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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/PattableGreeb on 2025-05-11 17:26:36+00:00.
She had time before the proper meet-and-greet. She’d double-checked that everything she’d requested or had had moved onto the ship was present in her quarters.
Ruth laid on her bed, the door locked, fiddling with a circlet with an opaque visor attached to the front. She debated. She thought of going out there with an incomplete perspective. She needed a reminder, to be grounded and open-minded.
She could not afford to screw up her first day on the job. She put the device on.
“Initiate the predescribed mental simulation.”
She went to sleep without actually losing consciousness.
*******
Ruth Shaw woke up standing on the corner of an old road lazily winding through a hilly landscape. A small incline led down into an idyllic little lake that sat quiet and still between the road and several much larger, heavily wooded rises. At the bend in the road maybe thirty feet away a quaint, old style cottage watched over the water like a bored but determined sentry.
Is this really what I picture when I think of Earth? It was a much more… Mundane scene than Ruth had thought her subconscious would conjure up.
As she thought about it, a grand, towering series of skyscrapers started rising up over the bigger mounds framing the other side of the lake. They were bright, energy in a rainbow of colors swirling around their tops in listless clouds. She could hear distant vehicle sounds and the pounding of limbs against sidewalks - not just human ones - far clearer than she’d reasonably be able to this far away.
“...Right. Have to focus.” She couldn’t let bias ruin the mental simulation. She rubbed her temples and forced herself to focus only on the topic she wanted to see.
She was suddenly inside the cottage. It was a lot less rustic inside. The shift in environment greeted her with sterile padded walls, wall-embedded screens and monitors, and lifeline beeping that immediately started irritating her because she had no idea where it was actually coming from. She squinted at one of the monitors, but there was no actual data displayed.
Registering the gap in information made it present itself promptly: a human appeared in the middle of the room. Ruth found herself on the other side of a pane of thick, reinforced, mineral-veined glass. It shined faintly when she tilted her head at it.
An alien doctor appeared. Rather, a hab officer, just like her, in muted blue-yellow with the IIC badge confirming their purpose from its spot on the alien’s shoulder. It was an illud, cattish and pale. It swiped its claws across a datapad and observed the human subject, who wore nothing more than a hospital gown.
“Officer Ruth Shaw is human, originating from a frontier colony in the Parmalan Ascendancy. She is deeply religious but refuses to acknowledge it in front of others-”
“Hey, just a moment-”
“-And clearly has trauma that needs to be worked on but which she refuses to deal with despite it being a blatant social hazard.”
“I did not start this simulation to give myself therapy.”
The alien looked at her. So did the human patient, which Ruth was starting to realize looked a lot like herself.
She was starting to regret this whole ordeal.
The illud hab officer sighed deeply and rolled its eyes. It turned back to the subject. “Humans do not need complex temperature, air, or gravity control, being most happy with an enforced medium between current galactic sapient-friendly averages. Long term exposure to sufficiently off-range temps and pressures will, eventually, cause lasting damage. Simple equipment will remedy most discrepancies…”
Ruth watched herself be set on fire, frozen solid, deprived of oxygen, implode from pressure imbalance, and then finally relax with a nice cup of coffee in a very soft-looking chair that suddenly appeared. The other Ruth conjured up a book with a title in Parmalan trade speech that read; Interspecies Friendships for Above-Average Idiots.
The actual Ruth made a mental note to examine her self-esteem after this was over.
“...As a human who has experienced dampening-” The illud glanced at Ruth in a way that felt unnaturally knowing. “-She is, thank her stars, still theoretically one-day-talented in empathic ability despite the inadequacy. Most humans are only at the rough point where they can use most common tools but display no strong aptitude for actual prima-emotional power.”
“This was a stupid idea.” Ruth shook her head and crossed her arms.
“What this means for everyone else is you can toss her in a mind storm with a sturdy suit and have her be fairly likely to come out unscathed or, at least, not broken. She can still use comm-links, operate certain vehicles, and so on and so forth… Something something human adaptability.” The illud figment suddenly turned on a clawed foot towards Ruth.
Ruth paused in the middle of starting to exit back to reality.
“What was the point of this, Ruthie?”
The other Ruth looked at the actual Ruth, human and alien staring her down. She swallowed. “I just wanted to remind myself what I looked like from the outside.”
“You know you don’t have to do that. ‘Everyone is an alien to someone’ is something you practically tell yourself in your sleep.” The illud walked up to her, taking her chin in its clawed hands and turning her face up towards it. “You passed training with flying colors. You’re ready.”
“I know that, I-” Ruth grabbed its hand with both of hers.
“The best of mankind are those who look at the stars and see something beautiful. Who will stop at nothing to make themselves comfortable in the offerings of the void. All that is strange and new is welcome, for we are not alone and the word for friend can truly have no limits.” The alien was suddenly wearing a philosopher's robes.
Ruth glanced at the other Ruth. She was in the chair again, with a book, but now she was drinking Parmalan alcohol - the fancy stuff - and reading something titled The Role of Man in a Sea of Lives.
“Is this my psyche’s way of telling me I’m pretentious?”
“I think you’re just scared that you are and that all you’re really going to see out there is a lot of people hurting each other.”
Ruth said nothing. She just frowned. She heard the other Ruth loudly sip her drink, pinkie extended.
“The most important habitation need for a human-” The illud was wearing a hab officer uniform again. “-Is knowing that things are a lot easier than they seem. They require healthy social relationships, balanced environments, and if not purpose then consistent comfort. In an ideal humanity… A good human will seek a world where new horizons are a constant, and where they can settle down without difficulty wherever they choose.”
The illud crossed its arms, letting go of her now. “Do you still believe that?”
“I think so.” Ruth answered immediately.
“Then I think you’ll be okay.” The illud smiled. “Before you go, though, you need to address the fact you’ve been feeling quite lonely lately. Your options are pretty broad going forward, and the IIC does not condemn-”
“End prima-tesseract simulation.” The world faded away before Ruth could finish reading the questionable title on the other her’s next book.
*******
Ruth came back to reality rubbing her face until the mobile simulation circ fell off her head and clattered to the floor. She stared at her books, at her simple little accommodations. She thought of how much effort secretly went into making it ideal for her: the systems in the walls actively modulating everything from the heat to the oxygen she breathed.
Perfectly balanced, constantly filtered. Nothing would spill over and mix from the other quarters and kill her. Not as long as everyone did their job and was aware of everyone’s needs.
Not as long as she made the right calls. Saw the right sides.
She forced herself out of bed and went to the bridge. She tried to compose herself and manage a smile ahead of time.
*******
Stell watched Ruth Shaw enter the bridge from her spot in the center of the room. She was technically everywhere. At any moment, she could peer into someone’s private quarters, correct - or destabilize, if she became unhinged - the failings of any system or information present on the Stellar Flare, or blast them off to a random jump point or other lockable energy signature.
It was a lot of pressure. She never properly got used to it, no matter how many times they recycled her.
She debated if she should ever tell Ruth she’d briefly hijacked her simulation. She decided against it. It didn’t matter either way: she seemed troubled, but capable. That was all Stell wanted from her.
She followed Ruth around the room with her sensors, slowly rotating, as she greeted humans, cousin species, and everything along the length of the opposite side of the scale. She failed and succeeded in intervals in applying appropriate social gestures, processing and filling in the translation gaps in her and everyone else’s communication devices, and pulling herself back from about to throw up to probably not going to throw up.
She was trying very hard. So Stell decided she liked her. She waited until Ruth had taken a breather to telepathically ping her. “You’re struggling a little. You feeling alright?”
Ruth startled, almost knocking a bowl off of a snack table next to her. She went into a hallway through a door. “I’m doing fine. This is...
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