The previous chapter Man in Space, Event 1: Journey to Voros can be accessed here
“Is the male human?” Manning asked and I smiled.
Although I had seen the pictures of Vorians before my travel there. I was still surprised. The dubious nature of the planetary surface coupled with the excessive radiation therapy required for venturing into Voros meant that no earthling had set foot on Voros in the last 30 years. All communication and trade was done through robots. Inter planetary transmissions was not yet possible. Communication was mostly through space shi[ps. This gave me the dubious distinction of being the first earthling to see a Vorian for the first time in nearly thirty years.
Anatomically the being looking at me was a human. He had 2 hands, 2 legs and one feet. Not that I knew how to differentiate other alien species. Man has never encountered another species in the last 150 years of interplanetary space travel. I was able to identify him as a male because he wore the distinctive insignia denoting his sex on his forehead. This was famous around 30-50 years ago right around the time Voros was founded. I remember seeing old pictures of my grandparents and parents wearing similar regalia.
He had a more toughed look about his skin, just like a rhino which you could view in the zoo reserves. His nose was almost non-existent and it was connected to a thin translucent tube which trailed down to a cylindrical box connected to his hip.Otherwise, he looked similar to a human being.
As I was absorbing all this in, the being came towards me with it’s hand out-stretched and Manning in a reverse motion came in front of me and a Vorian. “Intruder alert!” he wheezed out, adopting an attack stance. The Vorian’s robot did the same. It was then it dawned on me whilst the data banks of the Vorian robot’s would have been filled with how an earthling looks like But I hadn’t uploaded the Vorian data schema into Manning’s data banks, for he was an earth robot built for earthly duties. Calling back Manning and commanding him to move into a suspended state I cursed myself and struggled to explain it’s actions.
Waving back my struggles, the Vorian extended his hand and introduced himself as Dexle Syout, Senior Aide to Voro’s President. After introducing myself and apologizing for and explaining Manning’s behavior, I took him to the meeting bay which also doubled as a pilot’s room.
After asking him to take a seat whilst his robot stood motionless near the door, I offered Dexle water and some puffed rice, the new universal tradition of welcome. Dexle took in the water through a straw he had in his cylindrical pouch which also connected to his nose and looked at me.
“Why?”, I asked. “Why do you use a straw for drinking water and why do you have a tube running into your nose?”
He looked at me with his dark blue eyes perched right below his wide forehead, he spoke, “ Although it is highly irregular to comment on a person’s Camola ( that’s what the cylindrical device is called) being a non-Vorian I can forgive this transgression. Over the course of the next three weeks, I will educate you on the different Vorian customs, which we expect you to share with the MPPA.”
“Now coming to your query, Voros is a class B planet and it did not make sense for us Vorians to do Dna Rewriting only for the radiation but use cumbersome oxygen masks whenever we move into the surface. So in addition to roughening our skins to protect us from the radiation, we re-wrote our DNA to breathe in Voro’s atmosphere which although is not completely successful for all of us it has allowed us to get rid of cumbersome respiratory equipment. Also, these changes allow us to eat food grown on native soil rather than relying on soil imported from Class A worlds. This means that although I could tolerate the nitrogen oxygen gas mixture inside your spaceship I couldn’t live long and that’s the reason I use my Camola.”
“Because DNA rewriting is still a hit and miss science each one of our DNAs are slightly different. This means that each one us have a Camola created to our specific DNA sequence and assigned to us on our birthday. This allows us to Drink and breathe in Voros and Earth like environments. We postulate that in our future the Camola will be no bigger than a pill implanted onto a person’s nose.”
“But,” I replied, “ None of this information is present in MPPA’s planet directory. Also the MPPA’s ( Multi Planetary Peace Agency) charter does not allow for this level of DNA rewriting. How did you do it?”
“That’s precisely why I wanted to talk to you before the delegation meeting. We want to add one more item to the meeting’s agenda” replied Dexle.
Wondering how the already complex talk of converting Voro’s colony status to planet is going to be sabotaged by the revelations just shared, I warily asked Dexle, “ What kind of changes do you propose?”
Dexle calmly replied, “ We wish to change the definition of what it means to be human” and my jaw dropped.
