Job on Alien world back up nov 28

Job on alien world


   I am a US citizen, I am also part of an international trade regulations team. I am what you could call a trade moderator. I am that guy so many people hate because they think I am either a censor, denying people access to exotic goods, or in the case of the extreme but very vocal minority a traitor to my world. To be clear I am part of one of many teams that regulates trade between our Earth and the alternate reality Earths we have in recent years opened up trade with. Working alongside representatives of those Earths on what goods from our different worlds to trade back and forth. I am seeing less of the concern that trade with alternate Earths was going to devalue our world and corporations argue they don't need to protect the environment as there are infinite resources out there. However while some like that are still around, including a few too many corporate managers my team has had to deal with; that conversation generally ends when we point out we are not one of the great multiverse empires, we are the Ki'ran or the Ju-el, or any of the others who on their own have expanded and colonized older timeline or devoid of sapient life Earths. We don't have colonies or out posts, we only in the last few years were even approved for trade with like four of these expanding worlds.We send goods to their worlds and they send goods to ours.

   The regulation aspect of this is multifacited; one being economic; this part earns us alot of hate because some feel we are denying them goods from these worlds for no reason. But we have our own countries' economies to consider. Now when it comes to edible goods this is alot simpler, we can't always eat each other's foods. Even worlds with humans we are open to trade with have rejected many of our edibles as "too unhealthy" or "toxic" by their standards. I am in truth so glad I didn't end up on the team that deals with trade regulations with the Ki'an'ta, Van'toase, and Ki'ran worlds that keep humans as pets. Imagine working along side beings that view you like a talking dog about selling them new pet foods and pet toys; I understand we actually do have a healthy trade with them for soft "enrichment" toys like stuffed animals, and similar novelties. When it comes to food I was moved around between a few teams with the Chokota and a species whose name is really high pitched and can't be pronounced by humans so we keep it as an audio-file as our nick-names for them were offensive to them that look like four foot tall bipedal squirrels; I understand from our biologists that we work with their world for some reason the mammals didn't diversify as much as our world did and were mainly rodents, small herbivores, and some marine mammals; yet a mammal species did dominate that world anyway and not an Avian species as most worlds like that end up havintg as the dominant species. But I digress, my point there was they could eat anything from our world it seems but in reverse almost none of their native dishes were edible for humans. But hey, Ki'an'ta and Van'toase can't eat any of our food, the cooked stuff, plenty of plants and animals are edible but again those ones tend to be concerned with us as the "talking dog world" of their pet trade.

   One aspect of this trade though that was thankfully quickly understood as locally our own countries and even states within countries already had strict laws regarding the transport of fruits, vegetables, and live animals as potential environmental hazards. We are dealing with alien worlds that are technically just slight (from an ecological and geological perspective) from our world. So yeah no fruits, vegetables, and no pets. Although some zoos have gotten licenses to display some of the more unusual creatures, and even animals that would be extinct on our world. Real life Dodos, dinosaurs, ancient mammals, the Ki'ran world even sold to the Central park zoo what looks like a cross between a triceratops and a parrot...I wasn't fond of the Voice Immitating Weasel; nightmare fuel, a nearly human sized weasel that immitates vocal sounds including human voices to draw its prey in for an ambush...I understand some old myths may be inspired by cross-dimensional shifts dragging animals temporarily from one world to another...we suspect our first meeting Ki'ran "neighbors" who according to other universe Ki'ran had a "primitive" form of dimension travel may be responsible for the 1970s explosion of one time only cryptids as their equipment could have left a dimensional slip stream near their experimental facilities dragging animals from various nearby Earths into each others. Again I digress. This is all still fairly new and I am more than a little over whelmed with my job being to regulate goods.

  Back on that topic, while foods and life form trade is understandible. Don't want someone buying some gremlin animal from another Earth, bringing it here and it gets loose, reproduces, eats up plant life, and has no natural predators as everything on our world either thinks it tastes bad or it is poisonous, a cane toads scenario. On the other hand trade in other goods is a bit harder; we don't have contact let alone trade with any of the other Human dominated worlds. We have met the "Ju-el" but they arn't interested in relations with our world. We learned there were two other "major" multiverse empires of Humans called the Andros and the Aesperians but they apparently are also not interested in trade with us. We are a "primitive" world to them and our encounters with the multiverse and opening up trade are because we were contacted by a Ki'ran world; and well they wanted to try and have trade with a world whose inhabitants they regarded as just above the "pet" level. It does feel insulting but then again we don't even know HOW they could travel between realities so we really are riding on their coat tails as it were all thanks to them likely viewing it as an interesting experiment to open trade with what would be the equivalent to us finding a world of talking cats and dogs living in houses and trying to establish trade. Being told all that though that does make me wander what these three major multiverse human civilizations are like if they don't think of them that way. I mean we met the Ju-el but it was this whole they were wearing suits and piloting biped mechs and as one biologist pointed out from their suits their proportions would be a tad off from ours with longer legs and necks like the exagerated proportions of Aeon Flux or Bayonetta. Although I imagine its not all just looks in that regards but also how technolotgically advanced they are. If we found a world of cat people piloting hyper advanced space ships and a galactic empire one would be hard pressed to even regard them as close to the same thing as a house cat.

  On the topic of other goods, my point was most things there is no interplanetary trade for right now, clothing, hard plastic toys, motor vehicles, video games, and so on. One being the of course no human trade outside of "human pets' owners" but they arn't interested in toys outside of plush and soft toys or basic things like balls but even then they make most their own; our colorful characters in plushies is the only real trade there. But alot of the rest of that requires cultural comprehension of the intellectual properties, and video games we understand arn't that common. Although the Ki'ran representative did say the Ju-el, Andros, and Aesperians have something like our Virtual Reality Games, but more like our imaginary versions of that...so they have actual neural dive virtual worlds while we are just shoving tiny tv screesn in front of our eyeballs...good to know. Now there is some effort in the entertainment industries, but between worlds that are also different species its even trickier than between countries. Some of them can't even see our screens the same way we do, and vice versa with what they make in regards to movies, tv shows, and other broadcasts. We first have to work together to determine what would sell, what would be culturally appropriate, what's funny to one is offensive or just not funny to another. We were surprised to find the Ki'ran approved Duck Tales and a number of anthropomorphic animal cartoons, they have the same sorts of exaggerated characters in their own entertainment, as do most avian worlds. I won't go into all the details on that but its the part that gets me labeled as a censor; but that's why there is a whole international team that works with their teams.

  I feel that is enough, probably too much, of an introduction to my job as I was transfered to spend a few months on a Ki'ran Earth to help inspect and approve or deny some goods a Ki'ran company was hoping to sell to our world as part of an exchange partnership for our world to send over a wide variety of toys and try to approve some of our entertainment products for "general usage" and "pet enrichment" yep I have been transfered to a world where humans are kept as pets.

  ******

   Arriving at the Ki'ran world was awkward, while not my first transfer to another reality, a concept I still have to remind myself I have now done six times; the quarantine and check up are always quick processes; their medical tech is incredibly advanced. The Ki'ran may regard humans as pets but this pet trade between them and the Van'toase and Ki'an'ta makes us look down right cruel to our own pets. Their knowledge of human anatomy, health, and dietary needs is insane. The last time I went to a Ki'ran world; a small colony one last time, I had a touch of mineral shock from eating the "human food" they provided. Its good but so much healthier than the food back home. It is in fact one of the things we want to negotiate trade for, if nothing else the recipes and their medical knowledge on human health concerns, cancer treatments, the works. Been a bit of a time I hear getting that as a few of our major countries treating health treatment as a commoddity really rubs them the wrong way.  But by awkward I really mean that this is one of their more developed worlds and they have insisted myself and the six other humans who came to their world stayed in an isolated compartment of the transport both to this reality and to the facility where we would be working; basically just a large room, table, and looking over whatever goods were on the agenda that day, checking off a check list of concerns, and either decideding to postpone till further inquiries, deny *rare to do on the first pass*, or mark to send off to be tested. Due to a non-disclosure agreement and my own privacy I won't say what specific goods we were looking over. The real meat of my encounter was that after unlike the outpost colony world here we were sent via private "cars"...read hovering rounded wedge shaped pods to apartments set up for us and each of us kept seperate. They said it was for our own safety and concern over "poachers". Apparently some of their pet trade isn't as nice as they made it out to be and certain nations and outposts don't agree that our Earth should have special immunity from the pet trade and they are being denied fresh new stock of humans for their breeders and what not. Which really has painted a darker picture than before, in that it really sends home that most of them don't regard us as equals and on this planet I am seen by many of them as a novelty, a talking dog as I keep saying. So no walking down the streets, no wandering around on my own, pod to apartment, stay there till time to go to work, take pod right from apartment door to work and so on.

  *****

  It is all well and good we don't walk around this city or even stay in a normal one of their apartments. I am suspicious of this apartment, I suspect it may be a kennel given how the doors lock me in, and a pod takes me to and from work, but I do have a fridge that stocks up automatically, sink, bathroom, and a mostly normal bed. We do have communications between those of us staying here and could bring some stuff to keep us occupied like books, games, they even adjusted a "power supply cube" so we could plug our appliances and charge our phones and game consoles, I didn't bring one but one of the others who came did. Now I say its all well and good not just because of that threat of poachers or feeling like I am being looked at like a dog off a leash; for the record no, this isn't a cartoon show they don't have humans wandering around in their streets on leashes; I'd say their regard is more like a cat, size wise we are to them I'd say closer to a small dog, like a cockerspaniel. Which brings up another problem navigating their world, proportions. I mean the Ki'ran arn't awkwardly shaped or anything, they are mostly six to eight foot tall thinly built long legged bird-people with claw like hands on their wings, but they can't just fly from any spot so its not like a cartoon in that regard or the other regard like Duck Tales where they are just people who happen to be birds. I mean size and shape wise I'd compare them to the Rito from the Legend of Zelda games; which feels pointless to say, who is reading this who hasn't seen a Ki'ran? But again size wise I'd say cockerspaniel to them and roughly the same shape. So I just feel really short in their offices and their tables and bar stool like chairs (they have short tails and tail feathers so makes sense they don't have backs on their chairs). I worked at a facility with some Van'toase looking over proposed goods for trade, mainly "pet trade"; size wise I'd say humans to them is like a German Shepard, we are almost the same size they are just a little bit bigger. I am glad however I never worked at a Ki'an'ta facility. I mean they are bigger than elephants and look like someone crossed Mothra with an octopus; we are more like cats to them. I worked with someone once who told me they had a few weeks at a facility working along side Ki'an'ta inspectors, one of which hosted her stay there; and this Ki'an'ta actually had elephants as pets; and according to this person I worked with had at the end of her stay proposed to her to stay as her pet. Like right out of the blue according to her making her realize the whole time she was being hosted this Ki'an'ta was under the impression it could just ask us to stay as their pets as if it had been a trial period. Obviously they said no or I'd never have heard about...scary thought just now on that. But anyway; back on topic. Doorways, stairs...or what passes for them; how they build their walkways and shelves; its all just that...just slightly too big...like things are just a little too tall, a little too far out of reach. Just enough to make it awkward. So yeah, again I doubt these apartments were specially made for us to our scale which is why I suspect they just added a fridge and these out of place power cubes to plug into, to what may be a kennel, a "dog apartment" like we have back home for people to drop their pets off while on vacation.

   *****

    So today found out a rather unexpected development, apparently the items we are inspecting arn't just for use in the human pet trade and general usage but also intended to be sold again through retailers here to other avian species that don't have direct trade with our world. Not unheard of but surprised to learn two of them were the "Harpies" (another species with a name we can't right out, but look like feathered humans with longer feathers in place of hair, claws on wings, proportion wise closer to humans but have featherless faces that look human; and they all look female. We don't really know anything about them other than they have trade with the Andros and Ju-el and may also be of "human descent" somehow. The other are what we dubbed "the parrots", as they look exactly like parrots, same size, shape, but display even higher intelligence; although I understand finding out about them has made our own scientists question how we treat and teach parrots; however according to the Ki'ran this species regards the parrots of most world how we might regard a caveman or an ape in a zoo...which after how much we're treated like "clever animals" it has made me feel really awkwartd about seeing apes in zoos with their obvious intelligence and self awareness.