Batman did not look up from the screens of the computer in the Batcave. “You didn’t say you were going to be in town,” he said, still typing.
“Oracle said you were out of state for work the last few days,” Nightwing said, leaning against the desk once he was close enough. As the desk was massive, this was still a significant distance from Batman. “You didn’t call me in.”
“She shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he said, still typing. Different windows were popping up onto different screens, databases and tables and terminal commands. “You have enough to worry about.”
“I can still cover a night shift or two.”
“It was handled.”
Nightwing made a sound both thoughtful and suspicious. “So,” he said, “someone stole the Batmobile.”
Batman paused. He turned his head just enough to see the Batmobile, parked exactly where he’d left it. He turned his head the other way, just enough to look at Nightwing for the first time. He’d started sitting on the desk, his toes only barely able to brush the ground.
“Not ours,” Nightwing clarified.
“Is there another one.”
“That Netflix show,” he said, and Batman did an almost-nod of acknowledgement before returning his attention back to whatever script he was running. “They had a big reveal of a new Batmobile this season, they auctioned off the old one for charity. I’m sure you heard about it.”
“What they do with their show isn’t my business,” Batman said.
“Uh-huh,” Nightwing said. “You really didn’t see any of this in the news? It’s been pretty nonstop since last night.”
“I was working.”
Nightwing put his hands on the edge of the desk, and kicked his feet upward to do a handstand apropos of nothing. “Too hard to see any news, all day.”
“I may have seen something about it,” Batman conceded.
“I’m sure you have theories about who did it.”
“It’s outside our jurisdiction.”
“Your business trip was in…” Nightwing asked, swinging off the table to stand.
“Jacksonville.”
“Did you pick that to help you get in character as Florida Man?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I want to know where you found a pink Batman costume in that size,” Nightwing continued.
“I didn’t.”
“The pictures are–I’m having them framed, I hope you know that.”
Batman’s mouth twitched.
“I’m so mad you didn’t call me,” Nightwing said, leaning against the desk again. “I know this place that sells rainbow Robin costumes with hotpants and a crop top–”
“Absolutely not.”
Kitty what the fuck, I knew you were writing this and that news article looked so real that I actually thought I was reading an article for about ten seconds
i comforted myself with the thought that in the future it will be a lot easier to make fake gotham gazette articles
It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.
I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.
How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?
Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.
HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN
YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.
A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT
humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.
REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.
WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE
WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY
THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.
HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS
WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.
HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE
OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD
More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness – but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.
(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)
Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:
Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you – and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.
Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.
We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty – humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits – but they’re highly functional.
Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves – and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.
In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.
Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place.
We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps.
And by god, we will eat anything.
We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food.
We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin.
We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live.
We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out
We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground.
Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places.
We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights
We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them.
On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet.
Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us
We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!
On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.
Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.
Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.
Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow.
The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.
Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.
We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it.
Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel.
They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”
It would be interesting to meet a species with fewer senses than humans have. Aliens who cannot see or hear would view our ability to do so like we would look at telepathy or precognition.
They compensate for their own lack of natural camouflage by TERRAFORMING THEIR ENVIRONMENT TO MATCH THEIR NEEDS
They are HIGHLY RESISTANT to temperature change.
They PUT METAL AND INK IN THEIR HIDES FOR FUN
They are SO SECURE in their position as predator over prey that they have developed and wear an array of decorative and protective wear in colors so bright that it challenges any other species to just /try/ to mess with them. However, they have also developed highly effective materials that both swallow light and completely divert it, effectively creating invisibility, as well as perfect camouflage for everything from deserts to tundra to water to forest to jungle.
THEY SEND HUNDREDS OF LOUD EXPLOSIVES INTO THE AIR BECAUSE THEY LIKE THE PRETTY COLORS
They have managed to harness ENERGY ITSELF to heal themselves.
They as a species can climb sheer rock surfaces and trees, AND walk and run (Even those that have lost their limbs being able to attach prosthetics or use contraptions to get around) AND THEY SWIM AND FLY AND GO IN SPACE AND THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM THEM????
They are so persistent and patient as to carve into rocks for massive amounts of time in the name of preservation of history, and have elevated it to an art form.
Mermaids as fun drinks!!! 😀 I’m going to be selling these designs tomorrow todayshhdontjudgemeandmypoorsleephabits as stickers at an event at my college. Would have made more but ran out of time ;w;
Oh geez, this isn’t half the story. Buckle up kids. This is wild.
The inventor is Paul Winchell, who started off doing Dummy shows on the radio. His star rises, TV happens, and he enters a dancing contest where he WON AGAINST RICARDO MONTALBALN.
Mr. Montalbaln was SO IMPRESSED that he invited Paul Winchell to dinner. At dinner he was seated next to A PRE FAME DR HEIMLICH.
YES. OF THE HEIMLICH MANEUVER.
They hit it off and somehow Paul Winchell is invited to watch Heimlich and others do operations.
AGAIN, HE’S A VENTRILOQUIST AND A HOST OF THINGS. I DON’T KNOW HOW HE WON THE DANCE CONTEST THAT STARTED THIS THING.
Which leads to the following conversation.
Winchell: Hey, what if someone invented an artificial heart so someone can get blood pumped during surgery.
Heimlich: That would be a swell idea.
W: So, uh, as I make my own dummies, a heart can’t be too different.
H: I guess? It’s worth a shot.
W: And as I don’t know anything about, well, how hearts work. Can you answer any questions and help out to make sure it’s all correct?
H: I’d be delighted!
Cue a LONG time working on this. And while Winchell EVENTUALLY gets it patent-worthy (at Hemlich’s suggestion) it can’t actually, well, work. The battery it takes to run it was too large and burnt out easily.
But all modern artifical hearts are based on that design.
Again, this started when a VENTRILOQUIST BEAT AN ACCOMPLISHED DANCER IN A DANCE CONTEST.
(Paul Winchell has several other patents including: a disposable razor, a plasma defroster, and did a lot of work for the Leukemia Foundation and the red cross. He also did attempt to get a medical degree later and did some medical hypnosis)