In the Glass Tower

"And you let the creature come with you?"


"He presented a logical argument that I felt I couldn't refuse."


"This is not his business."


"It involves his species, so arguably it is."
"This is not for the sake of argument."


"I think maybe you should watch yourself. Emotion seems to be clouding your judgement."


....


....


"Psychologist, is this your opinion as well."


"He is a.... Fascinating specimen, both of them. They play off each other like the two points in a binary star system the one influencing the other but neither taking precedence."


"I did not ask for poetic rhetoric, psychologist, I asked for your assessment."


"You might have to be more specific, for that was my assessment."


"Is he or is he not fit to live."


"I think you will find that decision isn't as easily made as you think it is. I spoke with the human at great length on the subject, and it..... He provided me with a very interesting take on the changes we have seen with the doctor."


"We don't care about the the observations of a human."


"Well you should because the observation was astute and thought provoking. I think we, as Vrul, tend to be blinded by our supposed superiority and forget that other species have the ability to think logically the humans being the most flexible-minded in the known universe. Will I be permitted to continue."


...


"Go on then, let's hear it."


"He is under the assumption that every change that we have seen in the doctor is an adaptive behavior to surviving with humans."


"And how is aggression supposed to be adaptive?"


"You see, that was the interesting part. Humans communicate a measure of their hierarchical structure though aggression. Now if an authority figure is to give you a position in the hierarchy you may not have to be aggressive, but for the doctor, he was placed in a position of power by a human that sometimes refuses to listen. By appearing both concerned and aggressive at the same time he forces the other humans to listen to him therefore placing himself in a very high position within the social hierarchy. Many of the tiny movements that he makes is an adaptive way to show HUMANS that he is worthy of the position he holds. We see it as aggressive, they see it as confidence, or in certain cases anger and annoyance. Often times, humans do not understand that something is important unless it has a level of emotion attached to it. If i were to calmly walk into a room and tell the humans that there is a fire and they need to get out, they would be much less likely to respond promptly than if I ran in screaming about it. On the same line, the doctor must behave in an aggressive and angry manner in order to convince the others that his opinions are important and require a certain measure of..... Focus from his companions.


"That is a very convoluted and strange way to look at things."


"But it is the functioning of a human ship. The Doctor has not lost his ability to be Vrul, but he has proven his adaptive nature."


"He has proven, that his interest lies outside the furtherment of our species, and therefore is no longer of use."


"I disagree."


"We will see what the doctor has to say for himself.


***


It felt like a lifetime since Dr Krill had seen the horizons of his own planet, a ruddy sort of orange on the surface, the air fed by carbon producing lifeforms. The city was as he remembered it, an unchanging slab of white built in the most uniform of circles. with uniform buildings rising only to the height of three or four stories crossed between with long lines of wire. High walls encircled the entire perimeter isolating the interior from the outside world. Down in the city, the walls were so high that you had to crane your neck back simply to see the top. The council said it reduced the sunlight, but it was an acceptable measure in order to keep out the rest of the world.


Krill thought it was kind of ironic, almost funny. They had built a wall to keep out the world, but it was never high enough to keep out what had really come, it hasn't been high enough to keep out the cosmos, or the wars, or different ideologies that had fallen in from the galaxy.


In their fear they had tried to wall themselves off but ended up opening themselves up to the universe with open arms practically begging others to come in and cause them danger.


There were only thirteen cities on this planet, all of them ranged along the equator where the Vrul could best live. There had been thirteen for as long as anyone could remember, and in those thirteen cities there was just enough genetic diversity to keep a bottleneck event from occurring and annihilating the genetic diversity in the population.


In their fear they made the way they lived even more dangers, if there was more of them, more diversity more of them in the galaxy, than they would never have to worry about dying off.. By keeping their species isolated on this planet, they were threatening their entire species with mass extinction from a planet wide catastrophe.


He wondered if anyone else had thought of that.


He had never seen outside the city accept from above of course. He had seen hundreds of worlds, walked on earth with impunity, braved blizzards and asteroid fields, but he had still never seen his own planet. It was some kind of cruel twisted humor. He wasn't entirely sure what species were even native here, other than the screllings that flew just beyond the wall perimeter repelled by force fields so as not to cause trouble.


Of course the way he described the city probably did not convey just how large it was. One one hundredth of the massive white circle was taken up by the landing field, large enough to hold Commander Vir's ship a hundred times over than then some. They landed there and were escorted onto the platform.


He was surrounded almost completely by a wall of four Delta's and their beta handlers.


Walking down from the ship and onto the white stone, surrounded on all sides by watching eyes, he almost didn't notice the distinct thud thud thud, of human feet on the metal behind him. He turned his head sharply making the deltas shy away instinctively and the betas to glare at him with some trepidation.


He shouldn't have been surprised when The Commander smiled at him from a few rows back. If Krill had thought a contingent of four deltas was flattering on his person, the human had amassed an entire squad of them. Surrounded on all sides very nervous eyes, and hopefully, steady trigger fingers.


"How in the hell did you manage to get here." He said over the heads of his captors, incredulous.


The human shrugged at him, "Oh you know, used my ever present charm to talk my way onto the ship like a civilized person."


"Well that's an oxymoron if I ever heard one."


He was dragged away before he could say anything else. Tough his presence hadn't caught the eye of the other Vrul, the presence of a human sure had. It had been a long time since a human last set foot in the city. The last person that had come was the Commander himself, when he was still an unknown player.


He had saved a child from drowning.


Once upon a time the humans had stirred and entire city of the least curious species into curiosity, but years and years of rumors, stories, and intergalactic propaganda had fanned the fire of their fears, and made something which was once so curious into something that was no more than a vicious rumors and a midnight creature.


They caught many expressions of wary apprehensions as they walked past escorted down the way and past the hatching factories, and the deltas going about their business urged on by their beta masters. Vapid and tireless kappas lined the streets with their menial tasks going on as they always had with precision and perfection only to be stopped by the glimpse of the human.


They walked on making their way past lines and lines of residence halls, over one small sector of the city before the thoroughfare opened up before them to reveal a wide white building with a spiraling tower that reached towards the sky. It was honestly the only ostentatious thing in the entier city, and they made the excuse that it was only logical to make the center of government the most obvious thing in the city. It was a symbol of power and control to those down below, and should be looed up at on all occasions to remind everyone what they were working so hard to achieve.


Krill bet you could see over the wall from the very top, where the glass windows allowed in great streams of light to bathe the council in glorious nutrition from their sun.


While the workers down below fought for the light at various times of day.


They were escorted onto the first floor of the tower, and that is where the human was led away escorted by his platoon looking over his shoulder at krill who was led towards a tall shaft at the center of the room. Those around him inflated their hydrogen sacks and he did the same, and together, with the help of a light towing cable, they were dragged up many floors to the tower, and into a brightly lit antechamber with big glass windows on one half of the circular room.


He had been right before, you could see over the walls and out onto the vast expanse of orange plant file that covered everything from horizon to horizon. He saw a flock of something out there, but couldn't have said what it was. He thought he even saw the silhouette of something very tall and very slender pass over the horizon, but if vanished before he could get a better look.


"The council will see you now." A beta assistant said, ushering him through the doors and into the waiting room.


It was large and circular raised over the antechamber by a few feet to give the room a 360 degree view of the city and the surrounding landscape. From here the workers and the Vrul below were nothing more than earth ants scuttling about their dirt pile.


Around the room, the council floated in their places at the perfect distance from each other. They came in most of the expected colors for a Vrul, brown almost black, and grey both light and dark, one of them was so light it might have been mistaken for white if seen in a dark room, with nothing as comparison.


All of them were alphas, that was easy to tell, the best in stock of their species, perfectly formed, extremely keen, and unerringly arrogant. He had figured that last one out by himself, mostly with some self introspection and a couple of loud-mouth humans pointing it out. It was kind of the hallmark of being an alpha, thinking that you are better than anything else and knowing that it was probably true.


Of course, the real issue came when you were thrown into a world where intelligence and personality wasn't so straight forward. A human that you, at first, might have thought was an idiot, could come back a second later and best you in a game of wit without so much as raising a finger, and going around to announce how great you were, was suddenly less appealing of an option.


They stared at him with silent impunity.


There were a few more there as well, one he recognized as the psychologist who had looked over his case, as well as the ship's captain and a few other experts. He didn't now them, judging by the look of them many were young. The average Vrul didn't make it very long before the council deemed their productive output to be lacking.


If this was earth, that fact might just warrant a protest.


"Doctor Krill, Alpha of the undefined levels, step forward to face the council." he did as requested, though ever fiber in his body had to resist the urge to snark at them.


"We have been monitoring your behavior for a while now, and we are displeased to say that we have not liked what we have seen."


Krill remained rather silent.


"We had hoped when you were born, that you might prove to be of more use to the populace than you ended up being. You were very promising. Never had we seen a Vr With such advanced aptitude scores as you. You broke our testing systems and played about them like they were no more than simple riddles. Ou were originally intended for government? Do you remember that?"


'My memory of those days is ... fuzzy at best."


"A vrul always has their path chosen for them . We do not get to decide what we become, because it is not in our best judgement to make that decision when we cannot see the whole picture. Even as a grub you were particularly headstrong and difficult. The day that you were to begin your training with the political assemblage, you vanished, only to find you hours later wide and and fawning at the medical academy. By the tie it happened the damage had been done, one of our best minds lost to a scientific iled instead of the political one that kept us all safe.


Krill remained very silent, he had not heard this story before.


He hardly remembered any of this.


""There were some who suggested terminating you on the spot from deviating against your original course, but with your potential we could not let that stand.... Another student was removed from your place, so that we could maintain the controlled population plan that we had original set out to keep."
Krill's insides went cold. Once upon a time a revelation like that would not have surprised him, but after living with the humans for so long, soaking up their ideals, it was different to think any other way. Someone had been terminated for a rash decision he had made so long ago.


He had always fancied himself to be a level-headed rational being, but it seemed that that was not the case. He had just been comparing himself to humans.


"We watched you flourish in the medical career, and it seemed, for a time, that you would fulfill a purpose. You brought new techniques to the table, and more lives were saved, but then the medical field proved not to be enough for you. All of a sudden we are getting questions challenging the way things have been done for thousands of years. Why don't we try this, why don't we try that. Why does it matter how many resources we use. Then you become the first Vrul to insist they are transferred off-world. Even then! We could stand it, despite your illegal forrays into journal publishing and development of new techniques."


Outside the sun had curved down over the far side of the room throwing light across the floor.


"And then the humans came along, and what do you do, you up and quit your position without any prior warning, without speaking to the council, and you sign off with a human ship as a human doctor. The last hundred cycles you have spent with them making absolutely no contribution to our society. In act you have proven to be a great drain on the council, and your personal behavior has caused a stir among the general populace. Maybe this all would have gone away had you not made yourself so public, but instead you go galavanting around with the one creature in the entire galaxy that has everyone's eyes trained on him."


Krill watched the floor as their shadows crept towards him


"Your psychological tests have shown an extreme deviation from normality, and your behavior is so excessively individualistic that you have proven no interest for the furtherment of your species..... What have you to say to yourself."


"You're wrong."


"What did you say."


"I said you're wrong."


"And what proof do you have of this."


Kril Moved to open his mouth and retort, but a shocked gasp from around the room cut him off.


"He has me.

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