《A Brief Look》A brief look at a cargo ship's captain's log entries pertaining to humans

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Contextual translation enabled. The timestamps on the log have unfortunately been lost.

I hired a human engineer today. Said his name is Elizabeth. When asked what sort of augments they have, they responded, and I quote "Well I have the standard nano, cyber, and genetic enhancements for increased intelligence, durability, endurance, strength, biological immortality, agility and flexibility, dexterity, disease prevention, anti-radiation, toxin filtering, temperature regulation, computer in my head, vacuum protection, atmopheric recycling, metabolism control, that sort of stuff. Although there's been talk of having those basic genetic changes be germline instead of somatic, so that would be just baseline human, not baseline enchancements. Oh and I'm pentachromatic like anyone else, apparently we used to to only have three types of photoreceptor cells in our eyes. As it is we can distinguish around ten billion different colors? Something like that.

Anyway, as for the non-standard stuff, I had my eyes entirely replaced with cybernetic ones, decided to keep to standard pentachromatic instead of going higher, and I have a basic engineering suite. Intuitive programming, multitools in my hands and forearms, electron beam welders, that sort of stuff. Lastly I replaced my fingernails with small but retractable, sharp, and durable claws. Helps with stripping wires and manipulating small finicky stuff. Oh and I have several chambers in my left upper arm that can synthesize different inks which I can draw into and eject out of my claws. Never have to worry about having a pen or sharpie with me basically."

Firstly, it seems they like to ramble a bit. Secondly, "standard" augments. It's kinda funny how these people that are a fair bit smaller than any other known sapient species are so terrifying.

Do note that said genetic changes have in fact gone through recently. The humans are also looking into designing cells that would create nanobots to construct other nanobots and cybernetics, thus allowing any human to automatically have "basic health assurance."

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Turns out the human is female, not male. I was mistaken due to the lack of apparent mammaries. Also, even a joking hit from a human rather hurts.

Upon trying out the shower in their quarters, the human proclaimed that it's like "drizzling ice water on yourself in the middle of the arctic!" There was much more colorful language surounding that, including several expletives that didn't originate with humans. They then started working on refitting the shower, starting with adding more pumps to the extent that the water would pulverize the flesh of any other being onboard.

Upon loosing a 10mm socket, the human slammed their hand against an armored bulkhead in frustration. The bulkhead in question massively deformed. After cursing the "flimsy" materials they got to work fixing it.

Elizabeth diverted some of the heat from one of the secondary reactors to their shower, and then not satisfied with that reactor, completely rebuilt it to compensate for the extra power draw from the additional pumps. On one talon, that secondary reactor is the new primary. On the other, while the shower was never able to get particularly hot, that seems excessive.

One of the drawlzak, Damka, challenged the human to a sparring match, on the condition that the human disable their cybernetic first. Damka is now in stasis until we can get them to a proper hospital. Elizabeth apologized profusely, stating that without their cybernetics active they can't judge their strength versus the sturdiness of their opponent anywhere nearly as accurately. Another drawlzak, Dakma, challenged the human to a spar. With a great effort of will I restrained myself from just shooting them to save on medical expenses.

"I finally got around to looking at the weapons you guys carry. They're not great." A little while later Elizabeth gave me a seemingly cobbled together handgun. The weapon does nothing to the ship's hull, but against anything organic or containing organic matter, such as a heavy assault infrantry suit with an avian inside, the result is... gruesome. I was not aware that meat could do that.

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Elizabeth was tinkering with our anti-meteor weapons. The ship is now technically classified as a lightly armored artillery warship instead of a cargo hauler. They swore to "fix" the lightly armored part.

The human worked on the shield generators and increased their strength by some amount I'm not really sure of. The other engineers are insisting physics doesn't work like that. When at full power the back of your teeth taste like blueberries. I have never tasted blueberries. They apologized for not being able to make it stronger without taking down the entire power grid for refit.

"I hadn't gotten around to looking at the drives because I assumed that would be the first thing the other engineers here would bring up to decent specs with the materials avaliable. Clearly I was wrong." Our sublight manuevering speed is 1.3 times as fast, our sublight forward acceleration 1.7 times as fast, and our FTL 3.1 times as fast. I have no idea where they got the materials from.

A crewmember "accidentally" disabled the filter on the internet, and browsed the human-specific internet. They're a tad bit traumatized.

Apparently the ship's cooling system and some of the security cameras are now partially organic. I no longer have any idea what happens on this ship.

There was an attempted boarding action against us. Elizabeth has since incorporated their ship into ours, and their corpses into a many-limbed robot called Igar that likes to travel through the air vents. Its primary purpose is handing her items but it does have other functions. Apparently she was rather displeased at some of the threats they made, so now their heads sing encouraging things at the crew and their central circulatory organs act as drink dispensers. I am far from sure on how to feel about this as while their protectiveness of us is I think on the whole a good thing it can lead to rather disconcerting things.

Medic Jkholmdk was crushed between two crates in an accident. Elizabeth tried to rig together an impromptu life support system but Jkholmdk perished all the same. Elizabeth had an entirely calm expession on their face. Investigation revealed that several of the poles involved in the shelving one of the crates had been on were considerably weaker than they were sold as and had buckled in a matter of tragic timing. The next I heard of the company that had produced those poles was Elizabeth nonchalantly mentioning that apparently hundreds of millions of lawsuits from various sources had been filed against the company regarding false advertising and cutting corners.

Also apparently, the entire board of directors had contracted some novel illness that impaired judgment and then when discovered racked up astronomical medical bills. That combined with persistent inexplicable hardware and software issues in all of their factories as well as a sudden surge of strikes and various automated auditing systems suddenly catching quite a few issues with the company resulted in the company going under. I am going to assume that Elizabeth had absolutely nothing to do with any of that and not look at that assumption too closely.

I was not aware that the ship's internal defenses now include a wide variety of neurotoxins. I miss when things made sense.

A crewmember accidentally downloaded a computer virus that resulted in any input showing a human sing that they would never stop hunting the viewer through a desert. Elizabeth spent several minutes cursing whoever programmed the device before fixing it. I learned several new interesting combinations of words from them.

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