Aliens Can’t Sing

hornygold:

humans-are-space-orcs:

Okay. So. I was reading some of these Humans are weird posts, and I kept thinking of how humans can sing and make music with their bodies. Like, what if aliens can make instruments, and have a grasp of what music is, and they enjoy it like humans, but they can’t sing at all. Like, it’s physically impossible for them to sing at all. So when they meet humans for the first time, they’re amazed that most of them can make music with their voices? Can you imagine Aliens at, like, an acapella battle or something, or karaoke night, and they are just baffled as to how humans can make different tones with their voices. 

Submitted By: @cartooncaretaker

Commander
Gulokdar hurried towards the rec area, her worry mounting about the
surreal and aethereal sounds issuing from it. It sounded like the
humans, and judging by the sheer range of sounds being produced they
were suffering from some kind of collective sickness. Gulokdar’s ship
was among the first to have a large group working as part of the
crew, and the idea that they might be unwell, especially just a few
days into their trip, terrified her.

She knew
that in the past humans had suffered from numerous plagues which had,
on occasion, caused immense devastation. The Black Death had killed
most of the humans in Europe; Smallpox had wiped out perhaps ninety
percept of the population of the Americas; and the third (and final)
Bird Flu pandemic had killed over a billion in just eight months.
There were many other diseases which had the potential to kill large
numbers very quickly. Cholera, haemorrhagic fever, coronavirus –
Gulokdar had spent time making sure she knew them all, and whatever
this sound was, it wasn’t a symptom she was familiar with.

The
possibility that something had come aboard which the humans didn’t
know of – and they themselves freely admitted they hadn’t come
close to identifying and categorising all the innumerable
microorganisms their deathworld had so far produced – would have
made the Commander sick to her stomachs, if her species still
possessed stomachs.

When she
got to the rec area the sounds had stopped, and the crewmen there –
human and non-human alike – were relaxing and chatting.

“What
was that?” she asked as she entered. “What was that sound? Are
you unwell?”

“That
sound?” asked the Lieutenant who was closest to her. She’d forgotten his real name, since everyone called him Akela – apparently it was what the Humans called a nick-name, an informal term of affection (usually) that was given to someone. In this case, he was Akela because he was the highest-ranking human on the ship, and apparently Akela was the name of a fictional character who had that role. Also, Akela’s real name was, apparently, difficult to pronounce for many humans due to it having something called ‘clicks’. Gulokdar hadn’t pretended to understand. “Do you mean our
[untranslatable]?” Akela said.

The word
got stuck in the translator, which was unfortunate because Gulokdar’s
species wasn’t able to form sounds like human speech. All she could
tell was that it started with a hissing sound, followed by another
sound repeated twice.

“I
didn’t understand that word,” she said.

“It’s a
form of art,” said the Lieutenant. “A type of music we create
with our own bodies. Humans have been doing it for as long as we can
remember.”

“So
you’re not unwell?”

“We’re
all perfectly healthy. We just did something called the ‘Bohemian
Rhapsody’. We wanted to show our friends some human music, and
[untranslatable] seemed the easiest way. I tell you what, though,
I’ll [untranslatable] something else so you can see how it works.”

“Okay…”
Gulokdar was unsure, but curious.

The
Lieutenant turned to one of other crewmen, a smaller one who Gulokdar
was pretty sure was female. “Lyssia, do you want to do ’Phantom of
the [untranslatable]’ together?”

Lyssia
grinned and came over, then the room fell silent before Lt. Akela
started tapping out a rhythm on the table. Dum-t’dum, dum-t’dum,
dum-t-dum.

And then
Lyssia opened her mouth and, breathing heavily, produced a dizzyingly
complex sequence of sounds – something like human speech, but with
tones Gulokdar had never imagined any species could produce. A short
while later Akela began producing similar sounds, but with a lower
range of tones. The two humans alternated, sometimes created sound
together, and Gulokdar had to admit that while she didn’t always
understand the words, and found many of them disturbing, the overall
effect was beautiful, majestic, and left her with a growing sense of
emotional tension.

All too
quickly it was over, and the commander found herself feeling dizzy
from the experience.

“What
did you call this again?” she asked when she felt like she had
recovered sufficiently to speak.

“[untranslatable],”
said Lyssia, but the sound was becoming familiar. “Do you not have
an equivalent in your language?”

Gulokdar
shook her head. “I think we will have to call it mouth-music,”
she said.

“That
might not work,” said another crewman, Yoshimoto. “We also make
other types of music with our mouths. What about vocal music?”

Akela
grinned. “That works. But you can do something a little special
can’t you, Yoshi?”

Yoshimoto
grinned. “You want me to do ’Daydream in Blue’? I have the backing
track in my collection.”

Akela
nodded, and Yoshi stood, a strange smile on his face that Gulokdar
knew signified some kind of mishief.

“Okay,
so why’s he smiling like that?” she asked.

“’Daydream
in Blue’ is very tricky to perform,” said Akela. “It has two
parts, and not all humans can do the second part, let alone both. Not
without having a serious sore throat. The people who originally created it used computers to distort the sound. Plus there’s a double meaning
to the words. It’s about the human experience of love and desire, and
the dichotomy between the public, hearts-and-flowers facade, and the
private, sensual, transgressive side. In the human language of
English, the word blue is often associated with transgression and erotica. So
take it away, Yoshi!”

Yoshi gave
some verbal commands to the computer, and music came through the rec
area’s speakers. Then Yoshi started producing vocal music, his
voice’s tones higher than normal, and somehow light and airy. As
Gulokdar listened she found she liked the words – until the music
changed sharply, and Yoshi’s did as well, the sounds produced deeper
down in his throat, the meaning of the words partially obscured by
the harsh guttural hiss of his voice, and if what Akela had said was true then
Gulokdar wasn’t entirely sure she didn’t feel relieved. She’d heard
rumours that the human mind had some pretty dark corners.

At the end
of it, Yoshi launched into a coughing fit that made Gulokdar wonder
if she might not have been wrong about the humans being unwell. He
grabbed a glass of water and gulped it down, then turned and bowed.
“That song always takes a lot out of my throat,” he said.

“So you
really do push yourselves to the limit with this vocal music then?”
she said.

“Sometimes,”
said Lyssia. “I think the best example of that is the [three words,
untranslatable].”

“The
translator lost part of that,” said Gulokdar.

“It
comes from a movie made before humans first made contact with
aliens,” said one of the other human crewmen, Anila. “The movie
was called the Fifth Element, and had an alien, the [two words,
untranslatable], who made vocal music like we do. But the people who
made the movie wanted the music to be really alien, so they wrote it
so it was impossible for a human to perform. That way only an alien
could perform it. Thing is, Humans like a challenge. You know what
we’re like – tell us it can’t be done, and we’ll move
[untranslatable] and Earth to find a way to do it. Over the next few
decades several professional [untranslatable] managed to perform it.”

“So one
group of Humans devised a piece of vocal music that was intentionally
made impossible for Humans to perform, and other Humans saw it as a
challenge to be beaten?” That really shouldn’t come as a surprise
given the Human approach to difficulty and their ability to survive,
Gulokdar realised. Their habit of creating their own supposedly
impossible challenges, and then defeating them within such a short
space of time, was probably just preparation for the challenges of
their planet. It certainly explained why their colonies could thrive
on even the most inhospitable worlds – places so harsh that even
extremophile bacteria had long since given up and died.

Even
their art revolves around challenge, Gulodar thought. No wonder they’re so impressive.