Empyrean Iris Story Collection

M-Flu

It was early December, or so the humans said. Krill had never really understood the human's need to split up time like that. The Vrul did, of course, keep track of their planet's revolution around their star but that was simply numerically based rather than starting the count over every month like the humans did.

It had been a bit busier than usual which was rather odd. You would think, on a spaceship, that illnesses would be relatively common due to the closed in area with a bunch of people side by side, and that it would not be affected by the time of year like it was on earth. However, he supposed that allowing the humans leave planetside so close to their sickest season was probably the reason.

Still blew his mind to consider that humans had a time of year where epidemics and pandemics were more common. So common, in fact, that the humans just accepted getting sick as a fact of life, and often continued to go to work and be around other people during that time. Of course, this behavior used to be worse, but even with the widespread use of surgical masks during sickness, things still continued to spread.

He found himself, pleased, once again that he was incapable of catching human illnesses, though he did his best to stay away from plant life on other planets seeing as you never knew what he could catch from other species of plant, to which he was more similar than he was to animals like the humans or the Drev.

He reached upwards and plucked a clipboard from one of the nurses before turning towards the door and scuttling out.. He needed to go speak with the commander about the increased rate of infectivity aboard the ship. He was under the impression it would be best to begin a quarantine on some of the more sick patients. Yes it was true that the average human would not be taken out by the flu, but by his calculations it greatly decreased productivity.

Better to keep humans healthy and lose a few people than it was to allow everyone to only work at half capacity.

He greeted members of the crew as he floated the stairs and onto the bridge stepping through the door and approaching the captain's chair... a chair which was empty.... That was strange? This was around the time the commander went over ship diagnostics. He did this every morning and despite being a very impulsive man who wasn't prone to keeping schedule, this was a part of his day he didn't tend to change.

Krill spun in a wide circle looking around trying to find the man as if he expected to see him hanging from the ceiling, though, now that he thought about it. He totally expected to see something like that.

There was a clatter on the stairs behind him, and he turned to find Sunny stepping into the room.

She looked around in equal confusion to him.

"Good morning." She said in the traditional human greeting, "Have you seen Adam?"

Krill shook his head, another human gesture, "I was just about to ask you the same thing." He held up the clipboard he was holding , "I came to speak to him about medical protocol aboard the ship.

Sunny hummed, "Well, I came to him about, this." SHe turned and pointed downwards just in time for Krill to see three of the spiderlings clambering their way up the steps mewling and growling angrily on their way after Sunny. Krill inflated his helium sack and hovered out of reach of the spiderlings, who honestly scared the hell out of him, especially Glados.

Sunny stuck out a foot trying to hold the aforementioned monster at bay, but all three of them continued to squeal and chirp.

"That's strange." Krill began, they never left Adam's side if they could help it, and Glados didn't particularly like sunny all that much, so none of this made particular sense. Hal, the smallest of the spiderlings chirped the little vocal folds at the back of it's throat oscillating and vibrating. It was an ALMOST human sound but as if heard from a distorted speaker.