Challenge #00470 - A095: Not Dangerous

T’reka’s work on Toxic Island was to look for potential new compounds or cures in the dangers of the jungle, but humans have been working with flora and fauna of those levels of toxicity and higher for centuries, including some of the species only encountered by the other cogniscients on Toxic Island since they seeded from Earth

It follows that a) humans have already discovered medical applications using these things

b) humans are probably going to have a lot easier time working with new “highly toxic” substances than most other cogniscients

Medical science might take a bit of a speed boost once they arrive.

or they might set everything back years while everything has to get tested on non-insane species, I mean humans still do that organ transplant thing without batting an eye.

This was accelerating too quickly for T'reka’s liking. The humans built things far too rapidly for her dazed mind to handle. They installed a functional door for her village Hide Unit literally overnight and supplied her with a ‘welcome basket’ of alarmingly accurate favourite foods.

Including cricket fritters.

The Co-operative Research Institute sprang up in a matter of days, using the mid-path sky-raker tree as a base. Stairs wound around the massive trunk and a perplexingly-named 'elevator’ took those unwilling or unable to climb up to the lower branches.

What surprised T'reka the most was the engineering. Humans were capable of taking a basic concept like the construction of her tree-borne domicile unit, mix it liberally with their own knowledge, and produce the increasingly-massive structure with harm to neither tree, wildlife, or any assisting Numidid. They were a shockingly adaptive species.

The smaller children were the best at picking up Ulu, and even the adults learned how to swear in it relatively fluently. There were some words or phrases that came out mangled, of course. T'reka had similar trouble with some human words and phrases. Forgiveness on both sides was vital.

T'reka found herself holding the adaptive classes for the medical technicians who were bold enough to venture out to Toxic Island. Trying to teach them how to be open-minded and adaptive enough to work with an assumed-dangerous species on potential medical breakthroughs. Lessons that included lies-to-children levels of walking the medics through the increasingly bizarre things that humans did to heal each other.

“They cut open their companions?”

“First, they assure that the companion is sleeping and unaware,” repeated T'reka. “Then they cut. I have survived a similar procedure when they set my leg.”

“Set?”

“Humans break bones and live to tell the tale,” she said. “The process called 'setting a bone’ is that of aligning the broken pieces so that they heal relatively straight.” Of course, she offered her healed leg for inspection. The scar from the original injury was still visible, but the work from their 'surgery’ was almost imperceptible. Those bold enough to feel her leg would detect the subtle lump where the bone had mended itself.

T'reka bought up the surviving documentation of the event. “In a way, I was lucky the humans were prepared. Seconds after the injury, Su-syn injected the injury site with an anaesthetic chemical, and administered other medicines to prevent me from going into fatal shock. She kept me warm with her body and rushed me to their medical facilities. I am told, after I arrived, they administered full anaesthesia and worked their hardest to ensure I survived.” A wan smile. “I do not remember much after the rushing.”

One of the more observant students pointed to the files visible on the main screen. “The humans let you access video footage of their… O-pir-a-shon?”

“Yes. I find it personally disturbing. I have made this file public access with suitable warnings for the content. The humans do far more on each other. Cutting out cancerous tumours, tailoring their skins, and…” she had to swallow and breathe to stop herself from retching. “Organ transplants.”

“Pardons, learned teacher, but those last two words make it sound like they swap around their internal organs like a mechanic would switch out engine parts.”

“Almost. They print a frame for a replacement organ and grow the remainder in laboratory conditions, then they take out the old, defective organ and replace it with the newer model. All under anaesthesia, of course.”

Gasps and murmurs and -yes- some hoots of alarm. T'reka let them settle their feathers before the next truth bomb.

“In their ancient history, they used dead humans for those replacement parts.”

Three fainted.

T'reka let the others assist in their revival. How would they react when she got on to subjects like 'caesarians’ or 'chemotherapy’?

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