This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/olrick on 2025-11-09 11:12:14+00:00.
The segmented, chitin-plated school transport whined to a halt, its repulsor-lifts sighing as they settled onto the crystalline plaza. The air inside the cabin was thick with the recycled-atmosphere tang of juvenile secretions and the high-frequency static of thirty distinct, grating voices.
"Are we there? Are we there? My lowest locomotion pads are numb!" gurgled a small, purple being named Gleep.
"Your lowest locomotion pads are stupid, Gleep!" buzzed Zorp, flicking a slimy pellet across the aisle with a casual snap of his primary tentacle.
Ms. K’Nid’s multiple sensory stalks drooped in exhaustion. The field trip to ZeZoo was the highlight of the semester, and it hadn't even been ten minutes since they’d left the learning-creche. Her central respiration sack pulsed in a long, weary sigh that was lost in the din.
"Yes, Gleep. We are here," she vibrated, her voice already strained.
The transport's membrane doors dilated with a wet schloop.
A wave of small, multi-tentacled bodies immediately squelched and bounced onto the plaza, heedless of the thick, lavender atmosphere or the two sickly-yellow suns hanging in the sky.
"I claim the 'Primitive Wars' exhibit!" shrieked Flib, extending all eight of her grasping tendrils as she slithered toward the entrance.
"Nuh-uh! I'm going to the 'Failed Gaseous Civilizations'!" retorted Blorp, intentionally sliding his own bulk in front of her, causing a multi-tentacle pile-up.
"BLORP SMEARED HIS MUCUS ON ME! K'NID! HE DID IT ON PURPOSE!"
"DID NOT, YOU SPORE-SACK!"
Ms. K’Nid oozed heavily out of the transport, her own stabilization tentacles trembling. Before them loomed ZeZoo, the largest museum of cultures in the universe. It wasn't a building so much as a contained temporal anomaly, a swirling vortex of impossible architecture that folded in on itself, showcasing shimmering pocket-realities behind vast, transparent walls.
The class, naturally, was already trying to lick the entrance ramp.
"Spawn-group! Form a cohesive cluster!" Ms. K'Nid bellowed, clapping her toughest upper tentacles together for emphasis. The sharp smack momentarily silenced the gurgling.
"Listen to my vibrations! We are guests here," she trilled, pointing a stern, blue-tipped tentacle at the chaotic mass. "This museum contains priceless artifacts from quadrants you haven't even evolved the organs to perceive. I expect you to modulate your vocal sacs."
She scanned the group, her central stalk fixing on Zorp, who was already trying to poke a sleeping guard-drone.
"There will be no unauthorized slithering. You will stay with your assigned digestion-partner. Do not extend your grasping tendrils to touch the displays, do not secrete any adhesive or acidic fluids on the barriers, and if I find a single one of you attempting to 'taste-test' the holographic simulations, you will be on atmospheric filtration duty for the next moon-cycle!"
With a final, desperate vibration, Ms. K’Nid shunted the chattering mass through the preliminary bio-scanner. "Stay clustered! Stay clustered!"
They oozed into the first exhibit: The Gallery of Subliminal Harmonics.
The vast, quiet chamber was filled with towering, iridescent crystals that hung suspended in a low-gravity field. They pulsed with faint, shifting colors—mostly beige, pale mauve, and a particularly dull shade of grey. A low, resonant thrummmmmm filled the air, which, according to the plaque, was the "unified sorrow-song of the lost Q'Qualar race."
The class stopped. The silence lasted 0.4 seconds.
"This is stupid," Zorp buzzed, his auditory filaments drooping.
"It's not doing anything," Flib complained, prodding the kinetic barrier around the nearest crystal. "It’s just… slow noise."
"My visual-receptors are bored," Gleep whined, plopping onto the floor in a gelatinous puddle. "This is less interesting than the ceiling of the nutrition-vat."
"It's not supposed to 'do' anything, spawn-cluster!" Ms. K'Nid hissed, her stabilization tentacles quivering in frustration. The thrummmm of the sorrow-song was giving her a cranial-sac rupture. "This is art. It’s about feeling!"
"I feel like my lowest tentacle is asleep," Blorp muttered.
Ms. K’Nid clapped her upper limbs again. "Query-Slates out! Now! Open to the 'Cultural Significance' chapter. You all have questions that must be answered before we move on."
A collective groan vibrated through the group. Reluctantly, the children pulled out their small, damp datapads.
"Question one," Flib read aloud in a monotone squeak. "'Analyze how the artist’s use of negative-space frequencies evokes the socio-economic despair of the Q'Qualar's 4th dynasty.'" Flib looked up. "I don't know what any of those vibrations mean."
"Just write 'sad rocks,'" Zorp whispered, already scribbling a crude drawing of a stick-being getting vaporized onto his own slate.
"Zorp! Are you filling in the answers?" Ms. K'Nid demanded, looming over him.
"Yes, Ms. K'Nid," Zorp said innocently, hiding the drawing with his shortest tentacle. "I'm just writing how it makes me feel 'existential.'"
"Ms. K'Nid!" Gleep shrieked, waving his slate in the air. "When are we going to the 'Primitive Wars' section? Blorp's oldest sibling-pod said they have a working replica of a Mark-IV Plasma Obliterator!"
The entire class instantly perked up, their various sensory organs swiveling toward the teacher.
"Ooh! And the 'Greatest Disintegrations' exhibit!" buzzed Flib, her boredom vanishing. "I want to see the 'Annihilation of the Florg'!"
"You will see nothing," Ms. K'Nid snapped, her central mass flushing a deep, angry crimson, "until you have sufficiently analyzed the socio-economic despair! Now, write! What color best represents the Q'Qualar's lack of internal validation?"
Grumbling, the spawn-group returned to their slates.
"Beige," Gleep wrote, then immediately started trying to see what Blorp was writing.
"Stop copying my existential dread!" Blorp hissed, shielding his slate.
"I'm not! I'm just checking if you spelled 'socio-economic' right, you spore-sack!"
After what felt like an entire digestive cycle, Ms. K'Nid finally relented, her internal structures sagging in defeat. "Fine. We can proceed to the historical exhibits. But you will complete the art analysis during your next regeneration period!"
This vague threat was ignored. A unified, slimy "YESS!" echoed through the beige gallery, and the spawn-cluster instantly coalesced into a single, high-speed blob, squelching toward the exit.
"STAY CLUSTERED! NO SLITHERING-RACES!" Ms. K'Nid bellowed, already left behind.
The transition was jarring. They left the serene, thrummming silence of the art wing and entered a pressurized tunnel that dilated into The Dome of Galactic Repulsion.
The change was instantaneous. The air snapped with the smell of ozone and simulated plasma-fire. The sound was a deafening cacophony of recorded battle-cries, orchestral martial music, and the thwoom of distant, holographic explosions.
"WHOA!" Gleep gurgled, all his sensory stalks vibrating at maximum frequency. "It smells like victory!"
The kids fanned out, their query-slates forgotten, bouncing off the padded floor in their excitement.
The dome was a swirling, 360-degree holographic theater. In the center, a towering, twenty-tentacle-tall statue of Grand Admiral Vor'Kresh stood frozen in a pose of heroic fury. He was depicted crushing the carapace of a 'Gnat-Swarm' scout drone beneath his massive lower pads.
"I claim the 'Void-Leech Crusades' display!" Zorp shrieked, sliding on a trail of his own mucus toward a pulsating red exhibit.
"Nuh-uh! I'm seeing the 'Siege of the Xylos Nebula'!" Flib retorted, already mashing her tendrils onto an interactive tactical display, causing tiny red warning lights to flash. "Look! I just repelled the first wave! Take that, you crystalline spore-sacks!"
Ms. K'Nid oozed into the dome just in time to see Blorp attempting to climb the base of Admiral Vor'Kresh's statue.
"Blorp! Your primary tentacles are not for scaling historical monuments!" she trilled, her voice barely audible over the sound of a simulated anti-matter charge detonating.
The walls shimmered with projections of legendary battles. They watched, mesmerized, as fleets of organic-steel cruisers vaporized entire armadas of silicon-based invaders. They saw the "Thousand-Cycle Stand" at the K'Lorp Rift, where a single battalion held off the 'Devourers' using nothing but amplified sonic lances.
"Ms. K'Nid! Ms. K'Nid! Look!" Gleep shouted, pointing his shortest tentacle at a display. "It's a working model of a Z-Class Particle Disruptor! Can we touch it? Can we fire it?"
"Absolutely not! That is a priceless artifact of..." Ms. K'Nid squinted at the plaque. "...the 'Third-Quadrant Purification.' Oh, dear."
"My digestion-partner's older sibling-pod said this is the best part," Zorp buzzed, his oculars wide. He was standing in front of a floor-to-ceiling display showcasing the "Great Generals." Holo-projections of stern, multi-limbed beings faded in and out: Matriarch S'lleen, who repelled the "Mind-Eaters" by broadcasting lethal frequencies of pure logic; General Gr'm, the tiny, unassuming being who famously weaponized tectonic plates.
"Query-slates, spawn-cluster!" Ms. K'Nid attempted weakly, knowing it was futile. "You have questions on the strategic importance of Admiral Vor'Kresh's-"
She was cut off by a deafening VRRROOOM as Flib and Zorp activated a "Bat...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1osgsh4/zezoo/