Navigator Salamus Fricker, BMA serial number 786571025, Mental Log #503.

I follow in Seventeen’s footsteps, same as I have over the past few days. He keeps dancing and humming as he goes, same as before. Initially I questioned and doubted that behavior, but I understand now. Compared to my own people, humans are by far the most resourceful and inventive species I’ve ever met. They had more or less mastered breach travel in a fraction of the time it took us, which I believe is because they seem to be far more willing to hurl themselves into the unknown. It is quite inspiring just how deep their explorer’s spirit goes.

However, these admirable traits comes with a price. A human’s mind seems to tire out much quicker than their body. They are easily distracted, and struggle to maintain focus over long periods of time due to a peculiar emotional condition that our people do not experience, hence why our language has no word for it. Seventeen described it as an unpleasant feeling that is a mix of frustration, impatience and tiredness that appears whenever the mind is either idle or preoccupied with mundane and uninteresting tasks. This sensation makes the humans easily distracted since their brains crave excitement and entertainment on a regular basis.

It’s not as if I do not understand the need for mental stimulation, as I do appreciate various recreation activities. Exercising the body through sport or letting the mind wander with a good book or a humorous video is an excellent way to shake off stress. However, such activities seem to be vital to a human’s mental and emotional health. It is why Seventeen had listened to that strange song with the unknowable words thousands of times during his oceanic exile. ‘It was significantly better than the endless crashing of waves,’ was what he told me.

Honestly, it is the first time I’ve ever met an intelligent being this… foreign and alien to me. I’d read the books and listened to the lectures, but those just don’t do these people justice. They focused far too much on their physical abilities. Which, in all honesty, are pretty terrifying. Their bodies are highly resistant to injury, and are capable of fully recovering from wounds that would be either fatal or crippling to an orizian. Skull fractures, loss of limb, firearm wounds, extensive dehydration and/or starvation. Seventeen tells me there are even those who willingly remove the arms and legs they were born with, just to replace them with ‘superior’ mechanical prosthetics!

Yet their major weakness is… lack of entertainment? And such ill-conceived entertainment at that. Hurling themselves from heights? Fighting one another in a cage? Driving unsafe vehicles at ludicrous speeds through a track designed to be difficult to navigate? Or how about scaling treacherous mountains on foot despite having easy access to flying vehicles, all just to prove that they could? What these humans consider sport would be seen as just plain suicidal by orizian standards, like their entire species has a death wish. And I don’t even want to think about their ridiculously ill-conceived ‘space programs.’ Not even the most demented of orizians would strap themselves to an explosive tower for the sole purpose of flinging themselves into a vacuum.

The way I understand it, the entirety of human civilization seems to be built on taking stupid, unnecessary risks. To be fair, I’d probably be just as reckless if all it took to mend a broken limb was a few weeks in a splint rather than open surgery and years of rehabilitation, but I digress. My point is that if anyone was going to accompany me to a different universe by using unstable, untested tech some random guy barely out of the academy came up with, it would be a human. And I was right. Seventeen and his superiors just sort of… went along with it. He even told me he fully expected it to fail the way it did.

Which it didn’t. Not really. The prototype anchor allowed us both to pass through the same breach and arrive at the same destination. It was a major success in my opinion. The only fault lies with the operator, which is to say myself. However, my new companion didn’t seem to be angry with me, and I honestly didn’t want to argue with him for fear of how he might react. That was, however, before I got to know him. I understand now that humans are not inherently violent nor reckless. They are, in Seventeen’s own words, just a bunch of idiots with way too much energy. He also shared a rather enlightening nugget of human wisdom with me - ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.’

That aside, though I definitely feel more relaxed around Seventeen than I did when I first met, it is impossible to deny that his species are, objectively speaking, quite terrifying.

“Get down!”

Therefore, when my companion suddenly shouts, ducks behind behind a large boulder and presses his back against it, I instantly follow suit. On one hand, we were almost at the foot of the volcano where our exit is supposed to be. Neither of us had seen any signs of life since we arrived on this world, and the only hazard we’d encountered was some mildly acidic rain that forced us to take cover in a cave for a while. But on the other hand, when a human expresses caution, that usually means something borderline catastrophic is about to happen.

“What is it, Seventeen?” I whisper warily.

He doesn’t answer me with words, but with hand signals. It’s a bit weird following them since he has five fingers instead of the six I’m used to, but it was the human-founded BMA that came up with this special navigator’s sign language, so I have no trouble understanding him. He’s telling me to remain silent, hidden, and to kill my comms. I comply by pushing a few buttons on my wrist-console, powering down my helmet’s transmitter.

When I look up, however, Seventeen already has his firearm drawn with one hand and signs ‘possible hostile contact’ with the other. Years of training kick in as I instantly drop my spherical souvenir and take out my own weapon from my coat’s inner pocket. It’s made to emulate BMA standard issue equipment like the rest of my gear, so its exterior shell almost identical to Seventeen’s even though the internals are worlds apart. The only real difference in appearance is that mine’s grip was made with a six-fingered double-thumbed hand in mind.

I watch carefully as my partner peeks out from our hiding spot, looks towards the volcano’s base and then ducks back down. ‘Unknown device ahead, 100 meters, please confirm,’ is what he signs at me. I reply with a quick ‘understood’ and slowly shuffle around the other side of the boulder. I poke my head out, and it takes me a few moments, but I definitely spot an ‘unknown device’ peering over a ridge. It looks like the top of one of those radio towers I saw on Earth, during our brief flight from HQ to the departure facility. It has the same antennas, bowl-shaped devices and blinking lights, though covered in a layer of volcanic ash and wrapped in a terran causality field.

I immediately understand why Seventeen assumes hostiles. This is without a doubt human tech, or at least something close to it. However, the BMA has no official presence on this world, otherwise his communicator would have picked up on it. Which, in turn, means that this device most likely belongs to a criminal organization. The type that would have no qualms about killing a navigator or two to hide their secret.

I shuffle around back to Seventeen and sign at him with ‘unknown device,’ ‘confirmed,’ and ‘requesting orders,’ to which he replies with ‘retreat and regroup.’ Which is what we do. We double back for about a half corason, or one point six kilometers in Seventeen’s measurement system, and hide in a shallow cave we passed on the way here. Only once we’re inside does he finally speaks up.

“Blast them all, I should’ve known.”

“Should have known what?” I ask.

“Why my computer is not working right. That was an ivanium mixer.”

Wait, what? How does one ‘mix eevanium’ with a signal tower? Granted, my people use sonic resonance to help refine and mold shukhrotokar, but human science is based on heat and electricity, not vibrations. That can’t be right. Oh, I see, that ‘mixer’ was probably a translator glitch. If that device is somehow interfering with his equipment, then it must be either absorbing or dispersing the unique vibrations that shukhrotokar sends through the fabric of reality once properly stimulated. In short-

“Do you mean a jammer?” I ask warily.

“Whatever you want to call it, that thing’s bad news,” Seventeen says while holstering his sidearm. “It means whoever is here has a significant enough presence to warrant one of those.”

“So, what do we do?”

“We blow it up, that’s what.”

… Spoken like a true human, I suppose.

“Hey, don’t think I can’t feel you judging me in that weird head of yours. You think I’d suggest something so stupid if we had any other option?”

Alright, let’s hear him out.

“Why not leave its range and call for backup? Or find another breach?”

“That one tower can easily blanket the entire planet, so the first option is not going to happen,” he says with a shake of his head. “And you know as well as I do that this seems to be the only breach that’s within anything even remotely close to a walking distance. Why do you think that is?”

“You’re not suggesting they have a departure facility like the one on Earth, are you?”

“I’m not suggesting it, I’m saying it.”

“But, inside an active volcano? With all that heat and toxic fumes and Omnissiah knows what else?”

“Perfect place for it. It’s a natural fortress and a source of geothermal energy.”

Ah, of course. I keep forgetting human science is fueled by fire and lightning.

“Still, that is a lot of speculation based on a short glimpse,” I point out.

“A simple glimpse and also years of navigator experience,” he retorts. “My intestines are telling me we’ve stumbled onto a massive operation, right under the BMA’s noses.”

“… Your intestines speak to you?”

“It’s a figure of speech. It means instinct, insight, that sort of thing.”

“Understood. Then how do you propose we topple that tower? There’s only two of us and your ‘massive operation’ theory suggests the locals outnumber us quite heavily.”

“Indeed. Our only viable option is to take it out from range and retreat until reinforcements arrive. They wouldn’t leave that mixer defenseless, however. It’s sure to be shielded, or at the very least reinforced. The ordinance I’m carrying won’t damage it in any significant way even if it does hit. But, that only applies to attacks that they are expecting.”

He then points to the console on my left forearm.

“Do you think you and your gear might be able to do something about that? If you can make your tech cooperate with mine, then surely you know how to make it do the opposite.”

“Oh, my! That is a brilliant proposition, Seventeen!”

It may sound like a boast, but I dare say I’m the foremost expert on how orizian and terran tech interact. I’ve spent much of my academic life exploring the mysteries of human science. Or at least as much as I could without leaving my homeworld. The One Earth Government embassy in the capital was a huge help in that regard. Not only did they encourage and assist my research as much as the law would allow, but they also helped me become a full fledged navigator and even arranged my visit to the agency’s headquarters. It’s how I was able to design an adaptable anchor that is capable of functioning by both sets of natural laws, all thanks to shukhrotokar’s unique properties.

And yet it didn’t even occur to me that I could do what Seventeen suggests.

“It’s actually frighteningly simple to do that,” I tell him. “I just need to use my console’s matter tuner to subject the device to an atomic frequency cascade.”

“What will that accomplish?”

“Well, depending on how well I do it, it will either bring down the tower’s causality field and break its delicate circuitry, or straight up disintegrate it.”

Both of those outcomes would result in it going offline, allowing us to call for backup.

“Awesome! So, how far away do you need to be to do that?”

“That depends. Normally I’d need to be practically next to it, but I can use the power crystal we found to boost my tuner’s range to about two hundred meters.”

It only takes Seventeen a few moments to realize the crucial flaw with that course of action.

“… You forgot the crystal when we ran away, didn’t you?”

As expected of a human’s sharp wit, he catches on fast.