Memory Transcription Subject: Rosi, Yotul Housewife

  Date [standardized human time]: November 20, 2136

  My tail swished around smugly. Less than a full day working among humans, and I’d already caught one up to no good. Two, if you count helping to identify that Predator Diseased fellow for the Exterminators. This Iris character, though, was clearly the more damning case for humanity. Why was a predator dressing like an herbivore? Only one explanation made sense. “Let me guess,” I said. “You were plotting to infiltrate us!”

  Chiri looked askance at me. “I mean, it’s not a particularly convincing Nevok disguise, Rosi,” she said. Chiri was supposed to have my back on this! What even were Gojids for, otherwise? “The eyes are too big and too forward-facing, the head shape’s a bit off, it’s missing the hooves…”

  Iris was blushing with embarrassment, still, at being caught. Rendered speechless by the shame of her failure at maintaining her cover identity, more like.

  I rolled my eyes. “That’s probably why she was waitlisted. Too unconvincing of a Nevok disguise for an infiltrator. The Exterminator’s Guild on Ittel would have unmasked her immediately.”

  “This was from before first contact, though,” Chiri pointed out. “How would she even know what a Nevok looked like?”

  I tapped my chin, thinking. “Well, then ‘First Contact’ itself must have been a ruse. I mean, come on, think about it. First species in centuries to figure out FTL drives on their own? And then their first scout ship beelines straight for the nearest Federation homeworld? And all the human languages were already in the translator chip database?” I pounded the bartop with my paw. “That’s too many coincidences! The simpler explanation is that the Arxur tipped them off. Maybe even uplifted them! A species of silver-tongued pack predators to act as spies and saboteurs? It’s the perfect dagger in our backs while the Arxur attack from the front. That’s why the Arxur showed up during the Battle of Earth. To protect their investment!” I nodded to myself with a sense of smug satisfaction. Honestly, I’d just been being contrarian there at first, but it really kinda came together at the end, there.

  I blanched. A rippling chill flowed down the fur on the back of my neck. Oh fuck, that really came together at the end, there. Heart in my throat, my eyes slowly drifted over towards Charmaine to gauge her reaction. Gods help me, did I just solve the puzzle, aloud, in front of the human secret police? Was I just dead here?

  Charmaine was laughing at me again.

  My ears pinned back in distress. Bah! Whatever. That's the last time she gets a comforting hug out of me!

  “B-Bunny!” Iris stammered out, as the rest of our heads swiveled around to face her. “It's not a Nevok. It's a bunny. A rabbit!”

  Chiri tilted her head. “No, I've seen a rabbit before. They're like… brownish gray?”

  Charmaine chuckled to herself as the laughter petered out. “No, no, some rabbits can be white. Especially arctic ones. Blends in with the snow, helps them hide from predators.”

  “Rabbits aren’t bipedal, though,” Chiri pointed out. “Frankly, I think David said the list of bipedal animals on Earth was extremely short.”

  “Somebody say my name?” said David, walking out of the kitchen. Iris hunched her shoulders over like making herself look smaller would turn her invisible.

  “Yeah,” said Chiri. “We were poking around on social media about Iris, and we found her on a site called Fur Affinity?”

  “No shit? That’s neat.” David turned to Iris. “How into the community are you?”

  Iris did a double-take. “How into the community are you?!” she sputtered back at David.

  David shrugged. “I mean, not particularly, but I’m also pretty happily dating an anthropomorphic hedgehog, so I guess not zero…?” What was a hedgehog? What was a human-shaped hedgehog?

  I smacked the bartop again. “Okay. Point of order. What the flip are we talking about? Community? Humans have some kind of… what, alien infiltrator secret society?”

  “Am I allowed to talk about this?” David asked, looking towards Charmaine, the secret police lady, for confirmation. Oh dear gods, humans have an alien infiltrator secret society.

  “What, talk to Feddies about Furries?” The human exterminator lady shrugged. “I fully don’t fucking care anymore, and I’m pretty sure nobody else will by the end of the month.”

  “Oh, fun,” said David. “So any charges would get thrown out as moot by the time the case made it to court. Heh. Moot. That’s a fun word. Lawyers don’t normally come up with fun words.” That may have genuinely been the most inane thing I’d ever heard David say, and I think Chiri caught it, too.

  “Okay, David, are you stalling?” Chiri said, looking askance at him.

  David sighed. “Yeah, okay, a little. Furries are kind of a broad topic. I wasn’t sure where to start.” He rubbed his eyes. “Okay. I don’t know how people do things in the Federation. You guys have spent generations hanging out together, but humans were an isolated species until like earlier this year. Most humans are, consequently, exclusively attracted to other humans.”

  Chiri did a double-take. “That can’t be right. It’s practically a running joke on social media that the Exchange Program was the most successful matchmaking app of all time.”

  “Selection bias,” said David. “Here, I’ll show you. Charmaine, if you could date anybody by the bar, who would you pick?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Charmaine made a disgusted face. “Uhhh… is the weird blond lady an option?”

  Iris turned redder. “I might be…” she mumbled.

  “For the purpose of this discussion, let’s go with no,” said David.

  Charmained grimaced. “Eugh. None of the above, then. You’re a dude. The other two girls look like animals. I’d rather be single.” She perked up suddenly. “Oh, or I could maybe make an exception for the dapper gentleman in the hat over there.” She nodded towards… empty space behind the bar?

  “That is a bottle of Captain Morgan,” said David.

  “I said what I said,” said Charmaine.

  Chiri rounded on her, shocked and insulted. “What the fuck? You seriously wouldn’t date me? I'm adorable!”

  “You have a brown-furred snout!” Charmaine shouted. “How the fuck is that gonna work? It’d be like tongue-kissing a German Shepherd!” She pantomimed a tender hug. “Oh darling, sweetie, come a little closer… SHLORP SHLORP SHLORP SHLORP!”

  David waved at Charmaine to stop talking, probably because Chiri looked like she was about to fight her. Gods help me, how far gone was she? “Look,” said David. “The point is, human sexuality has a… broad spectrum, let’s say. I personally just have a somewhat flexible notion of what an attractive woman looks like. At the very least, most of the other bipedal mammals in the Federation look alright to me.”

  I blanched. Oh gods, I was a bipedal mammal. Was he attracted to me, too? What a horrifying thought. I slowly raised a paw to point at myself, afraid of the answer.

  David snorted. “Yotuls in general? Sure, why not,” he said. “You, personally, are married, and also kind of a bigot. Pass.”

  Pfeh. He was a human. A predator! It’s not bigotry if they’re all actually terrible.

  How many times did I get told at school that Yotuls were all terrible?

  I gritted my teeth and shuddered.

  David had abruptly stopped talking to try and reset the conversation. “And I am just now realizing that nearly every word of this conversation has been an HR disaster. Okay. Let’s… lemme rein this back in before Sylvie smacks me in the head again. What else do we need to--”

  “It’s not a sex thing!” Iris blurted out. All the heads turned towards her. She looked to David, panicked.

  “No, please, go ahead,” said David, gesturing encouragement at her. “Don’t let me speak for you. Floor’s yours. What does being a furry mean to you?”

  Iris hesitated. If she wasn’t an infiltrator… what was this even about? Why did she still look embarrassed?

  “No judgment here, Iris,” David said. “I’m not that specific type of asshole, Charmaine’s a jock whose objections don’t go deeper than this whole topic being ‘nerd stuff’, and I’m pretty sure Chiri and Rosi are just confused.”

  Chiri stood up at this point and walked over to Iris. “Here. You don’t have to get put on the spot if you don’t want to. If you do, though…” She pointed back towards the bar. “Little liquid courage?” She spread her arms open. “Hug?”

  Iris accepted the hug almost immediately, and seemed calmer by the second. Were humans just… lonely? “I, um, actually came out here to ask you for a lowball glass of that stuff you use for your family wine substitute? Just the flavor concentrate part, not the bubbly you drizzle it over. I was going to use it to flavor some batter for muffins…” Iris nuzzled her face into the fur on Chiri’s shoulder. “Sorry, this is… hugging a Gojid is kind of a bucket list item for me.”

  “That’s fine. You gotta let go, though, if you want me to start mixing,” Chiri said, nodding. Iris slowly released her. “Alrighty. Tell me more while I whip up the flavor shot.”

  “It’s like… an aesthetic thing,” said Iris, finding her footing. “There were… I read a lot of stories, growing up, about little woodland creatures going on big adventures, or throwing pleasant little garden parties. Beatrix Potter, Redwall, that kind of thing. It was… nice. Like a rabbit would have a fieldmouse and a hedgehog over for tea and cakes, and just enjoy the flowers in spring. Things just being happy and simple.”

  David nodded. “Cottagecore. Makes sense. Anytime people get stressed out by the tension of modern living or bustling cities, they start craving the simplicity of the countryside.”

  “I love tea and cakes. That sounds nice,” said Chiri, mixing her drinks. “If you want to have a picnic next spring, I’d be happy to join you.”

  “Maybe sooner?” David started looking something up on his hololenses. “The New York Botanical Gardens were in the Bronx. That’s pretty far to the north of the city center. Let me check if their greenhouses are still intact.”

  “Shush,” said Chiri. “You’re rushing her again.”

  David was taken aback by this. “Okay, you were shushing me last night about getting too rough with Rosi, but Iris is a human.”

  “Is she?” said Chiri, quizzically. “Because it sounds like she’s more of an herbivore than I am. She even put together a costume to look more like us.”

  This whole conversation was baffling. I could maybe wrap my head around rejecting modernity. I was a Yotul. The future had hit us fast. I personally liked our new way of life, up among the stars, but I wasn’t blind to the fact that this wasn’t a universal sentiment among my people. We had stand mixers and fancy mechanical dough rollers now, yes, but some of us still enjoyed the simplicity of a good sturdy wooden rolling pin sometimes. No, the part that made no sense was…

  “Okay, but why the costume?” I asked. “You’re from a species of apex predators. You’re hunters. Why are you… starving yourself on an herbivore’s diet, and dressing as one, too?”

  Iris blinked, like that was the most obvious part of all, and she couldn’t fathom why I’d even ask. “Have you… never wanted to be someone else? Or something else entirely? Somebody whose life gets to be better than yours is?”

  Bile rose in my throat as my eyes drifted to the left… to Chiri. Gojids were broad and strong, with long luxurious fur… and an honored place in the Federation. My breath caught. How many times had I cried in my bed after getting chewed out at school for not being good enough? For being born a Yotul, somebody who’d probably never be good enough? A drain on Federation resources, a burden upon my betters. Worthless. I prayed to any god that would listen that I could wake up the next morning and just magically be someone else, someone respected. But the gods never answered. So I made do with what I had. I busted my ass. I worked hard to try to prove myself. To prove that all Yotuls had value to the Federation! It was never enough, but… maybe one day it would be?

  Dark needles pricked at the edges of my thoughts, threatening to tear down that little bubble of hope that kept me going.

  “Childish,” I mumbled. My eyes winced shut. I wasn’t crying, not really, but tears were leaking out, just a little, despite my best efforts. “It’s not evil. It’s just childish. Nobody can change who they are.” I sniffed, swallowed with a dry mouth, and tried to compose myself. “But I suppose I can see the appeal of little games of pretend, now and then. A bit of escapism never hurt anyone.”

  Iris smiled, happy to be seen. Chiri nodded, satisfied. “So where do you get the costumes, anyway?” she asked. “I wanna be a bear!” She flashed her teeth and claws in a ridiculous display of false ferocity.