grotesque squishing sounds filled the air.
When Them looked up, the commander’s guards had all been airlock’d. Spears not unlike the kind the manipulated apes used jutted from their bodies at stilted angles. They lay in pools of their own blood, staring at each other, unblinking.
Them looked around. The elders and a few of the other adults were breathing heavily, edging closer to the corpses. They held more spears in their hands.
Them was too confused to scream.
A council was called once the bodies had been buried. Everyone wanted to talk at once. Them forced himself to stay quiet.
“He was never going to let us live,” one elder said. “We had to do it.”
“We are no better than our grandparents. Those soldiers are well within their right to wipe us out. We deserve it,” another said.
“That’s not true. Look at all we’ve accomplished. If they’d just left us alone, we would have been fine.”
A chorus of cheers went up in the meeting hall.
“The government did this to them. We were willing to be peaceful. They were the ones knocking on our wall with guns.”
“What do we do?” one asked.
“We have to kill the rest, or they’ll wipe us out. We don’t have much time.”
“We won’t get close to their rocket. They’re armed to the teeth. They’ll airlock every last one of us.”
“There is still hope!” an elder cried above the din. His fragile, warbling voice stopped the assembly cold. “We must be smart. The die is cast now. Us or them. Hear me now...”
A plan was concocted. The elder designated tasks for the adults to carry out. Gruesome tasks.
Towards the end of his briefing, he pointed at Them.
“You are a clever young man. You have a role to play as well.”
“I do?” Them asked.
“Yes. The first part is this: go to the guards and strip them of their uniforms.”
“Oh.”
“And be mindful of the spears. You’ll need to pull them out. The edges are quite sharp.”
The insanity of the plan did not end at stripping corpses of their clothes.
The colonists dressed themselves up like the guards. The elder who had formulated this plan put on the commander’s medal-studded uniform, folding the neck crease just so to hide the bloodstains.
Them was handed a uniform, too. He put it on without complaint, even though it barely fit. The plate armor sat heavy on his diminutive shoulders.
Then, as a group, they walked the mile to where the rocket was parked in the clearing. Several other colonists with spears trailed behind, unseen.
The woods around the landing site made them difficult to pick out from a distance, and the remaining guards weren’t expecting a fight. But as the group drew closer the guards realized something was off about the commander and the way he was hobbling along.
Just before the shooting started, Them realized it had most likely been a bad idea for the elder to dress as the commander.
The guards raised their weapons to fire, and that was when Them heard the strange, horrible whistling sound again. Spears flew through the air before planting themselves firmly in the faces and necks of the guards. A few misplaced throws bounced off the guards’ armor, but it was enough to stagger them.
The guards recovered quickly and opened up with their guns. It was a slaughter. The elder dressed as the commander went down first, his chest bursting open from the inside. More colonists were hit.
It was over in seconds. All of the colonists and most of the guards were airlock’d. But somehow, Them passed through the maelstrom uninjured. He ran to the entrance of the rocket and threw himself inside, sealing the door shut behind him.
The inside of the rocket was quiet and sterile. It looked remarkably similar to the pictures of the rocket his parents came to this planet in. It made him sad to know that Ni’so technology had developed so little in all this time.
As he ran through the rocket, he began to realize why his ancestors went mad.
As the elder instructed him, he made his way up to the bridge. He was surprised to find it empty. Several windows outside illuminated a grizzly scene. The few surviving guards had beaten back the colonist attack and were now probing the bodies of his friends and mentors.
His breathing grew heavy. His eyes could not stay on one thing. He stepped backward and tripped over an access panel with a colossal clatter.
From down the access corridor, he swore he heard footsteps.
In a panic, he looked around until he found a panel that read:
MISSILE CONTROLS
The footsteps got louder. He frantically started pressing different buttons. Any buttons. It no longer mattered which. The elder said push the buttons. So push he did.
The footsteps got louder. They picked up, like someone was running towards him. Fear blistered his mind. He cried out and hit a small red button on the bottom of the board. Alarm bells went off.
The footsteps were right around the corner. He pressed the button a second time just as more Ni’so guards entered the bridge and opened fire.
Outside of the rocket, a micro-MIRV missile shot out of its housing with a wispy poof of smoke.
The rocket reached its apex and hovered a moment, floating weightlessly through space.
Then, twenty four rockets broke off from the main housing and spread in a circle one mile wide.
They started to fall.
A great explosion rocked the fledgling earth.
And then for many years, there was peace.
The previous one hundred and eleven planets they’d shot drones at were barren rocks, all iron and silicates and nothing even remotely interesting.
The one hundred and twelfth planet they shot a drone at was earth.
To this day, the first image the drone beamed back paints the cover of history textbooks. The Ni’so carved it into their monuments and tattooed it on their bodies and framed it in their art galleries. Their annual holiday, Discovery Day, cements it in their calendar.
The picture is pastoral, if not a bit bland. It depicts a lush Mississippi river basin, circa one million years ago. Trees dot the landscape. A tributary runs along one border of the image. Two bird-shaped blurs tease the opposite corner of the image.
It took six months from the time the drone captured the image to the time it was received on the Ni’so home world. In under a day’s time (days on the Ni’so homeworld are equal to four of our days), the government organized a crewed mission, packed with the world’s finest scientists and educators, the curious and the able.
The trip would take six hundred and twelve years. The average Ni’so lifespan was a mere two hundred.
The first generation aboard that rocket went forth bravely, without complaint. The second generation, the ones born en-route, who neither got the glory of their heroic sacrifice upon departure nor the honor of setting up the future base on that strange new earth, the proverbial middle children, the Moseses--they mutinied.
Lucky for the mission, the rocket was computer-guided. Its destination couldn’t be changed. The middle children slaughtered their aging parents, dumped them out the airlock, and established communist rule in the rocket. All communications equipment was destroyed, along with all the guns and weapons of war. The mission became one-way.
Their little utopia lasted approximately one hundred years, until the third and final generation of the voyage came of age. Then, cyclically, they turned against their parents, killing them to the last and dumping their bodies out the airlock. They then declared the rocket back under the control of the Ni’so world government, and continued on with the mission. Anyone who dissented was thrown out the airlock.
The rocket arrived exactly six hundred and twelve years later, having left in its wake a trail of floating corpses three generations long.
The children of those who arrived in the rocket knew nothing of its claustrophobic terrors. They grew up in habitats with windows that opened to scenic expanses of untouched wilderness. They breathed deep the air of the new Ni’so world and were happy, for a time.
These children grew to be the first generation of explorers and scientists. Their days were strictly regimented, but they were loved by the older generation, who were so terrified of being killed like the previous generations of Ni’so travelers they resorted to loving their children instead.
It worked.
One of the children showed a particular aptitude for biology at an early age. His name was Them. Them was placed under the direct tutelage of the Ni’so biology team. For ten years, he slept with them, ate with them, studied with them, and shadowed them on their excursions outside the base.
These excursions were unique for their own reasons. The Ni’so colonizers only brought with them enough supplies to make a single habitation consisting of several dorm-style buildings, a main assembly hall and cafeteria, and a wall running around the length of the perimeter.
Unless otherwise authorized to, no one was allowed to go outside the wall.
Them’s peers were endlessly fascinated by his tales of the outside world. He told them between classes about the strange rock formations, the trees with their alien green leaves, and the strange variety of apes living in the nearby woods.
“We leave most of it alone,” he said to his friends, “except for the apes. The biologists say their brains are plastic, and we can mold them with the right chemistry.”
“Are their brains really made of plastic?” one of his friends asked.
“No. It’s just meat, same as the rest of them.”
The whole group of young Ni’so hummed in disappointment.
When Them was a young adult, he and the rest of his peers witnessed a sight they never expected. One day, without any warning at all, a rocket descended from the sky. Painted on its side was the flag of the Ni’so world government.
It circled the camp once, then moved off to a clearing in the forest a mile away. All day and all night it stood there, silently watching.
All expeditions outside the walls were cancelled. Them, along with the rest of the adult Ni’so, were called to the assembly hall to deliberate. There was a lot of shouting and hurling of words Them had never heard before.
Eventually, it came to a common consensus that the two oldest colonists should go to the rocket and ascertain their intentions.
Several hours later, the two elders returned, grim looks on their faces. They said they had met with the rocket’s pilot, a military commander from the Ni’so space force. He and his attachment of troops had been sent from the Ni’so homeworld following the second generation of colonists’ communist uprising. The mission of the soldiers was to reclaim the wayward expedition, or destroy it if it was deemed unsalvageable.
“How did they get here?” Them asked.
“What do you mean?” one of the two elders asked. “They flew a rocket, same as us.”
“But it would have taken six hundred years for them, too. Three generations.”
The elder shrugged. “Their grandparents must have been firmer of heart than ours.”
The elders continued speaking. They had tried to explain to the commander that all the communists were long dead, and that they were loyal to Ni’so and to the original intent of the expedition. But the commander didn’t believe them. He proclaimed he would tour the colony the following morning to determine whether or not they were still fit to continue the expedition.
“What if they think we’re not fit?” Them asked.
“We’ll get airlock’d,” the elder said, fear in his voice.
The collective unconscious memory of a string of bodies three lifetimes long overtook the assembly. No one spoke. The air was as silent as the vacuum of space.
The commander arrived promptly at sunrise.
The alien single sun made the ribbons on his chest shine. His uniform looked unsuited for the alien world. The dozen or so guards he brought with them had armor plating much more appropriate for the occasion.
The camp was utterly silent as the commander and his cadre took their tour. He inspected the scientific instruments, noted the perimeter defenses, and shared a cup of coffee with the two elders in the assembly hall.
The tension ebbed slowly from the camp as it became clear he saw no harm in them. He concluded the tour by chatting amiably with several of the colony’s adults in the outdoor area by the assembly hall.
As the commander was wrapping up his tour, he passed by Them and a few of his friends.
“What do you do?” he asked Them.
“I’m studying to be a biologist.”
“Very good. A necessary and noble profession.” The commander’s tone became softer. “If you could go home right now and say anything you wanted to the people of Ni’so, what would you say?”
Them noticed the elders tense up. He considered his words very carefully before responding.
“I wouldn’t say anything. I would show them all the data we’ve accrued. The neural malleability of these animals is astounding. Just last decade, we chemically manipulated some primates’ brains to grow larger frontal cortices. Now they’re fishing with spears. It’s remarkable.”
The commander smiled and nodded. Them’s heart swelled with pride. The impossible distance between him and his ancient home seemed a little less, if only for a moment.
Them and the others followed the commander and his guards to the gate to see him off. Just as he turned to walk through the gate, however, Them heard a strange whistling sound fill the air.
He looked at the commander just in time to see a spear slide into his face.
His eyes darted one way, then another. Then he collapsed.
Them fell to the earth and closed his eyes. More whistling sounds came from all around him. Awful, grotesque squishing sounds filled the air.
When Them looked up, the commander’s guards had all been airlock’d. Spears not unlike the kind the manipulated apes used jutted from their bodies at stilted angles. They lay in pools of their own blood, staring at each other, unblinking.
Them looked around. The elders and a few of the other adults were breathing heavily, edging closer to the corpses. They held more spears in their hands.
Them was too confused to scream.
A council was called once the bodies had been buried. Everyone wanted to talk at once. Them forced himself to stay quiet.
“He was never going to let us live,” one elder said. “We had to do it.”
“We are no better than our grandparents. Those soldiers are well within their right to wipe us out. We deserve it,” another said.
“That’s not true. Look at all we’ve accomplished. If they’d just left us alone, we would have been fine.”
A chorus of cheers went up in the meeting hall.
“The government did this to them. We were willing to be peaceful. They were the ones knocking on our wall with guns.”
“What do we do?” one asked.
“We have to kill the rest, or they’ll wipe us out. We don’t have much time.”
“We won’t get close to their rocket. They’re armed to the teeth. They’ll airlock every last one of us.”
“There is still hope!” an elder cried above the din. His fragile, warbling voice stopped the assembly cold. “We must be smart. The die is cast now. Us or them. Hear me now...”
A plan was concocted. The elder designated tasks for the adults to carry out. Gruesome tasks.
Towards the end of his briefing, he pointed at Them.
“You are a clever young man. You have a role to play as well.”
“I do?” Them asked.
“Yes. The first part is this: go to the guards and strip them of their uniforms.”
“Oh.”
“And be mindful of the spears. You’ll need to pull them out. The edges are quite sharp.”
The insanity of the plan did not end at stripping corpses of their clothes.
The colonists dressed themselves up like the guards. The elder who had formulated this plan put on the commander’s medal-studded uniform, folding the neck crease just so to hide the bloodstains.
Them was handed a uniform, too. He put it on without complaint, even though it barely fit. The plate armor sat heavy on his diminutive shoulders.
Then, as a group, they walked the mile to where the rocket was parked in the clearing. Several other colonists with spears trailed behind, unseen.
The woods around the landing site made them difficult to pick out from a distance, and the remaining guards weren’t expecting a fight. But as the group drew closer the guards realized something was off about the commander and the way he was hobbling along.
Just before the shooting started, Them realized it had most likely been a bad idea for the elder to dress as the commander.
The guards raised their weapons to fire, and that was when Them heard the strange, horrible whistling sound again. Spears flew through the air before planting themselves firmly in the faces and necks of the guards. A few misplaced throws bounced off the guards’ armor, but it was enough to stagger them.
The guards recovered quickly and opened up with their guns. It was a slaughter. The elder dressed as the commander went down first, his chest bursting open from the inside. More colonists were hit.
It was over in seconds. All of the colonists and most of the guards were airlock’d. But somehow, Them passed through the maelstrom uninjured. He ran to the entrance of the rocket and threw himself inside, sealing the door shut behind him.
The inside of the rocket was quiet and sterile. It looked remarkably similar to the pictures of the rocket his parents came to this planet in. It made him sad to know that Ni’so technology had developed so little in all this time.
As he ran through the rocket, he began to realize why his ancestors went mad.
As the elder instructed him, he made his way up to the bridge. He was surprised to find it empty. Several windows outside illuminated a grizzly scene. The few surviving guards had beaten back the colonist attack and were now probing the bodies of his friends and mentors.
His breathing grew heavy. His eyes could not stay on one thing. He stepped backward and tripped over an access panel with a colossal clatter.
From down the access corridor, he swore he heard footsteps.
In a panic, he looked around until he found a panel that read:
MISSILE CONTROLS
The footsteps got louder. He frantically started pressing different buttons. Any buttons. It no longer mattered which. The elder said push the buttons. So push he did.
The footsteps got louder. They picked up, like someone was running towards him. Fear blistered his mind. He cried out and hit a small red button on the bottom of the board. Alarm bells went off.
The footsteps were right around the corner. He pressed the button a second time just as more Ni’so guards entered the bridge and opened fire.
Outside of the rocket, a micro-MIRV missile shot out of its housing with a wispy poof of smoke.
The rocket reached its apex and hovered a moment, floating weightlessly through space.
Then, twenty four rockets broke off from the main housing and spread in a circle one mile wide.
They started to fall.
A great explosion rocked the fledgling earth.
And then for many years, there was peace.
Pics
There's a lot of stuff here that I personally really wish I could do, like the high-level narration that blends with the moment-to-moment pacing. Every time I try to do something like that, I end up hating what I'm writing. :P
I also really like the feeling of big-concept sci-fi that you've evoked. It kind of feels like Three Body Problem (which I finally got around to reading) in terms of its tone and the way the story lets the implications of its events speak for themselves.
One thing that kind of confuses me, though, is how human-like the Ni'so end up feeling. They have similar government styles, they wear clothes, they have familiar weapons, they use buttons in their electronics, and they drink coffee. I understand that the point of the story isn't to focus on their alien-ness, but at this point, it's really hard to imagine them as anything other than human.
The first two sentences of this story does a great job of intriguing the reader, partially because we immediately want to know about the Ni'So and how they're different from humans. The fact that the story never quite pays off on this desire ended up disappointing me a bit. But keep in mind that I'm a bit of a world-building nutcase, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. :P
Thank you for submitting!
I also really like the feeling of big-concept sci-fi that you've evoked. It kind of feels like Three Body Problem (which I finally got around to reading) in terms of its tone and the way the story lets the implications of its events speak for themselves.
One thing that kind of confuses me, though, is how human-like the Ni'so end up feeling. They have similar government styles, they wear clothes, they have familiar weapons, they use buttons in their electronics, and they drink coffee. I understand that the point of the story isn't to focus on their alien-ness, but at this point, it's really hard to imagine them as anything other than human.
The first two sentences of this story does a great job of intriguing the reader, partially because we immediately want to know about the Ni'So and how they're different from humans. The fact that the story never quite pays off on this desire ended up disappointing me a bit. But keep in mind that I'm a bit of a world-building nutcase, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. :P
Thank you for submitting!
I'd like to draw special attention to the repeated use of: "string of bodies three lifetimes long" and the term "airlock'd" being used not as slang but what appears to have straight up become the word for "horribly murdered." They really sell how deep seated the issues that arose from the journey became in subsequent generations.
I feel like there's trying to be a theme about breaking generational cycles of violence, but then everything falls to shit again as soon as the second ship arrives, so maybe the idea is more akin to being damned by history rather than over coming it? Then again, for being an advanced alien race with big space science hobby, the Ni'so feel incredibly emotional, even in the opening paragraphs.
Still, the MIRVs were my favorite missiles in the old tank games, so 10/10 from me. ;)
I feel like there's trying to be a theme about breaking generational cycles of violence, but then everything falls to shit again as soon as the second ship arrives, so maybe the idea is more akin to being damned by history rather than over coming it? Then again, for being an advanced alien race with big space science hobby, the Ni'so feel incredibly emotional, even in the opening paragraphs.
Still, the MIRVs were my favorite missiles in the old tank games, so 10/10 from me. ;)
This is a fairly straightforward tale here, though underneath it is a story that plays with rather weighty ideas. There's definitely a sort of finesse in weaving these kinds of concepts together to craft something that's readily accesible to even greenhorn readers, so that definitely wins points for me on that regard. The pacing is very measured as well, though it does kind of get rickety towards the end when the conflict begins to narrow down onto a more personal frontline, though that's something that even the most experienced of us here would have a hard time with if we're tasked with writing this so I wasn't all too bothered by it.
I kinda agree with Bachi's sentiment about how these aliens are a bit too human-like for me to consider them as fully alien, though it does make me wonder what other ways you could've done to make the species easier for us to connect with. I think this is where the idea 'less is more' could probably aid you, in which you could probably omit certain details about the Ni'so that still gives them an aura of mystique around them yet keep some things about them that gives us human readers some sort of attachment to them. It'll be hard to balance both sides of the scale, for sure, but it'll do wonders for your story if you can pull it off.
Overall, it's not flawless by any means but I think there's a lot of thought and charm in this story that really shone through in the writing. It's kinda hinting at me that you really enjoyed writing this, dear Author, though I can't really say for sure. What I am sure, however, is that I did enjoy reading this. Definitely worthy of a medal, even if it isn't written for these WriteOffs.
Thanks for writing, and good luck!
I kinda agree with Bachi's sentiment about how these aliens are a bit too human-like for me to consider them as fully alien, though it does make me wonder what other ways you could've done to make the species easier for us to connect with. I think this is where the idea 'less is more' could probably aid you, in which you could probably omit certain details about the Ni'so that still gives them an aura of mystique around them yet keep some things about them that gives us human readers some sort of attachment to them. It'll be hard to balance both sides of the scale, for sure, but it'll do wonders for your story if you can pull it off.
Overall, it's not flawless by any means but I think there's a lot of thought and charm in this story that really shone through in the writing. It's kinda hinting at me that you really enjoyed writing this, dear Author, though I can't really say for sure. What I am sure, however, is that I did enjoy reading this. Definitely worthy of a medal, even if it isn't written for these WriteOffs.
Thanks for writing, and good luck!