Chapter 2 – Oh… Crap.
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Hey another big chapter of introduction stuff not the most exciting stuff but it's where we learn information so it's useful!

Starting today i'll try to upload a chapter a week, on wednesday 1800h CET ( 12pm NY time, 9am LA time) let me know if you don't like it (well if you're reading this). Or just choose a 2 combination of time & day in the poll at the end of the chapter :)

I also wrote the end (not the chapters between now and the end, just the end)

Thanks you and it's really fun to write i hope a few people like this story and finds it fun too!

Charlotte -.

Chapter 2: Oh… Crap.

Units, times, and language has been translated from Union Standard to Earth Standard

Aarin POV, A few months before the first chapter

TW: Abusive parents, traumas, transphobia

- “This mission is becoming very boring”, Aarin said to himself

Aarin was on his second year of the human observation mission, in the far Sol system, he was a xenobiologist, xenosociologist and more importantly a xenolinguist, Aarin was the first of the Union Science Program to fully understand the Earth Standard language and learn it enough to be fluent, so naturally he was chosen to be on the second maned observation mission after the famous discovery made a few union years ago, no more than a century ago he corrected himself, he must think in humans units.

Unfortunately the mission was really boring, the automated probes stationed in the system were really good at their job so he didn’t have a lot to do. The next refueling ship was excepted next month but he really was lonely. On a whim he decided to check on his latest… discovery.

See, his society does not have the concept of… gender it was a completely alien concept to them, so as a xenosociologist he was thrilled to study this specie, he knew humans were not ready for first contact yet, they only were an archaic society, a class 1 on the Union Scale, they only managed to exploit the resources of their planet, and they really were doing a bad job at it, probes and scopes calculated that the atmospheric composition was becoming toxic to the Earthen lives.

However they outran every calculations of the union scientists when they unionized their planet in only two decades. And they were really coming from far away… In and all their society was really interesting to study. He secretly hoped they’ll correct their trajectory and one day become ready to integrate the local inter-stellar community, the rhythm of their discovery and the speed at which they develop new technologies were incredible.

Aarin snapped out of his internal monologue when the screen of the Human Subject 001 was displayed on the holographic terminal of the piloting area.

After a few minutes of data-gathering the hologram was complete, her parameters were in the human excepted values, but something was off with her. She seemed to be depressed, yes that was the word. Her mental parameters were completely off the charts, even when accounting for errors. He thought that was finally the time to come down and pay a little visit to earth surface.

Activating the human disguise, an average-looking, young, thin and 180cm tall man with short black hair, sharp facial structures, brown eyes and a little of muscle definition in his abs – the disguise was designed to be healthy but he managed to tweak it a little to his taste – he joined the shuttle bay and activated the shuttle AI.

- “Hello Professor” said the AI, “Activating piloting mode”

The smooth surface of the panel changed, morphed, transformed in a sort of liquid and settled itself in a series of bump, spikes, edges and flat surfaces, that was the standard Union piloting area, designed for the core world physiology, but really not compatible with his current human one, so he quickly switched it to the human-adapted tactile piloting gear he designed and strapped himself in the front seat.

- “Hello, activate the cloaking device, the thermal shields, the phase device and the mental disturbance unit please” he commanded to the shuttle vocal commands, which acknowledged with a sharp beep. He adjusted himself in the seat, positioned himself in a good, comfortable piloting position and with a press of a button activated the powerful yet stealth nuclear fusion reactor powering the shuttle.

A few hours later he entered low earth orbit and planned an automatic landing in the outskirts of the “New Paris” city where his target lived, he mentally went over the goals, he needed to approach the subject and… Listen to her

After landing and setting up the cloaking mechanism to assure nobody will spot the strange object, Aarin jumped out of the cockpit and prepared to peacefully explore the human megalopolis, he chose this city because of its strangeness, it was located outside of the old centers, at least the centers the probes discovered and flagged as such, and from the data gathered by the continuous surveillance it was new, a very young city, so his scientific curiosity was picked and the city was selected to become the first direct observation site of humans by union scientists!

He marveled at the diversity of the architectures from the surrounding buildings, there was a lot of different styles yet it was really working well together. Then he came into viewing distance of his target, the human subject, he knew how to do that, he just had to know why she felt so sad all the time.

At the same time his target walked towards her home, he quickly activated the disguise again and transformed himself into a cat, he picked this earth life form because he learned that it was considered cute by humans and noticed they always tended to react positively even if they didn’t know the said cat. He ran over and managed to sneak into the house just as his target closed the door. Crap, he scolded himself, he didn’t planed exactly how to know her, he couldn’t just stick a microphone on her as a cat…

As he was thinking, his target shuffled herself, she seemed very upset… no not upset, nervous. She was really strange, and really sad, finally she abruptly got up and nearly ran towards her parents, Aarin decided to closely listen to her and to record her and transmit it to the ship.

- “Mom, dad” she said, softly, almost like she didn’t want her parents to hear her.

- “yes Arthur? Said her mother, his father seemed not to pick up so she said “hey, listen to arthur he has something to tell us”

° “he?” thought Aarin, “but she’s a girl isn’t it obvious?” he was really puzzled and was getting more and more frustrated by the minute, he thought he finally had figured out humanity and their weird gendered society and here he studied this girl (boy?) for months now and he never saw that she...he… they was not a girl? He was positive the computer identified her as female and he was sure he configure it to detect gender, so that didn’t make any sense.

- “I want you both to stay quiet until I have finished” her parents then nodded “..it’s something I want to tell you for a few years now but I never have had the willpower to do so, and I’d always chicken out before I had the chance to tell you but I can’t hold it anymore I need to change things” her mom tried to said something but Arthur, her birth name Aarin deduced, glared at her and she kept quiet, “Syl’ finally convinced me to come out” at that word her father took a grim face but kept listening nonetheless.

I feel like I was meant to be a girl, deep down I am a girl, I am transgender, I am a girl.” she said on the verge of crying, but neither of her parents tried to comfort her. Aarin was thinking fast, he knew enough of humans to recognize this as a bad situation but he remained confused, what “transgender” meant, of course she was a girl if that was obvious even for him a being from another world which didn’t even have the concept of gender, it should be for her parents who know her very well, all of this situation made no sense whatso-

Before Aarin could finish his thought, her father stood up, approached her slowly, and slapped her hard right in her left cheek, leaving a red stain after him as a remainder of his act, Arthur seemed shocked and couldn’t even talk, he recognized the symptoms of a shutdown as he studied the autism spectrum and other neurodivergences in humans before departing Union Central.

- “No, you are not a woman Arthur, you’re my son, and you will remain my son, no amount of… cosmetic nonsense can change that” yelled his father right in-front of Arthur

- “Arthur, sweetheart, you can’t disfigure yourself with those procedures or these hormones you know it won’t work, you know you’ll never be a real girl, so you should stop thinking about that, maybe you could cut your hair? Or change your hobbies ? I’m sure it would help to pass that phase, it will be alright and forgotten in no time, it’s perfectly fine at your age to be confused but it will fade with time when you’ll find a lovely wife and start a family” her mother said, with an annoyingly huge grin on her face

Aarin remained still, staring at the girl, her parents were completely destroying her why can’t they see that? They are her parents they should recognize their child’s suffering ! Aarin was completely flabbergasted at the interaction it was so alien so unfamiliar that he didn’t know how to react, he couldn’t do anything here without his stuff and he couldn’t expose the mission but it was so hard to see the girl completely shot down without being able to react or answer.

Suddenly, Arthur snapped out of her state, met her parents with her eyes and with a calm and determined tone said

- “Dad, mom, I will repeat one more time, I am a girl, I will transition with or without your help or permission, I will be happy and you can’t do anything about it, now you can chose to keep me in your lives or not but mine will continue just fine and I will do it I swear the goddess of this world. And I’ll say it only once. My. Name. Is. Ariana” carefully articulating each word at the end.

Ariana, Aarin thought, it was pleasant to know her preferred name no more Human whatever 001 thing.

It was then that her father decided to slap her, hard and again Aarin remained still, completely agaped by what just unfolded.

- “Son, ARTHUR” his father spat, “you are a member of this family, of my family, and you will abide by our rules or you’ll not be allowed to be part of this family. So I’ll ask you one time son, Arthur, will you give up these lies and fallacies and come back on the right track?” His father said in a deep creepy voice.

- “No. I won’t. Never.” answered Ariana.

- “So be it, you’re not a member of this family anymore, you have an hour to quit this house before we start pushing you out ourselves, you are by then nothing, you don’t have a family to rely on, you are by yourself and we don’t know you anymore, you’ll now be wandering outside like a nobody, like nothing, like your kind is. Go thing, you have 57 more minutes to take your stuff”. Her father, said calmly.

Ariana tried not to panic as she was staring at her mom who just lowered her eyes in a non-vocal answer to the non-vocal question. She quickly moved in her bedroom to pack her stuff.


She came back less than 15 minutes later, she glanced a last time at her parents, and headed to the door.

- “And take that damn cat with you! I don’t know why its here!” her father yelled.

A long, silent, walk later she finally arrived at the home of her best friend Aarin identified, their name was Sylvia and they was really interesting too, they was non-binary which is another thing in their gender game but his mood wasn’t at research, He was really scared for the girl, she just was kicked out of her home? Is that a thing humans do? That seems really old-fashioned and just… weird, that grossed him out.

The door swung open and a woman was behind it

- “Hey Art…” then her eyes widened considerably when she saw the state of the poor girl “Oh my god come inside I will prepare you a hot tea, what happened sweetheart are you okay?”

The sound alerted Sylvia and they was running down the stairs to take Ariana in a big tight hug

- “Oh my god Ar are you okay? What happened” Sylvia shouted, completely panicked, their mom came back from the kitchen and gave Ariana a steaming hot mug of mint tea, her favourite and asked,

- “How are you hun?”

Aarin saw the thoughtful expression of Ariana, he was sure she was thinking a hundred things at the moment and didn’t want to repeat the experiment but something must have change Ariana’s opinion as she began to speak softly, barely a whisper,

- “I… came out to my parents, I came out as a transgender girl, they… especially dad, really did not take it well, basically ruled me out of the family and gave me an hour to be out of the house, I’m really alone no am I not?” she chuckled at that, a sad chuckle, but Sylvia took her into her arm and gently said

- “hey, no you’re not alone, you’ll never be alone Ariana I am here, I’ll always be there for you.”

- “My child is right Ariana, you’re more than welcomed here, you can stay, you know we have a spare bedroom for you, so feel free to live here.” Sylvia’s mom said, smiling and gently stroking Ariana’s hair.

Ariana started to cry and Aarin mentally relaxed, the situation was alright, Ariana was not in immediate danger anymore thanks to her best friend’s mom. But he couldn’t even think of not helping her, she was kicked out of her home! That was a little breach of protocol but he was positive he was gonna help her.


Aarin sighed as he remembered how it started, a few months ago with Ariana’s coming out, in the following month he learned as much as he could about transgender people on the humans planet-wide information sharing system they called “internet”. That was fascinating, and frightening, he never could have guessed the fact their society was so gendered could hurt so much a portion of the population.

He then made… a mistake, He realize he could accelerate how their transition methods worked and made them more complete, he spent years studying humans, their physiology and psychology so he knew their biological default form was flawed they couldn’t change it like a few species in the Union and were really far from inventing shape shifting technologies, so they never could obtain a comfortable body, even if he noted that the majority of the population were… okay with their body.

Whatever, the real problem was he decided to give Ariana the powered up HRT he made and swapped out her meds last month. But he must have made an error in the calculations because the effects were far faster than he originally planed, and Ariana noticed. Then Sylvia noticed. This was really bad because if others noticed this, it might bring planet-wide panic fast and humans were not ready for first contact yet.

He finally decided to transport Ariana and Sylvia from their room directly to the mess to explain them the conundrum, it was the best move, and maybe that will speeds up his research on humans. That would not be the first times observer made local allies by accident. Or in his case almost by accident.

He carefully entered the coordinates of Sylvia’s home, remembered to activate his human disguise, and powered the standard short range matter transporter up, it could be used on biological material but it was not portable so if he beamed himself down on Earth he couldn’t join his ship again so, yeah, he used shuttles, safer.

He initialized the transport sequence and prepared himself mentally for the hard talk that was coming.


Ariana’s POV

When light came back I was sitting in a bench with a comfortable cushion on it and I saw Sylvia stirring beside me so I started to explore the surrounding and we were not in Sylvia’s home anymore. I started to hyperventilate when I felt Sylvia’s hug and relief washing over me, at least they was there for me so I wasn’t alone.

We saw a human figure a few meters away from us and before we could react he spoke in a foreign accent I could not place.

- “So. I think I owe you an explanation” said the voice.

End of Chapter 2.

Hope you liked it! Next week, same date for the next chapter, Chapter 3: We Need To Talk

Is wednesday 1800h CET okay?
  • No, i'd prefer 1600h CET Votes: 1 100.0%
  • No, I'd prefer Tuesday Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, I'd prefer Monday Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, I'd prefer Thursday Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No, I'd prefer Friday Votes: 0 0.0%
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  • No I'd prefer 1400h CET Votes: 0 0.0%
Total voters: 1 · This poll was closed on Feb 28, 2022 01:33 PM.
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