Challenge #01851-E027: As Long as it Works...
Aliens trying to convince a human crew to change it's ship
[Alien] "You use century old technologies ! The new system is way more efficient and everything is automatic. No need to repair it!"
[Human 1] "And when it broke ?"
[Alien]"It can't broke !"
[Human 2] "So when it broke we just have to pray to whatever god that either another ship will pick up our distress signal or the engine restart by itself before the oxygen reserve are depleted." -- Anon Guest
Some humans have a saying, There's a reason why they're OLD wives' tales. And a great number of other species do not understand this. Especially when such a saying is trotted out when other Galactics sigh at outmoded tech like algal oxygen recyclers, tied with algal food printers. Or old-fashioned ion jets for navigational micro-corrections.
About the only new-ish tech the humans trust on their ships is the grav-drive[1], and they invented it. And since gravity tech came with an attendant human, it was closely guarded in very special ways. Put it this way, there was a reason some humans also nicknamed it 'gravy drive'. It worked by creating a virtual black hole in the direction they wanted the ship to go. As well as forming a specific gravity well below ship-bottom. It was a careful balancing act that only a specific subsect of Humans could perform reliably.
So it was quite a shock to other species that the reckless, gung-ho, explosion-loving Deathworlders were extremely touchy about laying their hands on, and subsequently relying on, tried and true Galactic tech. Their chief protest was, "What happens when broke?"
"It does not break," protested Gryx, who was trying to sell the upgrade to a ship full of obstinate humans. "We have made it unbreakable. Cannot be broken. You understand? Foolproof."
The human ship chief snorted. "Make foolproof, making better fool. How repairing? Where accessing insides?"
Gryx started getting a headache. "No needing," he said, resorting to broken Galstand. "Never break."
The humans were skeptical. "We testing," they insisted. "Install as main, keeping old system backup."
They had reached the point where any deal was a good deal if it got these picky damn Deathworlders the hell out of his shop. "Fine. If breaking, Gryx give money back and new system."
The humans thought this was funny, and punched each other's fists. They took the molecular manipulators and allowed Gryx's tech teams to install them properly on their -frankly alarming- Deathworlder ship.
Six Standard Months later, they were back. With a burned-out molecular manipulator that they had helpfully decoupled from their vessel.
"It broke," said the ship chief.
Gryx boggled at it. Made a helpless gesture in the air between them. "How?"
The human shrugged and made a consonant-less noise that took the place of, "I dunno."
Humans...
[1] Short for gravity drive, and sometimes named 'gravy drive' after what it can do to you in the event of a critical failure. You do NOT mess with the gravity drive unless you know what the flakk you are doing. And if you're not Nae'hyn, you don't know what you're doing.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / devon]
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Nice piece man.
I love this...