I'm absolutely going out of my squawking mind right now.
Confusingly, humans seem not record their own species' famous quotes very well. I'm presently in an argument with my roommate Ace, who is misremembering the literature lecture slides. I happen to have an exact copy of each in my integrated digital archive, and it clearly says the Germanic-origin of the phrase values blood over water, some sources will say the blood of the covenant, I think that's a bible-specific thing? One of those books. I know it's a rabbit's foot if you attribute the wrong myth to the wrong fairy-tale book. Humans take their personal metaphysics very seriously, they should focus on regular physics a little more. Ace does! That's why we get along so well, like Sodom and Gomorrah!
Ace has to go home to California for a few weeks, which will leave me all by myself with nothing but the ever-intrusive grad students from the paleontology program as company. I'm not even from this planet, I don't know what it is they think they'll learn about their homeworld's dinosaurids, we Cambrians clearly diverged from that timeline when we were sparred a direct collision with an Asteroid a few hundred million years ago. Oh right, Ace has turned around because I'm thinking about what I want to say too much. I clear my throat and poke my head over his shoulder. Kind of like one of the small birds they keep as pets.
"Ace, it's the blood of friendship is thicker than the water of the womb, were you raised in a barn!?"
"Don't you mean, do you live under a rock, or at least dropped on your head, REP? Being raised in a barn implies I have poor etiquette, and unlike you, I can sit up straight and know which fork is for the Salad, and which is for the Desert." Ace repudiates me, turning to fiddle with that confounded phonebook of theirs.
I'm pretty sure their threat posture and tone suggests I've messed up another one of their kind's undocumented customs, again. We get in arguments about the meanings of words a lot. You'd think we were acting out a 'married couple' routine, but really our conversational dynamic has been this way since we met during last semester. As far as roommates go, Ace is fine enough, they were the only one who wasn't a creepy paleontology major, and was willing to room with a Cambrian diplomatic exchange student.
"Well, pardon my French, but you said it wrong; the slide clearly tied Blood to Friendship and Water to Lineage."
"Oh my- PARDON MY FRENCH IS WHEN YOU'RE ABOUT TO- wait slide, like from class? Do you have a photographic memory or something?"
"What? No, I just record my lectures and pull them up for reference, my working memory isn't very good. Faulty RAM, you know."
"Sorry you pull them up, with... what? How? When did you even record them, all you do is draw in your notebook during class!"
"You don't have implants for that? I'd have thought humans at your Socioeconomic income bracket would have at least a few cybernetics installed."
"I don't... WHAT!?"
Apparently humans don't come equipped with on-demand visualization projectors, either, so my already hard-to-swallow Scales and Feathers visage is even more alien to them. Worse, now Ace wants me to take their notes too! I mean I can, but apparently they can't access them unless I tap into the school's intranet and put the files onto their drive. Last time I did that I got in trouble for 'hacking', which is stupid because I didn't cut anything, it's just data and I put my data in there too, all nice and neat just like they did. They make it sound like I violated some kind of boundary, so I'll just try to use this 'email' system instead, which is clunky and doesn't even have proper plug-ins for cranial interfacing, so I have to tap out my keystrokes manually.
"Are you uh... stimming?", Ace is interrupting my plane of thought, and it just pulled into the port on calm seas!
"What like, Dextroamphetamine? I know you humans like treating brain-altering substances as a form of recreation, but Cambrians are much more careful with medication. But yes, the synthetic medication I have does have stimulant qualities, why do you ask?"
Ace shakes their head. I guess it's because the question isn't about pharmaceuticals.
"It's because REP uh, you're sort of just flapping your arms and tapping at the air. Like, that's an Autism thing, you said Cambrians have disorders like human Autism, right?"
"Oh uh. No I was just typing out a Hip and with it Email, y'know, Skyping!"
Ace has their head in their hands. I think it's uh, Cringe, that's the lingo.
"REP, two things: One, Email is not Skype, and no one uses Skype anymore! Two, do you have like, a QWERTY keyboard you're seeing or something? Like, can you see me while you're doing an email?"
"Yeah I can multitask, long as I'm not thinking too loudly. Still kinda stunned you don't have any implants, like you all have pretty advanced computers? But everyone uses these tiny little touch-screens that are supposed to be for voice chat."
Oh that's my Calendar! It's now 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds, and 88 milliseconds until the Thanksgiving Break officially begins, so that means Ace should be getting into their car to drive back to California in about 16 hours.
"Oh wait- Ace! Maybe I should go with!"
Ace is visibly attempting to switch barrels so they can catch up with me, I'm fast like the Postal Service! ...and forgot to mention I was switching the topic.
"N-hang on, with me, to California, to see my weird anti-science parents!?"
"Yeah! It'd be great, we can work on our Exam Prep for Finals! It'll be a real good opportunity to learn about this weird social dynamic your progenitors seem to have traumatized you with, and even better, thanks to that literature class I can correct their misgivings about Pan-Arabic literature history! A real home-in-one!"
"...it's... HOLE-in-one, REP. HOLE. Like golf- oh forget it. I'm already in hot water with them over ending up with you as my roommate, I'm sure pouring gasoline directly onto a trash fire will at least be fun."
"Well of course the water would be hot, it's being poured onto a fire- wait those are two separate analogies aren't they?"
"Metaphors, REP."
"Sorry. So you'll think about it? Hope you make up your mind quick, there's only 15 hours, 55 minutes and 49 seconds of time before you should depart so you can make it there by approximately 9:45pm Pacific Time."
"D...did you just google that?"
"Not right now, but last month when you said you had to go for a holiday, I got curious and plotted a route using GPS data I got from your phonebook."
"...Macbook. REP honey, you pulled that from the Apple Cloud, that's supposed to be hard to get into! How did you do that!? You said you suck at computers."
"I said I'm not designed to solve Computational Science equations, but apparently the college's computer guys think I'm hacking the mainframe and busting a move every time I submit my homework the way that I would do it back home. Idunno, you humans all seem to be pretty interface-impaired, I think I'm starting to get why."
"It's because none of us have cybernetics, REP. Apparently you're more graphics card than bird-brain."
"Uh, my architecture is based on a quantum-entangled neural network with a woven carbon nanotube mesh, please don't compare me to a phonebook! It's a big deal where I'm from to call someone defective! No one chooses to be manufactured, you know?"
"...Yeah. I think I get it, REP.", Ace excuses themselves, and uses their Phonebook to voice chat with their progenitors.
The call goes pretty well, I can hear the excitement in the exchange, maybe it won't be sunshine and rainbows- hang on no that's backwards. Rainbows and Sunshine, that's more alphabetical. We talk for a little more and the planet's axial tilt and rotation causes a change in the wavelength of the visible light spectrum, and that triggers the molecular clocks in Ace's Frontal Cortex to signal a release of brain-altering neurotransmitters. As has become normal for us after a long day of talking and science-ing, Ace rapidly shifts from conscious to unconcious at about the 3-o-clock hour, which leaves them ample time to catch a full two and a half REM cycles before we need to start traversing westward towards Cal-i-for-ni-ca-tio, hang on whoops that's an inappropriate song.
I'm sitting on my charging dock watching more compressed human media like usual, and Ace has fallen asleep with their face buried in my plumage. I could go AFK, but I think I like this platonic friend who cuddles situation. I wonder if my handler would care? I try out typing him an email too, and try as I might, I just can't get the stupid GUI to work without wiggling my arms around, it just doesn't read neuromodulated interfaces the way I would expect. At least now I'll get to see California! Maybe it'll be interesting. I probably should ask for permission because last time I went too far from the college it caused a whole 'international incident'. How was I supposed to know the general public of Tucson, Arizona wasn't informed that I was allowed to ambulate unattended!? Rude was that scraggly man who smelled like alcohol and methamphetamine.
Right, preparing for California Girls, who are unforgettable. To my embarrassment, I'm still figuring out the forks thing. Do Americans really use a European custom this antiquated? Oh no there's advice columns on how to set a table. Who eats SALAD!? I'm not a Triceratops, sheesh.
