[Veltzeh]: 39.Fiend or Foe.Chapter 4: What the heck?

My general opinion of humans was that they are a bunch of extremist, religious, nymphomaniac and intolerant asshats. I came down to the bloody planet to look for two junior agents who were assumed to have been in an accident. We found a few pieces of legs, and with some DNA-testing, we found out the tissue belonged to Reikatogi-G-Qem, so I was pretty content with having them declared dead. But that was not the main point in it. The humans that I had to work with made me so excessively angry that I had trouble digesting that I was able to express so much emotion and not even be in estrus. I yelled at the stupid sex-crazed amoeba-brains on a daily basis and telepathically made them shut up or understand things about just as often. My superior told me we should not do that to please the humans because they were so pathetic and we needed to be a little more tolerant toward them than they would have deserved. I did oblige with that, but it was not like ey would find out all the stuff I did, especially after I started covering my tracks in it. The humans did not deserve it.

I think my superior had some clue, though, because as a some sort of clever punishment, ey assigned me to work with the human police force in Finland. The humans were thrilled with the fact that I could just tell them if someone was lying and find out all kinds of things. The humans had relatively little forced memories, obviously because they were not telepaths – they did not need it. However, their self-deception was, to put it straightforwardly, absolutely horrible. The humans did not let me do any more deep-scanning after I nearly turned some religious idiot into a vegetable. Of course that did not stop me from modifying the humans I scanned, but I did not do it so aggressively anymore. I figured that by the time they found out what I had done – if they ever would – I would be back on Regen. I was more worried about them tattling to my superior, but that was not very likely since all communication to em should have gone through me anyway.

So, I searched for the two junior agents and the ambassador for approximately one Earth week, after which I gave up. It was pretty clear that it had most likely been an accident, and we could not come up with any other leads.

I spent time on Earth. I almost liked talking to the more intelligent and skeptical ones of their species and I certainly got my amusement out of them. However, I was disgusted by their constant interest in sexual issues – as were some other humans, in fact. I had some good times ranting about the over-sexualizing with them. Since sexuality was also still a bit of a taboo among humans, it was also awesome to make them confused or uneasy by not expressing any shame about sexual issues. While maybe the funniest parts were single random scenes, the greatest scene I ever made was to take off my clothes in public at the police station. Of course they tried to talk me into putting my clothes back on, but since I had just read their laws considering "indecency", I could counter everything they told me, most often by using the fact that I was an epicine in an asexual state. That day I walked to my temporary residence wearing just underpants and shoes. The thoughts and expressions were worth it, but I did not want to do it again. It surprised me a bit to read and heard that some humans had liked it and hoped I would do it again – it was because of those that had some sexual fetish that I said I would not do it. Then again, I found out about the human transgender community that way and ended up being friends with some of them. I felt so sorry for them because they had had to live in the human community where so many things were sex- or gender-segregated. Some of them would have been very decent humans if they had not been forced to live in this sickening society. Actually, many of them were quite great anyway, especially for humans. I promised them that they could go up to the spacestation and spend time with other regenians too.

The worst experience by far was when my estrus period started. My partner was in Regen and the ambassador I should have had my period with was late with eir period and also had some really important meeting the first day. I was frustrated sitting in my residence, so I went to the police station. The humans pretty much shunned me; for some reason they could really notice that I was in estrus even though they had no clue how it worked in the first place. Some of the more curious ones came to ask me how it was like and I got off of explaining it to them. Later I heard some stories by them that I had deliberately made them feel sexual excitement and since any sort of sexual interaction between a human and a regenian was definitely considered a taboo by most humans, they were uneasy and bordering on accusing me of sexual harassment. The whole idea was absurd, because when I was not on my period, I could have considered their sex-crazed actions and thoughts sexual harassment by their standards. But at the time, I thought that the humans liked to hear what I had to tell, because they certainly did not leave even though they were sexually excited and uneasy. Since they were not telepaths, they constantly thought of physical activities – I suppose I would too, if that was everything I could do. It made me sick to even think of a human touching me or something of the sort, but touching their minds was okay in most cases – as long as they were not religious, extremist or sexist.

Two humans actually seemed to want something more from me than talk. I could not deny that it was partly my fault for keeping on talking to them, but then again, I did not quite realize that they too could get excited by mental images only and that they might have some trouble controlling their urges as well, if in an excited enough state. The other one was a fellow police officer at the police station. I let em rub my body and be close to me. Ey got rougher and wanted to touch parts of my body I did not want to let these sexed humans close to. I did not like sexual excitement to mix with pain any more than giving birth had already done. I told em to leave, but ey did not really listen. Ey insisted that I had allowed this, and it got so extremist that in the end I just made em go away.

Soon I left too, as it was getting late and I knew the ambassador would come tomorrow to accompany me. I walked outside and even there some humans could tell I was in estrus. I found out that it was because of the way I looked at them, and the fact that I could not keep my telepathy to myself and they were mostly receptive to sexual stimulation. I met a shop cashier who had been interested in me ever since I started working around the area, and ey also noticed that I was having my estrus period. Ey also wanted to hear about it, so I told em, but I also told about the police officer and said that I considered it pretty sick. Ey believed everything I said – not that I would have lied, I did not have a reason, but it was a bit disturbing when ey did not express even a little bit of criticism. However, I figured that ey realized unconsciously that there was nowhere ey could really get confirmation anyway. Eventually ey too asked me if ey could rub me a bit, too. Ey swore to me that ey would not be as rough or do anything that I found unpleasant, and since ey seemed honest about it, I agreed. We also agreed that we should not do that in public, so we went to my residence, which was closer. I sensed from the human's mind that what we were doing was pretty awkward and ey was comparing our doings to other experiences that were usual and normal for em. I did not really compare what we did to anything because I thought it was pointless.

At my residence we discarded some clothing – I was more comfortable without them and the human thought it was sexually exciting. I then let em rub me and ey proved emself not to have been a liar. Ey was good at it and I enjoyed it. After a while ey wanted me to touch em too, and I was curious, so I agreed. I actually liked touching em and it triggered an actual telepathic response from em, not just the sensing of sexual excitement like it had been to this point. It was vaguely similar to what I usually got from other regenians, so I was pretty happy and started thinking that maybe humans were not that different from regenians after all. They had just somehow been divided into two sex norms and exploited their own kind with the help of that system. I did not really think too deeply of that at the moment.

We were sitting on my bed, facing each other, and the human suggested that we hug each other. I was okay with that, so we did it and rubbed our bodies against each other while using our hands to touch the other body parts. The human was spontaneous and started thinking that maybe I would after allow em to touch me more intimately, as well. At that moment I was fairly agreeable because the human had been honest before and it did not seem like ey would try to purposefully hurt me or do anything radical that would unintentionally result in me getting hurt. Actually, at that point the human seemed more concerned about eir safety, but ey eventually did not care. Ey asked me if ey could kiss me, but I declined and explained that it was mostly to prevent disease and other harmful reactions that might result from it. Some research had been done in that area, at least according to what I had heard, but I did not know any of the results. I did allow em to rub my crotch through my clothes, however, and did the same to em. That was when it started getting disgusting, because the human started imagining me as being of one norm sex of theirs. That disturbed me and I could not block eir thoughts. Therefore, I stopped rubbing and hugging em and explained what was wrong. Ey tried to explain to me that ey could not help it. I did not understand most of eir reasoning of having been hardwired to one sex, because the transgendered humans that I knew were not like that and ey emself had acted against the system already. Ey got so sexist that eventually I had to tell em to leave and then made em do it.

I was very depressed that night and cried, but when the ambassador came the next day, I was glad. I decided that the next time, if there would be another situation like this, I would go hang out with the transgendered humans instead.


I did my work there for seven more months and got along with the humans fairly well, though I was pretty sure that if I would not have been able to spend time with the ambassador and some fellow agents, I would have lost my mind. In the beginning, when I looked at them, I saw little more than a rigid, stupid, sex-crazed and over-expressive animal with no organized manner of thinking. Over time I learned to understand their minds more, began to see some sense in their actions. First it made me scared – had I really come as low as to understand humans? I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it was not harmful to me.

Then one day we got a phone call from a information center, asking for some suggested courses of action in a very strange case. I was explained that the two agents who had been assumed dead months ago were actually alive and had been in the possession of some humans who had performed questionable experiments on them. It was rather clear that there indeed was a regenian speaking to us, but I certainly did not believe what ey was saying. We set up a meeting in the city they were in. There were some unclarities about the human who had helped them, though, but I said that if they needed to be clarified, we would work on that once we got there.

After the call was over, I discussed with my superiors and some human relations professionals. Reikatogi-G-Qem, the one who had called, had claimed to have been imprisoned by some illegal researchers and scientists in the Tampere University of Technology and that the humans had both installed cybernetic implants on em and managed to mess up eir and eir twin's telepathic abilities. We took a long time to discuss our courses of action. It sounded fairly absurd and to our knowledge, humans had not made much progress in cybernetics. Also, since they knew nothing about telepathy, it did not sound plausible that they could have messed up any telepathic abilities. Of course this all depended on our information on humans and even a little on their willingness to reveal them to us, and that was the weakest part of it – we just did not have any actually verified facts and no way to know. We could easily come up with several ways to explain how this case was possible. We prepared for the most probable cases: 1) Reikatogi was telling the truth and we would only need to talk and take em and eir twin to some hospital facility for examination and possible therapy. 2) It was a set-up, meaning that some human had somehow made em say whatever ey said. We thought that the most probable ways for this were that either they were only threatening em, but if the cybernetic implants were real, it could be possible that they had discovered technology with which they could control em completely. We doubted they could have made Reikatogi speak in such a complicated manner if that was the case, though. That, however, did not cancel out the possibility. 3) Ey had been made to think that the humans had done those things to em. Again, it would have been hard to accomplish according to our knowledge. 4) It was a setup by em for unknown reasons. This seemed like the most likely explanation.

We flew to the spot using a helicopter. Though a relatively efficient and fast vehicle, it was far too loud for my tastes. I did not approve of a vehicle making obvious damage to hearing organs, of all things. I went there with two fellow agents and five humans, two of whom were operators for the helicopter. We flew over landscapes that I could have watched for a longer time. We passed small cities, fields, villages, houses, narrow roads, and most of all, forest. There were countless square kilometers of forests, just variable enough to not be boring and homogenous enough to not be an eyesore. They hid houses, animals, plants and all kinds of life under them, and whenever I saw something, it was only by glance. Plants were small, they were soon hidden by more trees. Animals were fast, they ran away and hid in the forest when they saw the helicopter. I was intrigued. Of course I had been in a forest, both at home and in here, but I had not been as deep in it as I could have been. I had lived all my life in cities and constructs. I decided that I would like to take a long vacation to go hike in some forest once this thing was over so much that I could hand it to someone else.

I saw the two regenians and the human before we landed. We did not land right next to them, but a bit further, and then walked to them. As I neared them, I started sensing something disturbing. It was as if the Reikatogi siblings, who I by now recognized by look, radiated some telepathic energy that was poisonous to my mind. I felt disgusted and stopped. My companions did the same, just as disgusted. The humans asked what was wrong. I did not reply and neither did my companions. It was obvious something was different with their minds and abilities, but we could not discern whether it had been done to them or if they had somehow done it to themselves. I had a silly thought that it was the result of mind-merging of two such similar people – my companions were amused as well, they knew about the mating habits of the two. Nevertheless, one second's amusement was clearly not enough to lighten the situation, nor it should have. We brought up strong telepathic shields that helped us ignore the disgust. The Reikatogi siblings were not pleased, I could tell that.

As we got closer, I could see also the alleged cybernetic implants. They did look like such, but it was hard to know for sure. For all we knew, with this display, they could be robots with an erratic telepathic feedback generator. However, if that was the case, I doubted they would have been able to express feeling, unless it was a reaction to our feelings. But humans could certainly not achieve THAT. I had the fleeting thought that someone from Regen could hypothetically be responsible for it, and my brain spent too long trying to figure out that conspiracy. Reikatogi-G-Kem, the one without cybernetic implants, was very nervous and eir telepathic radiation was strong enough to annoyingly breach our shields. Ey almost seemed like ey was panicking. Reikatogi-G-Qem apparently tried to control em, but the panic rather infected em. Even I and my companions became scared. Of course we were afraid to see what had happened to the young agents, but the panic that they arose in us was irrational. The irrational and irrelevant IRREVELANT should not affect the mind. If they did, it was a sign of mental defects. We panicked at this idea as well. It was an endless loop in circular reasoning.

It discharged by few dense ideas, thoughts and telepathic bolts. I only have a few memory fragments of what happened.

The helicopter operators seemed to have the clearest visual of what had happened. They said that all us five regenians had started to twitch and shake and the four humans were paralyzed due to fear, staring about them with panicking and confused eyes. The regenians had shouted something. A couple of visible telepathic bolts flew and hit no one directly. After a moment, the Reikatogi siblings went into the car that belonged to the human with them and drove away. I and my companions were confused or unconscious. One human who had been with us was also unconscious. The two other humans were sitting on the ground, trying to gather enough courage to get up. They finally did and woke us up. After that we were able to clear our minds of the incident.


The incident, then again, was far from clear. Amidst all my questions, hypotheses, half-truths and speculations, I was totally exhilarated by this enigma that yet made so little sense to me to have not made it at all. I even considered giving the case up to savor the feeling, to for as long as I would live remember that moment of perfect mystery. Not so much that the mystery itself would be perfect, because it certainly was not and could be, for a perfect mystery would never have even occurred to me. While perfect mysteries are fun to think up, they are uninteresting in the way that there is no way to examine it except in one's own mind. To the stray Terran I say: a lot of regenian fictive literature presents perfect mysteries, and one very known to Terrans is the existence of god-like entities – but no regenian could ever take it seriously; they serve to tickle one's mind about mysteries and what can be solved. Then I got too curious and decided that there were other mysteries that I could not explain that could keep me busy. This one was special to me because it was my trade. I could solve this. This was my mystery. Mine. Then I shared it, because I could not solve it alone as far as I could understand. The hardest thing for me to admit was that we might even need the help of humans, and that came to me as a revelation when I was thinking about how we could find out things about the human who had been seen with the Reikatogi siblings. Then I asked it.

I went to a police station and waited while the slow computer tried to search the human's face from the database. I did not trust the humans to give me information. One police officer was quite insistent on giving me information about the vehicle our little fugitive party of three had used.

"The register plates read AWF-295." I knew that was how they kept track of vehicles. "It was rented from this place seven days ago, for a two-week period." The human showed me text that looked like an address. I was so uninterested that I did not even bother translating the text in my mind. "The owner of the place couldn't remember the renter but we got video footage." Then ey showed me a lousy recording showing a counter and one-third of a very large hall, with two little human shapes approximately to left from the center of the picture, facing each other. "The pictures you have and these show it's the same person." I practiced telepathic singing. Humans are a little sensitive to telepathy and so the human noticed what I was doing. "You aren't even listening to me, are you!"

"How could I NOT?" I shouted, very angry. Fortunately I have always been good at controlling my anger. Except in estrus, I mean. I saw no reason why my anger should not show in my tone, however. "You produce seemingly endless amounts of pressure waves that are quite pervious with respect to my distance from you and concerning the medium! My hearing range is different, yet it is very improbable that I would NOT hear you here and now! What I don't understand is WHY you keep saying those things to me!" I did not want to know why, because it was beyond stupidity. I wanted an apology.

The human was slightly stupefied and taken aback, but had the boldness to confront me. To my demise, the human told me why ey was explaining these things to me, and of course insulted my intelligence while at it. "Don't you understand that we can track the car with this information? We can put out an announcement. We have confirmed that the car was rented at this place at that time."

I did something very insulting then. An ignorant person such as ey should have been told what a fool ey was making of emself. What I did was to stare at em in the eyes, take a hold of my clavedels and hold them up, as if tied by a band.

Normally, clavedels do not bend like that. It does, however, no harm to put them like that, at least momentarily. On a longer term it has been observed to be uncomfortable. Still, the point was that there are regenians whose clavedels do naturally bend that way and are in fact standing up like that. It is a sign of serious mental retardation and handicap. Of course there are worse stages of retardation, but most of them do not present themselves so clearly visually, and since it is hard for a person of healthy mind to mimic an ill one mentally, like regenians would usually do, this case was a purely visual thing. It is very insulting and even most children do not forcibly bind a disfavored child's clavedels up like that.

The human, of course, stood there dumb and knew nothing of my insult. Then I just asked em to leave in the most polite manner I could achieve. "I would like to ask that you let me work in peace for a while." I could almost say that after my display, probably every regenian would have noticed the sarcasm. Most would have known why. The human did not notice anything.

"Well, alright, but I would like an explanation on why you disrespected me so much."

"SO WOULD I!" I shouted so loud that now everyone in the office and even the hallways looked at me. I continued sitting still in my chair, but my body was tense and my eyes probably aflame. I wanted to mind-cleanse the human right there and then. I restrained, though I doubt I would have been heavily punished for it.

After a small pause of shock, the human spoke again: "...What? I-I... didn't dis... Right? I can't tell... I'm confused."

I sensed calming confusion, sweet ignorance and inevitable uncertainty. It made me feel better instantly. I smiled and the resulting confusion was even sweeter. "Go. I do not wish to see you." I really, really did not want to give em information, but I figured that it would be more convenient than to risk this happening again. "Ask someone else and share what you hear with other humans."

Later I of course realized that if the Reikatogi siblings were indeed mentally lame or a hoax, the human with them might have been stupid enough so that information of the car might have been useful. It turned out that the fugitives were not that stupid. The car was found days later in a forest; it had been abandoned for days, apparently since the day we had met them.

I also found information on the human who had been with them. Cenral Lekala, a biophysicist and expert on cybertechnological implants. Ey was a very nice piece in my little mystery puzzle. 39 Terran years old, no established family. Eir parent was with us and did not know anything. Eir other parent (who I did not even acknowledge first) was just as clueless. Eir twin was also clueless, but concerned. I found I liked that the twin, Thyro Lekala, felt genuine concern. I thought it was human. Ey had good mental protections.

I began to put things together in my mind, to solve the puzzle. Technically and as far as the humans cared, my thinking was useless, since so much depended on us just finding them. I could not yet predict their intended actions. Getting a report out of nowhere was unlikely; Reikatogis could hide and Cenral Lekala was just a human among humans.


In time, we did get a report. Some people had seen a strange regenian wandering around in Tomsk, along the river Ob in a nation the humans called Russia. I had taken a vacation and hiked a little and had liked it. I resented that we had to leave this nation, because other nations had languages that disturbed most regenians, me included.

I could now deduce their general goal: running away. What were they running away from? Us? Us regenians, who were telepathic and had just lately mastered spacetravel? I laughed at that idea and thought it more possible that they might be running from humans. Then I thought up a bunch of reasons for it while I sent a bunch of humans to do my job and went to interrogate people at Cenral's workplace, the Tampere University of Technology.

I first talked to the whole place's principal, who knew nothing. Then I spoke to the head of the department under which Cenral Lekala had worked and found out that ey did not know anything either, but ey had very serious doubts about the issue. Ey was very worried that if it was real, ey might be fired from eir job. Ey wanted to believe that there was nothing suspicious going on, but ey could not prove it and the way Cenral had left did not help eir wanted belief. I asked if I could talk to Cenral's colleagues. Most of them declined because they did not want to expose their minds to a telepath. I thought that it was a perfectly good excuse to hide the truth. I only spoke to two people who had known Cenral, and even they just mostly described Cenral's weirdness. From their descriptions and by my standards, the picture I got of Cenral seemed quite "normal". In order to honor our agreements with the humans, my superiors denied me from scanning some minds in secret. We could not be sure if and how the humans could have found it out, but my superiors thought it was not worth the risk.

The humans said that it was possible to examine the computers for suspicious information. That was done and it took longer than I would have liked. Our computers were faster. They found nothing, but could tell that some files had been erased in quite of a hurry. They were able to salvage a few files that had not been digitally shredded. The data on them was disturbing and spawned further investigation. Since a fake account had been created for the management of these files, it was not easy for the humans to find out who had done it. I could have found out and I argued that since we now knew that there was someone working behind the scenes here, it would be much faster if we just interviewed and I would tell whether they lied or not. They did not accept yet. Six employees quit anyway. 14 took a vacation. Everybody had a few sudden illnesses which were faked. The whole thing amused me, and it would have amused me more if it had not been so sad at the same time.

I got back to searching the three fugitives and found out that humans were bad at this nation-hopping thing. I was largely frustrated. They held international meetings about it and pondered what to do. That I respected, but it was frustrating because it could have been faster and more efficient.

One day some senior police officer or something (I really did not care about their ranks, for everyone was obviously below me anyway, even though I had not set it that way; they had, and it amazed me why they had done it and then whined about it) started inviting me to meetings to discuss our preferred courses of action related to the Reikatogi siblings and the human with them. There were other people in the meetings as well, about 25–15 at a time. My fellow agents had gone to the spacestation, though I seem to recall that one of them was in some other nation taking part in the international discussions. I have a vague memory of daily rants about human languages and customs that were not written by me.

I never really listened to anything that was presented at the meetings and after the first time, I rarely said anything. I had thought most of their issues through a month ago and the others before the previous meeting. So I took it as an exercise in controlling myself. The humans were smart enough by me, but slow – what was to be expected, when they could not exchange thoughts and ideas directly, but had to use language, gestures and undefined meanings to do it? I decided that I would say something nice to the presenters every time, except if their presentation was utter crap. Then again, in the crappy cases, I did have to think about how the human, Cenral, would act with two regenians (provided they had even stayed together), and then I did think that through and found that the issue was still crap.

One day I came into the meeting with the sort of hurried feeling that something has been forgotten, and specifically that I had forgotten something. I could not figure out what, though, so I just sat down. I did not feel like listening at all. The one giving presentation today was good-looking for a human. I looked at the title of the presentation and the first three sentences and came to the conclusion that this was one of the better ones. I decided that I would compliment the human when ey was done.

By the fourth slide of the presentation, I had forgotten about everything and just stared at the human. Yes, ey would make a rather nice regenian if ey had clavedels and blue skin and no earflaps. I sat there stupidly, my feet on a chair, my arms crossed over my chest and something quite nice slowly awoke in me. The embarrassing thing was that the humans noticed it before I did. I did not get psychofeedback. They had an eye, a physical one, for things that were distracting to their minds. And my genital sticking up under my clothing was apparently a greatly disturbing thing. I first noticed it when the presenter started staring at my crotch. Then a few more people started staring at me.

I took my feet off the chair, pulled my legs together and put my hands on my lap. I was not embarrassed as such, because it was a normal thing that frequently happened to people who forgot about their estrus periods. The humans, then again, channeled their feelings into me and suggested that I should be embarrassed. I detested it and made every one of them feel sexual excitement. They squirmed a little bit more in their chairs and the presenter sat down on a chair. I got up, with my genital still sticking out, and said: "Hey, it's vacation time!" And walked away.

I was frustrated that no one had bothered to remind me about my estrus by sending my fellow agent down on the planet to keep me company. Then I found out that they had and ey arrived just shortly after I had quit the meeting, and the reason I had not gotten a message about it was because the batteries of my communication device had been drained. Well. Then I had sex for 12 Terran days.

The humans achieved nothing while I was having sex. I was more lenient with them now, though – it was not like I was in a hurry. It only felt like a waste of life, but what with the last 12 days, it had stopped feeling like such a waste. I came to yet another meeting and the amount of participants had dropped to about ten. I asked why this was and got a sense of rejection. I did not hear what I was told.

"Should I come to the meetings?" I asked then.

"Why should you? It's not like you've listened to any damn thing we've said here. Do you have any idea how insulting that is?"

"Do you understand that it's very hard NOT to listen?"

"I don't think you understand the meaning of listen. You're talking about hearing. Listening is the process of hearing and then understanding or processing the heard information."

For once, a human had something important to say. My expression changed and I thanked em. "Thank you for telling me this." The human felt very confused and I smiled. I tried to translate a saying in my own language and failed. Instead, I said: "I understood the issues before they were presented. I thought that this ritual served as some sort of teaching experience for the younger attendees."

The human looked frustrated. "Well, I had hoped you would have participated." I liked the way ey said it enormously. It was mostly due to me not knowing the language very well.

"Where is the one who gave a presentation just before my vacation?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"Eir idea was one of my better ones, so I thought I could compliment em."

"Isn't now a little late for that?" Ey meant both in time and emotion. I understood what ey meant, but the concept was unfamiliar.

"If you think it will do more harm to compliment than not to, I will not."

"...I don't know."

"Well then."

"Ey's in office 2316." I left and ignored the fact that the human wanted me to speak more. I did not understand the need and it did not seem to cause trouble.

The human in office 2316 was working, so I waited until there was a gap in the working. Ey flinched at seeing me and felt aversion. I could not help it, it was not my fault that ey had conditioned emself that way. I was about to start speaking when ey said: "Leave."

I did not quite know why this was. The human had moderate mental shielding and at the moment, I wanted to solve a mystery. "Why?"

The human laughed at me, but was not amused at all. It was perhaps one of the most bitter laughs I have heard. "You ruined my presentation. You had the nerve to stare at me like a damned pervert."

At that point I noticed that the human had said "like a pervert" and not "like the pervert that you are" which I heard often. This human did not consider me inherently perverted. Then I looked at em a bit more closely and noticed that the reason I had liked looking at em was because ey was transgendered. I smiled and the human was confused. I figured that I could just give a simple explanation. "My estrus period was starting; had I remembered that, I would have stayed at my apartment. I'm sorry if it disturbed you. I came here to tell you that your presentation was one of the best ones I heard." The human was taken aback and obviously doubted my honesty, so I added: "Yes, I did listen. I seemed not to very often because I had thought of the ideas before." The human did not oppose me now, so I said goodbye and left.