Oh, Sugar

What is Xenotechnology? The unique application of scientific knowledge by the various non-human species. While physical laws may be universal, the understanding and application of those laws to meet the needs and express the cultures of extraterrestrial species has resulted in different technological paths from those of humans on Earth. This exhibit displays numerous examples of the different technologies of the Exodus. Remember, it isn't that xenotechnology is superior or inferior to human technology, just a different expression of knowledge to meet the unique needs of other species and environments.
—Seacouver Museum of Science and Technology Pamphlet, April 2055

Mel rode with Molly in the Protoss. He wasn't sure whether to bring up his conversation with her mother. The content might upset her. On the other hand, he'd promised to be honest with her. As they pulled into the parking lot, Mel decided that if Molly asked, he'd tell her, but he wouldn't just volunteer the information. Same as anything else in his private life.

The Seacouver Museum of Science and Technology, Mel thought, was designed by the same person who had put the Cosmic Fill-Up together, only with a bigger budget and access to lots of glass and concrete. Great grey shells rose high in the air in great rain-streaked curves, the inner ones made of reinforced glass panes in a concrete spiderweb. There were no right angles, and Mel had been told, though he had never seen it, that from above it looked like a great eye open and staring accusingly at the sky. Something that would have been a matte painting in an old sci-fi movie, rendered into cold reality.

Mel had been here exactly once, on a school field trip, when the main feature exhibit had been about paleontology. They had given each of them a pair of smart glasses and let them go off on self-guided tours. While most of the kids had headed straight for the dinosaurs, playing with the augmented reality settings to clothe the bare bone exhibits with muscles, scales, and feathers, he had spent most of two hours wandering through a smaller hall dedicated to recent discoveries regarding the Cambrian Explosion, the sudden eruption of complex life on Earth over five hundred million years ago.

He remembered the trilobites, especially. Mel had stared at the display of various trilobite reconstructions over time, and felt a kind of sadness that he hadn't experienced before. The sense of knowing that he would never be able to see a live trilobite, that there were things he would never be able to experience ever in his life. Millions of years separated him from the little crustacean-like critters, and they would never, ever overlap.

It wasn't until later, on the bus ride home, that Mel realized that was how he felt about his parents.

Lucie paid their entry. A genuine smile on Mel's face as he slid on the smart glasses, fixing an earpiece in his left ear. Over the cold displays, augmented reality signs and features popped up. Self-guided tours, video clips, additional information available at a glance. Molly grabbed his hand and tugged him towards the main hall, with its new display: XENOTECHNOLOGY.

Mel was expecting—he didn't know what. Glowing crystals. Antigravity. Living biosuits. Metals forged in the heart of dying stars.

The first display was a selection of kitchen utensils designed for beings with non-human hands. A video showed a brain bat manipulating what looked like a spherical wok in zero gravity, using multiple arms to adjust the temperature and shift the frying foodstuffs around, using little ports in the bowl to access the contents without them flying off and clogging a filter. Lucie hovered nearby Mel and Molly, who hadn't let go of Mel's hand, as they moved from display to display.

What Mel learned, over the next hour and a half, was that his definition of technology was too narrow. For many species, biomechanics and sensory input determined different ways of doing things. For every slab of semiconductors grown organically using specialized bacterial cultures, or crystals spun in zero-gravity, there was a multi-species toilet that had to handle liquid and solid waste of different acidity, or a different way of making a book to suit creatures that had different manipulators.

Some things were relatively common; pretty much everybody that had discovered written language had some sort of scrolls and books, using whatever materials were available. Very few technological advancements were unique to a particular species or culture, but not every species adopted everything their neighbors did. Etherlings apparently needed special three-lobed earpieces, and didn't like a lot of music from binaural species because it gave them a headache. K'lur'k understood the basic concept of scissors, but preferred handheld cutters that involved small bladed wheels out of cultural familiarity.

Molly seemed particularly enthused by the liquid circuitry of the Alabi, and the ancient shared communications protocols that represented the complex underlayer of the extraterrestrial version of the internet.

"It's like, they all developed their own standards—voltage, frequency, programming languages," Molly said. "But at some point, someone managed to work out a common protocol, and it was adopted so widely that other species adopted it when they came in contact with galactic civilization. We're going to have to adapt to it too, at least in some form."

Her eyes were wide, and Mel got the distinct impression that she was getting more out of this than he was. Lucie smiled to see Molly enjoying herself, but said little, walking among the displays, keeping what Mel assumed was a respectful distance from him.

The last display was the big one. All three of them stared up at the massive sight of a hyperdrive hanging from the ceiling. The device was the size of an adult blue whale, and it was everything Mel had expected to see here. Enigmatic. Smooth lines, yet definitely artificial. Utterly, incomprehensibly alien.

"The key to faster-than-light travel," Molly said breathlessly, her dark eyes wide behind her glasses. "Although from what I understand of the physics involved, they're really just changing the local laws of physics so that the speed of light is higher, which means from their local reference they're going really fast but not increasing mass or experiencing the same relativistic time dilation. Outside of a gravity well, they can cover a light-year in about six to eight months. Can you imagine that? Alpha Centauri is only 4.24 light-years away!"

Her eyes looked past the drive and straight out into distant stars that humans might, someday, visit.

"I need to use the ladies' room," Lucie said with a smile. "Be back in a minute."

Mel stood there, suddenly aware of how sweaty his palm was in Molly's hand. She looked away from the drive and watched her mother disappear, then looked at Mel.

"What's with you and ma mère!?" she said softly. "You've been acting weird all afternoon!"

His shoulders crept up, head sinking down on his neck. Even though he was taller than Molly, the force of her stare made her seem bigger than him. Mel wiped his free hand on his jeans, suddenly and painfully aware that he couldn't lie to her.

"Your mom came to see me before you arrived at the Cosmic Fill-Up," he said. "She wanted to apologize for yesterday. About, um. She hadn't been completely forthcoming about her relationship with my parents. Apparently she wanted to have another kid. A sibling for you to grow up with. Someone with the same genes. My dad had agreed, but my mom was . . . she wasn't as cool with it."

Molly frowned.

"There's something you're not telling me," she said.

His pulse spiked. Mel felt a raw trepidation unlike last night's group sex. He wondered if that was because he was confident he could perform sexually, but this could ruin his actual relationship with his sister.

"She isn't getting younger," he said, "and, um, she thought I might . . . help."

Molly's frown deepened. Her brow furrowed. It was a perfect mask of incomprehension.

"Help how? How would you get . . . ma mère . . . enceinte . . ." Molly said, and Mel saw his sister's brow unfurrow, her eyes go wide, as she put the pieces together. "Oh, sugar. What did you tell her?"

"I, uh, told her I was in a relationship," Mel said. "But I didn't get a chance to tell her no. Yet. You arrived just as we were, I mean, she hasn't directly asked yet, but it's . . ."

Molly sucked in her lips, and her eyes behind the smart glasses looked suddenly watery, as if she was going to cry. Mel shivered. He really did not want his sister to cry.

At that moment, Lucie emerged from the bathroom, rubbing hand sanitizer into her brown skin.

"Let's hit the gift shop," she said with a smile. "My treat."

Molly didn't let Mel go as the trio moved to the gift shop. There were small mechanical and electronic toys of the edutainment variety. Some of the more expensive items were held in glass cases, genuine examples of K'lur'k cutters, Alabi writing tablets which used crystal memory paper, small Murker puzzles made from meteoric iron and which looked like they needed three hands to solve.

Mel found his gaze drawn to a rack of books. The lowest shelves were kids' books, but the middle and upper shelves had more grown-up books on the history of science and technology. He picked one off the shelf with the title Xenobiomechanics, and found it was an illustrated work on how the anatomy of various extraterrestrial species influenced their clothing and tool use.

His sister noticed. "You want that? You should get it."

Mel glanced at the price and frowned. It cost as much as Rachel's morning-after pill.

"I really shouldn't," he said. Yet Molly wouldn't let him put it back on the shelf. She hauled Mel and the book up to the counter, where Lucie waited. The older woman smiled, and the clerk behind the counter—a Great Horned brain slug host, Mel noticed, probably a member of the Collective—scanned the book, and Lucie placed her hand over the charge plate, fingers not really touching. The book was bagged, and Mel accepted it with a shy "thank you."

They deposited the smart glasses back at the front desk, and Mel stepped out into the dying of the day, glad for the breeze that had picked up.

"Where are we going for dinner?" Lucie asked.

"I should probably get home," Mel said. "My, ah, roommates will be worried about me. And we need to do laundry tonight."

"Oh yes, excellent," Lucie said with a smile. "I've been wanting to see where you live."

Mel felt that knot again in his stomach. This was not something he had planned on.

"Sure," Molly said, then she tugged her brother back toward the Protoss. "Follow me."

Fuck my life, Mel thought, not for the first or last time.