Author's Note: Okay, I guess think of this as a prologue, of sorts, but mostly just some explanatory stuff. There's nothing here that will be part of the plot of the story, but it will explain what the $!&# is going on. I tried to be 'clever' with the first part ( Old Habits ), and since I'd only ever done Drabbles, I made every paragraph exactly 100 words. Yeah, cheesy, but I'm easily entertained.
The setting is more than 1000 years in the future.
Terran race information:
They have begun to explore their own identity as a race, much of the named exploration leading up to and right after the First Solar War being done by majority Siriun astronauts.
Not interested as a whole in science, Siriun scientists are rare but not unheard of. The TEACHERS were designed by a mixed team with representatives from all four Terran races and from the Ffram, Gloxit, and Kqril, during the Hundred Year Armistice. The team was led by the greatest Siriun scientist known -- who, after learning about the way dogs were thought about by Humans throughout history, named himself Dr. Fetch Roverboy as a joke. Ironically, by total coincidence (and to his great amusement), his primary lab assistant was a Human named Elmer Fudd. Most professional athletes from Terra are Siriun, simply due to their great agility.
They revealed themselves as sentient only a few years after the Phins made their presence known. Sentients were protected and given rights, after all. Still quadruped, and they have to have translators or translation modules to make themselves understood by any of the other Terran races or the Ffram. The Gloxit and Kqril are able to understand Siriun speech. They use 12% - 20% of brain capacity.
For millinia they hid themselves, with some of the humans realizing they were as intelligent as themselves (though few suspected they were more so -- notable exception is the author Douglas Adams from the 20th Century OCD). Dolphins, porpoises, and whales. The mammals of the seas. All the old UFO sightings? That was the Phins moving about the planet, checking on Humans. They can reproduce Human, Chanteki, Ffram, and Gloxit speech along with their own. Siriun and Kqril languages still elude their natural abilities and they need to have translation. They use 24% - 36% of brain capacity.
Once outed, they freely bring their manipulators to the surface of the oceans, and freely use the other languages of Terra that they are able to. The Aquanauts were physically adapted to travel through the seas without being discovered by Humans. A Phin has what can be called hands and arms instead of flippers, but their hands and arms are capable of flattening into flipper-esque configuration for smoothly sliding through waters. They are webbed, and have cartilage that "locks" them into place. The larger Phins, descended from the whales, tend to spend their time in thought and conversation and have been some of the great scientists of the last thousand years. The ancient term, "think tank," amuses them, greatly.
Phins are responsible for the generators that are able to make colonization more possible. As you might expect, much of Phin technology is water oriented in viewpoint. The history of the Phin is something they have yet to completely share with the Humans of Terra.
They were originally called the Latecomers, a term that is considered a crude and rude epitaph now, and included two classes of primate that were once known as orangutans and chimpanzees -- and the mixed race offspring of the two (which tend toward the higher end of the intelligence spectrum of Chanteki) called Chimputans or Oranzees depending on which seemed dominant in the offspring. The Chanteki still use these four terms to denote the differences within their society, much like ancient Humans judged each other by the amount of pigment in their skins.
They are sentient, but as a race not as intelligent as most. They use 4% - 14% of brain capacity. They are still fighting for Civil Rights of their kind, as besides their general lack of intelligence, there is still the idea among some Human worlds that the "prophet" Pierre Boulle's words that imply that Chanteki with to make Humanity subservient must be true. It is an uphill battle fought against by the Ape movement, whose slogans include "the damn, dirty apes are biding their time!"
However, the Chanteki are respected Galactically for their creativity. Most types of artistic expression are dominated by the wonder of the Chanteki. They have an aptitude for capturing appealing images and feelings that are representative of all four Terran races. As Terrans encountered other races, the Chanteki developed an ability to speak to the artistic souls of the Gloxit and Ffram, as well. It is quite common, in fact, to have Chanteki artists present at Gloxitavi monasteries. They have, unfortunately, been unable as of yet to secure a single Kqril to sit for an interview so they might find out what pleases them artistically.
The non-Terran races are more complicated.
Gloxitari and Gloxitani each make up about 38% of their population, with the Gloxitavis making up 23% of the whole, and the last 1% are the Gloxitavin.
They all have an ethereal quality that sparks a general instinct toward trusting them. Hence the saying, "Never buy anything from a Gloxit you've met more than once." They are the experts in the Galaxy on any kind of travel, be it simply knowledge of appropriate modes or places to stay on your route, or how to repair any kind of vehicle known -- even to the point of improving a non-Gloxit designed mode of transportation on the fly (no pun intended).
They are so far ahead of anything that not just Terrans, but Gloxit and Ffram have, that they claim at times to be expert in anything and everything. Physically, not much is known of them, other than that their home planet has a gravity low enough to require a Kqrillian venturing out from Kqril Prime (Note: Race Naming Convention used for their planet name - the Star Naming Convention that is less popular denotes the home planet of the Kqril as Jvkaq Prime. Prime in both instances refers to the Primary Populated Planet, not the planet nearest the star.) must wear an exoskeletal environmental enclosure (E3). Another reason for the E-three is to provide a more comfortable breathing atmosphere. They are capable of processing the Nitrogen rich atmospheres of Terran, Ffram, and Gloxit preferred worlds, but it becomes painful after a few hours. Their home only having about 11% concentration of Nitrogen, as opposed to the 78% of Terra or the 82% preferred by the Gloxit.
Their planet is a one with a much more phosphorous-laden atmosphere, their air actually phosphoreses with a reddish glow to Terrans, Gloxit, and Ffram. There are rumors that their sense of sight is actually sensitive to a slightly different band of visible light, and that the Terran atmosphere has a glow to them as theirs does to Terrans. Another rumor is that Kqril above a certain age actually glow themselves from the high phosphorous content.
The "brag" that they are expert in everything has yet to be proven false.
Much to the annoyance of... well, everyone.
They have rather juvenile senses of humour and love pranks. They also love logic and they get their name from their originally designed function -- which they still serve in that capacity more than anything else. Think a cross between Mycroft, the HOLMES IV of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Mr. Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the robots of Asimov's creation with the Three Laws more as the Three Really-Good-Ideas.
They do not claim any of the Four Systems as their home, and instead think of themselves as a purely Spacer Race. There are TEACHERS that spend their entire existences planetside, but it's usually for a purpose. They developed into a semi-hive mind, that is, they're still individuals, but any member can Access. Access is their term for linking into the greater database shared by all TEACHERS.