The Nature of Predators - Wild West (10/11) (Patreon)

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Memory Transcription Subject: Nilrie, Takkan Smuggler

Date [standardized human time]: April 23, 2158

Blake Donovan had been released from the hospital, and was back in his familiar “cowboy” attire—as best as the modern beasts could replicate it. His old chest pelt was torn and soaked in crimson blood, so they’d provided him with a new one, as well as a pair of “boots.” He’d learned how to clip the holopad they gave him to his belt, and had reluctantly agreed to get the translator implant; the primitive human still was offering periodic complaints about it “changing” his thoughts. I wasn’t sure what he’d make of the new city, but he needed to acquire some food and supplies before we visited our new home. I’d pulled up a map to find a market, despite knowing what predators might sell there.

The United Nations had taken the cryopods and a few antiques into their custody, and granted us temporary living arrangements and a monetary stipend in exchange. We had enough resources to get our bearings and cover our basic amenities, which was kind of the binocular-eyed terrors.

Blake’s eyes were wide, as he fully took in the height of the buildings from the ground. “Well I’ll be damned. I dunno how these ‘ere towers stand this tall; Marlow shoulda compared that Tower uh Babel to this.”

“People in your time referenced this religion a lot more,” I noted. “What…what is it about?”

“Love an’ forgiveness. Y’ain’t gotta know nothin’ more ‘an that; just be kind to folks and believe in God’s salvation.”

“I see.” That doesn’t make much sense as a philosophy to govern hunters. “Ah, got a push notification. That’s our ride, right over there.”

The predator’s eyes snapped over to the arriving vehicle, gawking as I opened the door. He seemed amazed by the sheer volume of traffic, and the maze of concrete roads that interconnected the city. If Sheriff Donovan couldn’t mosey his way into a car, there was no way he’d be able to handle a fire kite. This was much faster than traveling by horseback, so I hoped he could hold his contaminated lunch; I didn’t want the carcass bits in his evil stomach all over me. He followed after me with hesitant steps, ducking to squeeze into the automobile’s backseat. I was a little surprised predators had seatbelts, but still had to showcase the safety contraption to Blake.

“That up front is the steering wheel…it’s tied to mechanical axels which move those big tires. If you’re wondering how it’s powered, it’s with an engine: a more sophisticated one than your steamboats and trains, but very similar,” I explained.

“Where’s the darn driver? It’s moving on its own; why are we movin’?! And fast too!” he hissed.

“A computer steers the car. I don’t think I…fully explained computers. It’s why this holopad is a lot more than a telegraph, Blake, because it…calculates and thinks. It’s electrical circuits, like what powers the lights, except it’s billions of them giving really complex commands. I’m sure that doesn’t make sense to you, but it’s actually very complicated. I can’t say I even fully understand how it works.”

“I don’t get it. Yer sayin’ this…computer is a machine that ain’t just doin’ one task on repeat. How can it know…maybe it’s repeatin’ a circuit, but what if someone done jump in front of us? How somethin’ movin’ that wheel for us gonna react?”

“I told you. It’s calculating based on the things it observes. It’s more of an ‘if x, then y’ loop, but with billions of criteria; it can pick the best action. It reacts to what’s happening around it, and to what’s ahead of us too. Like now, it’s taking data from satellites to look at a map from space—satellites are camera machines, I guess, that rotate around your world to give a bird’s eye view. From there, it studies traffic and picks the best route to the place I sent to its ‘network.’”

Blake groaned, pushing his hands over his hideous eyes. “My head done hurt. Yer tellin’ me it’s talkin’ to a camera in space? How come it be so quick then?”

“That’s the speed of light, Blake. Electrical signals are light that the eye can’t see. Light travels just shy of 300,000 kilometers per second…it’s as fast as any object can travel, since photons have no mass. So it can get through your planet’s entire atmosphere…um, sky…in fractions of seconds, to communicate back and forth near instantaneously.”

“But…there’s no cables. How the signals hit where they wanna go? How can anythin’ go that fast anyway?”

“It’s just math and trajectory. You know how fast it’s going, and how fast the satellite is up there to stop it from falling back down: gravity. You do know about gravity, right?” I breathed a sigh of relief as the angry beast nodded. “Good. Anyway, a computer would be able to easily figure out where a satellite is at any moment, and what orbital connection it needs to pick.”

“Ugh. This all sounds like magic runes. It don’t make sense.” The beast’s intellectual capacity was struggling to keep up with my extremely dumbed-down explanations, which was a bit frustrating. Perhaps I should’ve left Matteo to give him the answers, since Blake refused to just search it up on the internet like a normal person. “Wait. Lesgo back a minute. So if nothin’ can go faster than the speed of light, why you talk ‘bout yer spaceship doin’ ‘faster than light’ travel? Yer sayin’ yer fire kite goes faster than…”

“Yes and no. It’s lowering the amount of space it needs to travel by basically, making a…tunnel. I don’t know how to put this in terms you understand, but time and space are connected, and can be influenced by gravity. Anything with mass can bend it a little, so you amplify this affects by creating a ‘bridge’ and mathematically extrapolating—”

“Never mind. I ain’t wanna know no more. Yer a demon, and this is witchcraft.”

“Great response, Blake. You’re the one who keeps asking me, and I try to tell you. Just assume everything is a machine, or works by figuring out math and physics. Maybe both. It’s that easy.”

“Fin’ly. A good expl’nation. Ye like talkin’ over my head.”

“No, you just don’t understand anything. I can’t wait to see how you react to fire kites, when you have no clue how flight works.”

“We ‘ad flyin’ machines. We done had them hot air b’loons; the flames made ‘em rise into the sky. People even used ‘em as war mech’nisms over in France, scoutin’ and droppin’ bombs!”

“Of course you used balloons for war…as soon as you could fly, you worked on killing from above. Why were you even surprised by Arxur raids?”

“‘Cause they eat folks. We ain’t do that. We just don’t like the other countries.”

“Yeah, you’re so much better than the grays. So loving and forgiving.”

“If I ain’t forgivin’ enough, I woulda put ya down for yer insults and yer smugglin’ fiasco.”

“What happened to me being ‘Robin Hood?’” I protested.

The human shrugged. “Well, one uh Robin’s ol’ enemies was the Sheriff, come to think of it. He been a bad sheriff who took over everythin’ local, but still.”

“Are you going to ‘Manifest Destiny’ Portland, Blake the Balloon Bomber?”

“Depends. Do ya have a b’loon?”

I wasn’t sure why I found this conversation amusing, given that he was joking about topics like wars and evil sheriffs, but I was holding back laughter nonetheless. A few weeks ago, from my perspective, I could’ve never seen myself being friends with such a monstrous, violent creature. It was tough to say the exact moment I decided I liked Blake, but somewhere along the way, I’d assessed that he was safe to be around. He was a protector, and despite his many flaws, he was a feeling and empathetic being. The driverless car rolled into the supermarket parking lot, dropping us off by the entrance and going to park itself. Donovan seemed eager to vacate the vehicle, turning to study the building.

Being around lots of predators looking for food is terrifying; this is their replacement for hunting, after all. There are so many of them, everywhere. There’s more people here than in Blake’s whole town, and with just that many, they formed a mob with torches trying to kill me…

“Ah!” Blake jumped back into the street, falling on his rump. I followed his directional gaze, noticing him staring at the automatic doors. “They…moved on their own. The doors!”

“Those are mechanical, Blake. They have a motion sensor.” I heaved an exasperated sigh, noticing several humans giving us attention. For a tough guy, he spooked way too easily at basic technology; I helped the sharpshooter up, easing him back toward the doors. “See the camera above them? They literally can see you, frame-by-frame, and pick up a human-sized object moving in range. It’s a very rudimentary machine.”

“I, uh, gotcha.” The sheriff’s cheeks had turned red, and he picked his hat back off the sidewalk. “Is there anythin’ that they ain’t made a machine?”

“Nope. Now go on inside. It’s time for you to learn about refrigerators; much like cryopods, keeping things cold preserves them for longer.”

“Stop patronizin’ me. I ain’t gonna be rushed; I just got outta the hospital.”

“Oh, come on. This is way less complicated than the driverless car. You make no sense.”

The human pulled off his hat, waving it at me with evident disgust. He stomped into the supermarket, and I tailed after him with a bit of reluctance. Blake’s expression turned to awe as he moved past the second set of doors, and caught a full view of just how many aisles and displays there were throughout the market. My periphery immediately affixed to the rows of meat cutlets in an entire section of the grocery store, just as I feared; humans browsed them and picked up bounties as if it were nothing. How…how good had they gotten at hunting animals, to have this much on display? They did have to feed millions, which had horrifying implications; they might pen up cattle the same as the Arxur.

Blake whistled, grabbing a basket; the shopping carts seemed to confuse him. “They got a lotta food, Nilrie. Holy mack’rel. We’re gonna be eatin’ good tonight.”

“Y-yeah,” I managed.

The human walked over to a fruit display, before his brows shot up in outrage. “Five dollars for an apple? What the hell kinda scam is this? That’s absurd!”

“The currency likely has…decreased its value over time.”

“No wonder. I heard they took us off the gold standard, so the dollar ain’t got no real value—and it shows! Plus, it’s all just electric runes on screens now, which means it ain’t even got the value of paper, or bein’ somethin’ physical.”

“Gold has no value either. Your people probably realized that when they went to space, and there’s all the gold they could ever want in asteroids. It’s not scarce or worth a shit anymore.”

“I thought them UN blue-folk done gave us a fortune.”

“And I thought we were here to buy food.” 

“We are, but this is a racket.” Blake grudgingly took an apple, before moving toward the dreaded meat section. My stomach dropped, as I struggled to tail after the human. “Why the clerks just sit over at them counters? The people who worked at the general stores would get what ye need for ya, like clockwork with a list ya gave ‘em.”

“There’s a lot more food and a lot more predators to p-provide for. Are you…n-not able to get your packaged dead animals yourself?”

“I am, but these modern folk just got no customer service. I hear they ain’t barter either; inflexible like all their machines!”

My heartbeat accelerated as the sheriff breezed over to the meat counters, gluttonously scooping in several portions for his next meals. In my head, I was calculating the number of dead animals it would take to make all of this; humans surviving another day meant countless multitudes would be slaughtered for their insatiable appetites. The toll of me saving Blake meant thousands of living creatures would have to die, just for his bloodthirst alone to be slaked. I had basically killed the victims, and stood by with complicitness. I brought Sheriff Donovan here via the GPS, knowing full well what food he would gravitate to. All I could see in my expansive vision was red cutlets…

Why would any empathetic creature get desensitized to the atrocity of this? I have to get out of here. There’s dozens of humans milling about, eyeing me just the way they eyed the cutlet in their hands.

“They ain’t got mucha the organs, Nilrie; I love me some chopped liver,” Blake sang. They chop up organs? Oh stars, this can’t be real; I almost forgot the monster part of favorite monster. “Why they eat so much beef? Y’only kill them cows once they stop producin’ milk in the farms.”

My head spun even further, hearing that apparently these modern humans were more like to kill whatever this “cow” cattle animal was; it confirmed they did keep cattle. Also, did Blake just claim they stole their livestock’s lactation, and distributed it as food? The baby animals would starve without it, but why would they want something meant for prey babies? It made my stomach churn to think about the grisliness of Sheriff Donovan’s palate. I wanted to run out of this place, and forget the sickening human I’d promised to help adjust, but the world was collapsing in around me.

A hand touched my shoulder, earning a squeal from me. An unfamiliar human, who seemed to work here, had stepped in. “Easy, breathe. What the fuck are you doing, man? That’s just unkind to bring one of the xenos around this, and purposefully trying to freak him out by talking about chopped fucking liver. Takkan buddy, I don’t think you should be around here. Why don’t I just…move you somewhere else? You can do better than friends like that. We’re not all that cruel.”

“What did I do?” Blake objected. “He brought me ‘ere to shop for the food and all.”

“You really don’t see how you’re being an asshole? The poor guy looks like he’s about to pass out; anyone knows it scares them shitless to learn about predator food. It’s common courtesy, basic sense, to spare them the details.”

“Nilrie can’t be that upset. He came with me to hunt that rabbit; he’s fine. Just prone to freakouts is all. Gotta get over ‘imself one day, and stop actin’ like we’re so ‘orrible for eatin’ flesh.”

“You took an herbivore hunting?! Actually, what is wrong with you? Are you trying to torture him, you inconsiderate asshole?”

“Yer tryna rile me up. Ye don’t know who yer messin’ with, so I’m gonna let that slide once. We were stuck in the woods. Was I s’posed to starve?”

“I doubt you were there long enough to starve—”

“It’s okay,” I managed to speak, turning to the strange predator. “He…comes from a very different time. This m-might sound crazy, but they pulled him out of a cryopod after hundreds of years.”

The grocery worker squinted. “Fuck, is this some kind of prank? Am I being set up on EarthVid?”

“No. I’m serious.”

“Oh, fuck off. I was trying to look out for you, man; I don’t think it’s funny.”

Blake watched as the frustrated human stormed off, clearly having assumed I was playing a deceitful ruse for credibility on Earth; that must be how their internet was used. I doubted many predators would believe that Sheriff Donovan was from the ancient times, unless the United Nations publicized his face. They’d mentioned the story to the wider populace, but hadn’t shared our pictures. It was rational for the employee to assume we were using that tale for some twisted scheme. I hesitated, before returning to shopping with my friend.

“I’m sorry if I did somethin’ wrong. I didn’t know I wasn’t s’posed to be myself ‘cause uh yer emotions. These folks seemta believe I should baby ye, but thought we were friends an’ livin’ together. I done a lot for ye,” Blake grumbled.

I drew a shaky breath. “It’s…so many c-carcasses, Blake. How can you…kill so many things, and eat plants at the same time?”

“I just done want enough to provide for myself, and my f—the people I care about…”

“It’s fine, I guess; it’s just how you are with your bloodlust. It disturbs me to look at, so I’d prefer you don’t fill me in on the entire process. Please?”

“Yeah. I’ll just get what I need and we can go. Just one thing.” Blake swiveled around, waving at the scowling worker. “Why’s it say ‘lab-grown?’ What’s that even mean?”

The employee looked annoyed, before providing a reluctant answer. “I guess I am required to answer customers’ questions about the food and its packaging. Lab-grown means it was created from a minimal cell culture, and grown into this familiar structure, without any living organisms involved. No animals died to create it, got it?”

“What?!” Blake and I blurted at the same time.

“Oh, quit messing with me. You pranksters won’t buy anything anyway. Find a new victim.”

Humans…don’t kill animals for their hunting whims anymore? That is what an empathetic, bloodlusting creature might do, with proper science; that’s a lot better than a pile of carcasses.

The sheriff was eyeing his feast with a lot less delight now; perhaps the primitive hunter was less-than-pleased with not having a living creature’s blood flowing through his meal’s entrails. Blake grabbed his basket, and suddenly seemed thrilled to beeline to the produce section. He grumbled several comments about “Frankenstein,” and “hatin’ the future, nothin’s real ‘ere.” I tuned him out as he continued on a tangent about everything being made by a machine. At least the modern Terrans appeared to understand what was monstrous about their lifestyle, and showed basic consideration for my sensitivity. Maybe Sheriff Donovan would become a bit more civilized eventually, after having science drilled into his head and being around the improved humans of today.

After our escapade today, I was no longer certain about taking him up in a spaceship. I didn’t know if he’d have the awe of the stars at all, especially when he’d referred to hot air balloons as an avenue for bombing; his time period had been marked by constant lawlessness and warring. Despite Blake’s undesirable reactions, I still saw him as a friend…and intended to fulfill my promise to Cornelia. It would be left up to him whether he appreciated the universe’s splendor, and whether he was any more ready for a fire kite ride than the other humans of his day.

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A/N - Second-to-last episode! Blake leaves the hospital, and learns about head-spinning new technologies, such as computers, satellites, and driverless cars; though he does clarify to the Takkan that he’s not unfamiliar with flying machines. He also has additional gripes about how automated and digitized the future is, even if their food supply is impressive, as they travel to the supermarket. Nilrie is not as impressed with the meat aisle, or with his counterpart’s excitement over “chopped liver”: which narrowly avoids resulting in an altercation in broad daylight.

What do you think of the cowboy’s reaction to 22nd century tech, and whether he did anything wrong by fawning over predator food around Nilrie? Will Blake enjoy the fire kite trip, and be able to find a place in this daunting future?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!