This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/SpacePaladin15 on 2025-12-17 13:06:51+00:00.
Android Ambassador | Patreon [Early Access + Bonus Content] | Official Subreddit
It was a bit of a gut punch when Corai insisted on picking where we’d go first, as much as I normally appreciated her forging her own path forward with headstrong independence. The Elusian said there was something she needed to do to commemorate her time as a Watcher, which was understandable; after a million years, of course she’d know best what she wanted to see. She shouldn’t settle for my dumb ideas and be beholden to my whims with all she was going through. Still, I couldn’t help but be upset…I’d wanted to choose something special.
“Preston, have I upset you?” Corai prompted.
I startled, guilt spreading across my face. “No! I, um, am totally respectful of your choices and you knowing what’s best for you. It’s stupidly selfish that…I wanted to be the one to do something nice for you. As if I’m the solution to everything that happened, bah.”
“I am all yours after this is done. What I need to do is important to give to humanity, and…I must face your judgment,” she said aloud. “I’m not immune to the 5D weapon, my love. If anything happened to me, it’d be selfish to take this knowledge with me.”
“What knowledge?”
“Everything I know. Your people came wanting answers about us and your creation, and it’s in my power to grant them. You deserved it. This is to remind myself of my purpose here: that humanity means the universe to me. That remains unchanged.”
“You’re taking a Q&A? I’m not sure you’re up for that, hon.”
Corai laughed. “I’m providing all of my memories to human scholars. I can’t carry the burden of what your people might think of me any longer, not on top of these new weights I’ve been saddled with. I was…a cruel, idle god. It’s time for the reckoning my conscience demands.”
“Not everyone, but I think most people will understand the dangers of tampering with our cultures and not letting us make our own path—even if they disagree.”
“Humans will see that I closed myself off to your suffering.”
“Humans close ourselves off to other people’s suffering, all over the world. No one can help or care about everyone and everything, it’s unfair to you! Corai…”
The Elusian raised a hand. “Thank you for trying to console me. Let’s warp over to the conference room and be done with it. For you to have all of human history at your fingertips: my days as a Watcher might finally be meaningful.”
I knitted my eyebrows together, as Corai herded me through the portal she’d just opened and followed close behind. Researchers and famous professors, a few of whom I recognized from memeable documentaries, were gathered in an auditorium; since none of them appeared to have the nanobots in their bloodstream, I didn’t know how they’d process her data. I stood still on the stage and waiting for the Elusian to take charge.
The reactions to our sudden appearance made my fellow humans seem more like frightened animals. Many leapt to their feet with startled expressions, huddling together for safety or scuttling back toward the door. Through augmented reality, I could see their heart rates skyrocketing with fear; judging by how much many of them were sweating, they were already nervous. I could see the terror in their eyes, as they surveyed Corai and myself.
“Uh, Preston? Can you make me less scary?” Corai asked.
I stared at her for several seconds, before shrugging. “Sure. I know just the thing.”
The Elusian yelped as I smacked her on the behind and rubbed my hands together with a devious grin. Corai gawked at me for several seconds, before giving me a fiery look that told me I’d pay for that later. The gathered scholars paused, their reactions transitioning into confusion more than fear. One gawked at me with what looked like reprehension, wagging a finger as if telling off a child.
“That’s entirely inappropriate! Er, gray alien, the rest of us don’t stand for that kind of behavior,” her knight-in-shining-armor said.
I grinned from ear-to-ear. “Don’t feel sorry for her. She likes it. I bet she’s never had her ass spanked in public before! That’s why I’m a better lover than any of y’all. I mean, do you know how hard it is to give a million-year-old alien new experiences?!”
“Two can play that game.” Behind me, Corai quietly levitated nanobots into a massive, floating hand that waved at the crowd; I only noticed when I turned around to see what they were laughing at. “Mine’s bigger.”
“Jan t’nai! Jan t’nai. That means ‘I love you’ in Elusian, folks; see how thoughtful I am? I love you and would never hurt you. I’m a sweet little angelmuffin,” I exclaimed, raising my hands in front of me. “You like my butt how it is. You wouldn’t want to ruin it. Dents are bad.”
“Sometimes the lessons taught outweigh shallow desires.”
“Nooooo! Help me. Help a fellow human. I’ll bribe you. I know a tin can you guys can have for free. A trash bucket that’d love to be rehomed.”
The Elusian chased me around the stage with the giant, moving hand, until I finally allowed it to catch me and bump me over. I noticed the scholars slinking back to their seats, with their minds taken off their natural fears; the more relaxed smiles and bunched eyebrows said everything. The first hints of curiosity seemed to poke through, studying Corai beyond just lizard brain threat analysis. The Watcher seemed relieved not to scare them shitless anymore, and she stared out at the crowd with warm mirth. She could barely suppress her laughter.
See? Butt humor defuses everything. Just like I taught Mikri: I’m a middle school humor savant. The best t’vakna in Sol!
“Thank you all for coming. I’m…sorry for my telepathic messages, and the distress that must have caused, but I didn’t think you’d believe me if I used email.” Corai’s smile became more bittersweet, and she gazed at the crowd with moist eyes, heavy emotions choking her up. “I’m here to give you a record of all human history. I only ask that it’s disseminated and transcribed in a way that it can be accessed by your entire people. You all deserve to understand your past.”
I winked at her, trying to cheer her up. “Least favorite empire?”
“The Earth Space Union, of course. Your flag is ugly.”
“Who doesn’t like ESU blue? That’s a red flag.”
“Bad puns will make me muzzle you again,” Corai warned, before redirecting her attention to the audience. “I will leave the files, including my thoughts and sensory data, for when you have nanobots. For now, I’ve converted them all into human video format. I hope you’ll find it…enlightening to catalog.”
One of the academics gaped at her, as she delivered the data to the personal devices of everyone in the room. “You really witnessed all of human history? Including prehistoric times? This’ll be a firsthand account…”
The Elusian nodded. “Correct. Let me offer a disclaimer that I couldn’t watch everywhere at once. However, for important events, someone else saw them and I reviewed the footage. I suppose it’s not all firsthand.”
“I…don’t know what to say. Thank you!”
“I’m happy to be able to give your people a gift at long last. It’ll also be a way for you to…understand the Elusians as we were, to make peace with our role in your past. You’re all that’s left that…might remember us at all in a positive light. Perhaps…you can find our history worth preserving, as it really was.”
Another scholar hesitated, before swallowing and pointing a finger at Corai. “D-did you ever participate in abducting humans?”
“Certainly. I can’t speak for my colleagues—I don’t think they cared about your consent…but I only tested the precognitive abilities of willing subjects. Most thought I was a goddess, at that time period, so you could make an argument that they couldn’t give informed consent. I was enamored by your uniqueness, but it’s valid if you find any experimentation unethical. I’m sorry.”
“You can test this willing subject,” I whispered in her mind. “I like unethical.”
“Silence,” she responded. “As for our official reasons, we didn’t want to let you pass through The Gap without understanding the full effects on you. I played no role in the ramped up tests that you know of, from when the Justiciary believed you were destined to replace us. It’s a mess, I’m afraid.”
A professor with the stereotype screwball hair inched forward. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the Elusians were complicated people, and I have no right to tell you how to feel about us. We were flawed, arrogant, thinking that we were perfect and elevated to the highest echelons of existence, but we went through life like driftwood on the sea. Over the course of our unending lifespans, we were numbed to everything, even the most basic human decency and passions.”
“You’re not like that. Stop saying ‘we!’” I protested.
“I’m honest about what I am. I wanted to protect and love you, I clung to it, but now more than ever…I feel like just as much of a failure as the rest of my people. I thought I knew what was best for humans…that I didn’t want you to turn out like us.”
“We didn’t, hon. We have hair.”
Corai snickered, befo...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1pow1wm/prisoners_of_sol_99/