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Green for Go

When it is safe

By Jenn KirklandPublished 3 years ago Updated 2 years ago 3 min read
2
Green for Go
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

Jery'la watched the... "lights" the humans called them. At least they did in the language of the region in which they found themself. When one of the lights changed to green - and the light itself was not green as Jery'la understood it, but a piece of colored silicate over a white light - they were to go, to pilot the machine forward. Or to perambulate at first, as Jery'la was doing; they did not have access to a machine for piloting, and would need to learn how in any case.

There were exceptions to this instruction. If the light was green but the shape was not a circle, then the machine had to go not forward. If the light was yellow and the shape was an arrow, then one could pilot the machine in the direction toward which the arrow pointed, but only after verifying that there were no other people or other machines or other creatures in the path of one's own machine.

Jery'la was new to this world, but their shape was that of an adult female human, and therefore they needed to be able to pilot a vehicle by the rules of this world. Eventually. That was fine, but the rules seemed to change every several hundred units of distance, and there were other complications. The languages and their many variations changed nearly as frequently as the piloting rules. There were incomprehensible variations in the people as well - variations that Jery'la could hardly even perceive, much less understand. All humans looked alike to them, and the nuances of gender and hide hue and mind workings and partnering preferences and social or cultural differences and so forth were lost on them. If they had four limbs and perambulated on the back two, that was all that Jery'la cared about.

In fact, as Jery'la was the first of their kind on the planet, not including Kura'hy in the Depths with the other sentient species, and none of the partner species had any experience with it either, they were flying in null space, as is spoken in the Home Realms. They knew - they had been told by the Outfitting Engineers - that their species appeared to be human, their gender female, their growth status adult, and their social status unpartnered. It was confusing, but that was the nature of the business of a Traveler - to scout remote planets and determine whether they were ready to be Greeted into the Home Realms. If not, no harm was done; the Home Realms did not conquer or colonize without the permission of the local species. And some other Traveler - Kura'hy, yes, that was them - was working with the other sentient species on this planet. Jery'la was contented with this; they themself were better with the technology of this type than with propelling themself through liquids in any case.

But yes, Jery'la thought, shaking her minds back to the topic at hand. Before one can pilot, one must perambulate. And one must perambulate on these perplexing, incomprehensible streets and sidewalks. Ah, well, thus is work in a confusing universe.

The light changed, and Jery'la stepped off the sidewalk and onto the street.

They never perceived the machine that hit them.

The disguise from the Outfitting Engineer held. The humans never knew they weren't one of them. And when the body disappeared from the cold body storage area, the humans were mildly perturbed but not overly concerned. After all, what was one more Jane Doe gone missing?

"...apologize," Jery'la heard in their own language, and they focused their perceptors.

The Outfitting Engineer wrinkled its hide at them. "Yes," it said deprecatingly. "We did not know that the hue we call green is the one the humans of this planet call red. We apologize."

PART TWO

Short Story
2

About the Creator

Jenn Kirkland

I'm a kinda-suburban, chubby, white, brunette, widowed mom of a teen and a twenty-something, special services school bus driver, word nerd, grammar geek, gamer girl, liberal snowflake social justice bard, and proud of it.

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