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Geeking Science: The Aliens Among Us

Erin Penn

Photo by Thanh Tran on Unsplash

Why do I love writing about children so much? Because they are the closest to alien thinking we adults experience. Concrete vs. Abstract thinking is such a big gulf.

I love the mene of working with children (babysitting, being a kindergarten teacher, being a parent) is like being an ambassador to beings from another planet and teaching them how to assimilate to our culture.

No, eating fire or dirt is not the best nutrition option on this planet. Sorry, your ambassadorship, but gravity works a bit different here – if you throw something, it will break. Your excellency, I don’t mean to imply anything, but what exactly were you thinking when you did this?

Part of it is everything really is new to them. They are still testing if gravity is consistent everywhere, why are some things good to eat and others not, and what is all this history that happened before they got here that they are expected to understand. Children really need diplomatic attaches to survive in the alien world they’ve been thrust into.

Terrell (in Honestly and Home Cooking Part 1) reacts differently to Mr. Troy’s disability, and very much needs all the adults in his life to keep him together and dressed. Scott (in It’s Dirty and Memory of a Lifetime) is slightly younger than Terrell and goes off the rails a lot more. I don’t think I will ever do a POV inside a child’s head simply because I cannot conceive what they are thinking. 

Things like – a child believes that by staying out of their bedroom, bedtime won’t happen. Because bedtime is associated with the bedroom. Or how my niece K (mentioned in my editing rant this month) didn’t want to write the character having problems because she really couldn’t dissociate herself from the character and she didn’t want to deal with the problems.

The cognitive difference between concrete and abstract thinking is fascinating. I love using fiction to explore it. And I sometimes let the difference in thinking bleed into exploring alien creatures, such as in Grass.

All of the amazement and exasperation in the differences between adults and children especially comes out in classic teen question “What were you thinking?” We expect the adult-sized children to understand cause-and-effect (which they do) and apply it to every situation, especially complicated ones (which they can’t) that we adults know from experience and shared stories is a beyond-dumb idea. They don’t have experience, their friends haven’t survived through the experience to tell the story, and they just don’t think that many steps ahead.

“Look mom, we did think it through. I made sure there was a mattress for when we fall.” “But mattresses have springs. You bounced!” “Mattresses have springs?”

These aliens live among us.

How about you? Are there aspects in children – from baby, through toddler, to teen – which make you geek? Do you have any stories to share?

Bibliography

“Cognitive Development in the Teen Years”. Stanford Children’s Health. Last viewed 10/2/2019. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=cognitive-development-90-P01594

Author Spotlight: William McCaskey

Erin Penn

Amazon Cover

William McCaskey is a new science fiction author releasing his first book through Falstaff. Yes, another book I edited. (I developmentally edited a lot of books in the last year, and they have finally finished making their way through the pipeline.)

Each book is a challenge, and this one more than most because Mr. McCaskey came with such a clear vision and his military experience bleeds through on every page … just adjusted for lasers and spaceships. I hope he doesn’t have experience with those, or if he does, I am grateful that he didn’t share that information with me because that would really be one of the “If I tell you, I will need to kill you” moments.

I’m not sure where he is going with the rest of the series. I never ask, because I want to be surprised too. And I know I will be surprised with him. Some of the bits are really out there, like wood paneling on the spaceships. But that is his unique vision, and I ain’t going to step all over his voice.

If you like special forces ground ops in a military sci-fi setting, you will enjoy this book. Dragon Two-Zero. (In case you were wondering, there are no dragons. This one is pure science fiction.)

Mr. McCaskey can be followed on twitter here: https://twitter.com/thewmmccaskey (9/20/2023 update: Twitter is now X, and is locking itself behind a paywall. I do not know if the author is still on the adjusted platform.)

Flash: I Am Prophecy – Part 3

Erin Penn

She had emerged by herself and no one knew. Nineteen minutes and counting. Reaching out a hand, she touched her mirror image. Twenty-two minutes since dawn.

 

The screams normally would have activated the sensor, but her recent growth spurt inflicted violent cramps and she often woke screaming. After the fourth false alarm, her father had signed off on temporarily removing her emergency room monitor rather than pay fines. He had grown a foot in a six-month period as a teenager, and her body had already added three inches in height since the class term began in addition to her micro-boobs inflating to something she was having trouble hiding in the school uniform.

 

Wait, she had been so confused she had forgot. Too many pasts, too many futures, she had forgotten her present.

 

Throwing aside her sleeping robe, Vixen activated the uniform program. Some classmates only ran the shaver once a week, letting their fuzz give hints of individuality. Blond, brunette, white. But Vixen had always tried to blend with the crowd.

 

Standing in the center of the room, Vixen waited as the preparer removed any hair from overnight and spray painted her body with today’s skin color. Dark skin, milk chocolate brown, she sighed in relief. The flush red and dark blue lines branching with every blood vessel and vein submerged under the artificial dye. … Tomorrow, no … tomorrow’s tomorrow will be white, nearly no change for her and her friend Osantos, extra pigment for people like Marty who would have virtually no color added today. Her reprieve was temporary, but enough for now.

 

While sorting through the infinite of near-time, trying to discover a path to stay undiscovered, Vixen nearly missed the closet opening with her day’s clothes laid out. On top of the white blouse and tailored plaid slacks was a binder. She hated that binder, but the Emperor’s Boarding School took uniform to a level unknown anywhere at anytime in the history of man. – Her face relaxed into a small smile, her first since waking, as she verified this bit of unverifiable common knowledge. – Blending, being invisible in the crowd of children, was even more important than normal so she willingly plucked the stretchy fabric from the pile.

 

The binder did not snap in place after being wrapped around her rib cage.

 

“Maker bless mom’s genes.” Vixen threw the clothing back into the closet in disgust, laughing a little as mundane habit pushed back survival fear. She hit the button for a remeasure, the third one that month. Stepping completely within the closet, Vixen did the “tailor tape dance” as the kids in school nicknamed it.

 

Put your arms up, put them down, bend over, stretch arms to the side, stand up, lunge forward. An extra five minutes to throw her morning schedule off. An extra five minutes of life. But being late activated monitors, checks, which she no longer could afford. The path she needed to stay on required her recover a minute somewhere, otherwise the school would run a full diagnostic when she reported.

 

Today, she just wanted to live through today.

 

New clothes were released, the binder replaced with a brassiere and the shirt cut to accommodate her increasingly generous shape. No more hiding her gender.

 

Throwing on her clothes, she grabbed the blessed half-helm and snapped it in place over her newly non-human eyes and still human ears before rushing out for family breakfast.

 

(words 572; first published 4/10/14; republished new format 10/13/19)