The People Zoo #3

Hello, can you please do a part 3 of the human zoo? I'd like to read about the aliens attempting to train the MC for entertainment/business profits.

“Maybe it doesn’t like the chocolate?” one of the aliens were saying.

“I thought all humans loved chocolate!”

“Well, it’s not that it’s lonely,” said the other, with one of those strange clicking sounds that the translator couldn’t interpret. “It seems to be bonding with the female of the species fine. And I think it's getting enough sleep?”

“Maybe it’s obstinate. Or lazy. Or stupid.”

The two of them eyed the protagonist, from the other side of the glass.

It was day three of training, and so far, the protagonist would definitely have described themselves as determined, perhaps, over anything else.

The aliens, to their limited credit, were not going about their training in a particularly cruel manner. It was closer to how one might try and train a puppy to do tricks like sit, roll over and ‘paw’. Except, the aliens were trying to get the protagonist to do ‘sit’, ‘say hello’ and ‘dance’. For starters. On offer for getting the trick right was chocolate (or some alien thing designed to mimic chocolate, anyway).

Emily said that the aliens had all sorts of routines and ideas for the shows they did with her, with dance being a successful one. A bit like how one might go to a dolphin show and be delighted when the creature jumped through a hoop or balanced a ball on its nose.

Except that the protagonist wasn’t a damn tricky pony, and the sooner the aliens got that through their heads, the better.

“If you don’t do it,” Emily had tried to tell them, “They’re going to start making you perform for actual food. It will be the only time you get any. It’s just not worth it. It’s not – they don’t treat us badly, if you don’t give them a reason to. This really is more like a zoo than like, a freakshow. They want to prod you with sticks.”

Except it was worth it. The protagonist eyed the aliens back through the glass, jaw clenched, fingers flexing at their sides.

The protagonist had tried doing the exact opposite of what the aliens told them to do, to make it clear that they did understand the commands and so maybe there could be a proper and equal conversation between their species, but so far the aliens had figured that they understood but had no desire for the proper and equal conversation part. Queue, obstinate and lazy puppy, rather than the dog that would like a little damn respect please.

Really, given the fact that their species looked so uncannily similar in many ways, the protagonist would have thought the leap to ‘hey, maybe the human is an intelligent species!’ wouldn’t have been so seemingly difficult.

“Do you think it’s time to get the expert in?”

The aliens talked about the expert in hushed whispers. They were an alien who knew all about humans, apparently. Which, even more horrifically, implied that theirs was not the only people zoo in the grand terror of the cosmos.

Apparently, the human expert still didn’t realise that humans were not to be kept in cages for entertainment value and conservation, so how much of an expert could they really be?

Emily, apparently, hadn’t met them before – but then, perhaps it was harder to be defiant when you were alone, terrified and confused as to what any of the aliens were actually saying, and didn’t have their patronising bullshit to make you angry.

The human expert turned up on their second week.

The human’s previous ‘trainers’ usually stayed scientifically and neatly behind their wall of glass, bonding in ‘careful measures’ when the protagonist showed little tendency to being sweet and domesticated. Feral, they said. Wild. Maybe they got a bad human egg? Maybe – the translator cut off some of it.

The human expert announced themselves by walking straight into the training room. They were humanoid too, as with the alien species that had taken them and seemed to be running the zoo, and appeared male (broadly speaking).

The protagonist about had time to pivot towards the door before the new alien, before the ‘expert’ was on them. Their fingers closed impossibly strong around the protagonist’s throat, driving them back and slamming their hard against the glass.

The aliens behind the glass gave shocked little cries, that sounded just a little thrilled, like watching the juicy gossip of a scandal.

You have to be firm with them. They’ve got a very savage, hierarchical sort of culture, so you have to let them know who the boss is or they get confused and start acting out.

The words of the bounty hunter’s that the protagonist had first met came to back to them with a flash, just as their eyes locked with those of ‘the human expert’.

Like most of the predominant alien species that the protagonist had encountered thus far, the human expert’s eyes were a vivid poison green. Luminous. Acidic. The type of shade that in a cartoon would be in a big toxic vat marked with a skull and cross bones.

The human’s hand shot up, clawing at the human expert’s fingers.

The human expert tilted their head, (his head?), considering the protagonist as if the protagonist’s struggles were pretty much nothing at all. Then they pressed their lips to the human’s ear, speaking quietly, where none of the many recording devices could hear them.

“Judging by the rather desperate reports I’ve received, you can actually understand me,” the human expert said. “Go still if you understand.”

The human went still, just – just in case. Maybe. Maybe they’d be lucky and this one would get it? Maybe they’d even be able to get home?

“Good,” the human expert purred. “Then you’ll understand me that when I tell you that if you don’t behave for me, I’m going to make your short existence hell. And they don’t even know your species well enough to know the difference. I could tell them anything about what you want and human behaviour, and they'd believe me.”

The protagonist swallowed.

“These idiots don’t understand humans,” the human expert whispered. “They find them fascinating. Want to know what makes them tick. Don’t want to hurt you. But they don’t get you. But me?” Their teeth – sharper than a human’s, grazed against the protagonist’s throat. When they next spoke, the translator didn’t need to translate anything, because it was human.. “I know exactly what to do with you.”

The protagonist squeezed their eyes shut, just for a moment.

The human expert let go, pulling back, so their eyes met again. The protagonist was sure their own were wide.

“This is a mistake,” the protagonist said. “I want to go home. I’m not a pet.”

And the human expert smiled, some mimicry of how humans displayed emotion.

The human glared back, squaring their shoulders.

“You’re more far from home than you can possibly comprehend, human.” They made the gesture that, in the alien language, meant ‘sit the hell down now’, and they were speaking in the alien tongue again “You will be.”