Pizza Night
Danny promised me pizza tonight. I started drooling at the first mention of it. I haven't mentioned it before, but space food generally sucks. First of all, no one has ever heard of a cow... so that totally gets rid of half my diet. No hamburgers, steak, or even decent dairy product, though Danny has found a species that is completely in love with cheese. They even use types of it for currency. Every home has an NC cow-like or goat-like animal and they cruise the galaxy looking for new and exotic milks to make into cheese. Danny's been saving the results of his last trade for a special night.

At first glance I was a bit tepid. The sauce was blue, or apparently the only thing Danny could find that resembled tomatoes were blue. But he'd managed to rig an oven together, make a crust, and get most of the ingredients at a close match. He'd been working on the recipe for 10 years. I thought it was pretty good. It had a slight tangy aftertaste, but considering the food I'd lived off of for a few months, it was bloody fantastic.

The first feeding time with the Gaulagch's was odd. One of them entered the room and tried another unsuccessful attempt at talking to me. Suddenly he rolled a silver ball at me. I picked it up, quite unsure of what to do with it until he held out an arm. I rolled the ball back to him and he chittered away excitedly then tossed a biscuit at me. Now I hesitate to call it a biscuit. I mean it was obviously food, but after one bite, I was tempted to spit it out. It wasn't that it tasted bad, it just had no taste at all, but the alien was staring at me, and getting a bit agitated as I stared at it, so I swallowed the rest of the biscuit.

The Gaulagch moved back and forth, delighted... I think, and then tossed the silver ball at me. I rolled it back to him and he threw me another biscuit. It finally dawned on me. We were playing fetch. He was trying to teach me a trick. Oh, goody. My reward was another Tasteless Human Treat.

Carmen tried to explain that I shouldn't be offended by the food the Gaulagchs offered me. They don't have any sense of taste or smell. Those biscuits were quite nutrition and contained all the daily balanced diet that their research showed a human needed. Carmen is our protocol and liaison officer, so she's rather diplomatic. She's the one that warns us if something we're about to do will mortally offend an alien species... us being the crew members of the the ship and me, space baggage. She's quite informative and unlike Danny, is willing to give information that doesn't directly relate to Danny or something he's recently invented.

Carmen's the most interesting looking alien I've seen so far, which has been comparatively few. She's actually an it. Her species are hermaphroditic. I have Danny to thank for the gender assignation. He introduced her that way and she's been a she ever since.

My artistic impression. The orange and yellow things on her head are eyes. She got about a hundred of them. She's really bright blue on the main part of her body with her underside a sort of pinkish peach. She moves about quite easily on her three tentacles, and once you get used to the holes in her neck, she's interesting to talk to.

It's difficult to tell what she thinks of me. She's a diplomat, and has been permanently banned from playing poker, as she apparently has no tell whatsoever. She's quite good at getting her way, and making you think it was your way in the first place. She could probably run for President on Earth and be welcomed with open arms... tentacles.
- posted by omouse @ 3/22/2004