"The journey is going to take a few hours now, so settle down." Steve said as we entered the living room, "there are some interesting books on the table, check them out if you want." 

I looked towards the table. The table had a few discs. 

"You just need to tap on screen." Steve directed. Then he looked at me, "Maya, a word please." His voice was serious. Despite the use of please he was not requesting I come, he was ordering it.

I nodded and followed him to the engine room. He went to counters, starting the ship and putting it on autopilot. It took him a few minutes. 

All the time he did that, I stood in the background anxiously. 

Why did he call me aside? I had no guesses.

After he was done setting up, he pulled out two stools from the ground.

"Sit." He said.

I sat across him. 

"Aliens," he said gravely, "they don't understand the concept of curiosity. They don't understand the urge to know something just for the sake of knowledge."

I nodded, to acknowledge that I was listening, but I did not see why he was telling me this.

"They hunt for knowledge only if it's useful to them. For a purpose. We humans just take stuff and poke it in a blender and spectrometer, because why not?"

I nodded. Most of our inventions were accidental. In fact, electromagnetism was found out accidentally by a guy who was explicitly trying to prove electromagnetism did not exist. 

But I could still not see where Steve was going with this or why he was telling me this.

"Most aliens know that humans ask random questions for curiosity's sake. But still, it's not in their nature. It's just the way they are brought up. But if someone asks them a potentiality shady question, they would get alarmed. Because why would anyone want to know that kind of things?"

I could see where he was going with this now.

"Like asking about infiltrating the headquarters?" I suggested.

Steve smiled, "Yes! You got it!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

"I know! I know, Maya that you are not planning world domination. But aliens don't! Just avoid asking such type of questions to aliens. Any other harmless questions are alright, the aliens would love to answer. Especially the scientists on your ship."

I nodded. Steve told me that was all and I made my way back.

It was not until I was moving down the staircase to the living room that I realised something, 

'Wait, we are going to be living with alien scientists?'

●•●•●•●

When I came down to the living room, the boys were busy reading. When I say reading, I mean they were reading floating texts in the air. Holograms.

"Maya!" Ethan exclaimed when he saw me, " What did he need you for?" 

"Nothing much." I shrugged. 

I took a seat in front of the only hologram-disc-thingy left. I tapped on it and immediately a hologram popped up exactly above it. 

Ethan excitedly said, "Did you know we can move these ones? Try it."

I tried to touch my hologram and pull it closer to me. It moved! It actually responded to my band.

"This is awesome!" I said.

"I know!" Kevin said from the other side of me. "These are books on alien species. I'm sorry, the only one left is on humans. Everyone took the alien ones."

Sure enough, the title of the hologram read,

Introduction to Galaxial beings- Humans

I shrugged. It would be amusing to read what aliens thought about us. I read on.

°°°

Having joined the intergalactic community just a decade prior, Humans originate from the planet Primate, more popularly known as Earth. Humans (Homo sapiens) are the most abundant and widespread in Primea, characterized by bipedalism.

Humans are mammals, warm-blooded, quadracorus, four-limbed and elctro-diffusive, eukaryotic, heterotrophic omnivorous species.

Humans classify themselves into various categories, the most scientifically prominent one being into reproductive 'genders': male and females. 

(Note: human ambassadors are recently said to have conflicting opinions on the matter)

Known for their fearless and careless attitude and significantly resilient physical forms, humans have quickly become one of the most popular species known to the universe.

Know more:

• Communication guide

• Food habits

• Anantomy

• Earth (Primate)

• Classification 

• Achievements...

 °°°

After the brief introduction, a list of several sub topics was put together. I tentatively scrolled down. The hologram responded to my touch like a floating tablet.

The list went on till God-knows-how-long. It just kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. 

I decided to go back to the top and opened the title 'food habits'.

Another screen popped up from the first one, the first one still floating behind the second one. I moved the second screen so that I could see both the screens side by side.

It was a bit like laptop windows. 

Human food habits:

Warning: Do not try consuming primate rations. Most of the material humans consume are below regular Donna (pH more that 7.5 and less than 6.5). The human organs are protected from the acidity and alkalinity by a fibstance called 'mucus'. Intake by most other species would result in incredible pain or death.

Human rations consist of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins and minerals. A large part of the food intake is in the form of Glycogen and Glucose. It includes...

I read on for a few minutes. It described in detail the constituents of human food, which alien species could eat what and what was lethal for which species. Anywhere a new word was introduced, it was in a different colour and a separate dialogue box opened to explain it's meaning. 

Although this article was supposed to be on humans, I learnt a lot about aliens from it. For example, for most aliens (with the exception of a few species), any food that's even a little acidic or basic is lethal. Their food must be awfully bland.

I got tired of the monotonous list of nutrients and decided to open communication guide.

It was titled:

Humans: Communication guide 

My eyes quickly scanned the article, opening smaller tabs whenever I didn't understand something. This article was more interesting and a lot amusing.

Aliens, apparently, do not understand sarcasm. There was an entire part of the article dedicated to describing situations where a human might use sarcasm.

Some of them were so specific I had to believe that they were real experiences of an alien. 

If a human, while trying to find the lever to the air temperature accidentally reverses the gravitational settings and you explain to them the hazards of it they would reply with "Thanks, I had no idea." This is the use of 'sarcasm' and the human does actually have an idea about the hazards.

I mean, how specific is that?

And there there was this interesting part about smiles... 

"Maya! Hey! Maya!" Ethan's voice broke me out of my reading induced daze, "Look!" He said excitedly. 

I looked up to realise that half of the large room was covered with holograms. The boys had left their seats and all of them were rapidly opening more and more holograms, stashing them aside to open more without reading.

"What are you doing?" I asked, staring at the cluster of holograms. 

"We wanted to see how much information this disc had. I am starting to think it is endless." Kevin explained. 

I noticed two of the holograms embedded in the roof. I stared at them, "...how?" 

Kevin grinned unashamedly. He picked one of the holograms and threw it like a frisbee at the roof. 

"That's how."

I tilted my head, confused and amazed at their ...uh, creatively. 

"Do you guys know how to close these tabs?" I asked.

They looked at each other, realisation dawning on their face. They started fumbling with their tabs, trying to look for a cross button, but to no avail. 

I smiled to myself, letting them try a bit before I gave the answer. Stephen noticed me smile.

"Maya!" He said indignantly, "You know how to do it, don't you?"

I shrugged noncommittedly, "Yeah."

"How?" Kevin asked.

"You have to put the tab on the one it came from. Like this." I demonstrated with my own tab, bringing it down to the main page.

Tanya tried doing it. "It works." He confirmed. 

They all set to work, putting them back into the main pages. I watched on with amusement, deciding this was more interesting than my reading. 

After a moment of rifling through the tabs confused, Ethan asked with annoyance, "Okay, who idea was it to mix everything up?"

They all looked at Kevin with accusation. Kevin had the decency to look embarrassed. 

He said as a means of excuse. "Guys, I didn't really think that long into the future." 

"Do you ever?" Tanya snorted and fired back. His voice was low, probably only meant for Kevin. The only reason I heard was he was standing next to me.

"Uh, while we are talking about disasters," Stephen started, "I, uh, kinda threw the main page at the roof?" 

Three angry boys turned to him. 

'Looks like someone's going to get murdered today.' I thought, before burying myself in my book with a smile.