We never take no for an answer

 

 

            The aliens dump us all into the same hole.

            Human and humanoid, even a few sentient lizards, but nobody counts them, so I don’t either.

            This is my home world so of all here I’m the most comfortable, if you discount the chains.

            I know if I can slip out of the links and get over the wall, I’ll find safety with the underground.

            The pale humanoid woman from some sun-deprived world elsewhere in the galaxy watches me squirm then guesses what I’m up to and imitates me.

            Half naked and multi-jointed, she’s out of her chains just as I’m out of mine, even though I started before her.

            She leaps at me – her sharp pale nails targeting my eyes.

            Humans, I know, are not a popular spices, but I figured with a common enemy we might at least be civil.

            I leap out of the way, then up the dirt wall of the hole to the top where a stone wall encircles us, from some hasty construction the aliens put in place until they could get all of us caged.

            I hear the woman climbing behind me and wonder if I can climb the wall in time.

            And whether or not I’ll find an alien machine on the other side waiting.

            I don’t know why the aliens want to eliminate us or why the woman wants to kill me.

            Life is full of those big questions I always get a headache pondering: what love means and why humans act like assholes when it comes to other races.

            I always concentrate on smaller matters like trying my best not to piss anybody off band enough to make them reach for a blaster.

            I can’t control what my race does.

            An old man, a humanoid with three arms and legs and skin green enough for him to get mistaken as a lizard says I ought not to try and escape.

            What’s the point? We will only die later anyway.

            He says this world is full of booby traps that any of us might set off if we move the wrong way.

            This is another big question I have no answer for.

            But I figure if I have to die anyway, I might make it as hard for the aliens as possible.

            Then I start to climb.

            Maybe that’s why the universe hates us so much.

            We humans never take “no” for an answer.

 


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