A: I didn’t know that humans spit acids
H: uhg we usually don’t, I think I ate something toxic
A: I see so the acid is used to neutralize the toxins
H: it really isn’t. Get back I’m gonna blow another chunk -- Anon Guest
[Offensensitivity warning: descriptions of regurgitation]
The Human digestive system is a mass of toxic substances in valved tubes. -- Gryxnu's Comparative Anatomy, 236 GalStand years before Human Admission into the Galactic Alliance.
221 Years before the Human Admission...
Human Bob evicted a stream of acid and other substances that Medik Gryxnu's livesuit registered as dangerous and informed on procedures to safely neutralise it. Step one included powdered cellulose. Step two was to seal off the area to prevent incidental contagion. Fortunately, a Medik's livesuit has extras that untrained lay people just don't have access to. Step three was where it started to get complicated.
Air recycling into biohazard-burn mode, which meant it and everything carried in it went through a superheating unit before it was cooled back to tolerable temperatures and fed back into the room from whence it came. And what an array of chemicals. It was frankly astonishing.
"I didn't know that humans spat acids," said Gryxnu.
Human Bob coughed. "We usually don't... I think I ate something bad."
Well, that narrowed the field of potential trouble to any one of the thousands of things that Human Bob had crammed into her maw in the space of less than forty-eight Standard Hours. Nevertheless, Medik Gryxnu attempted to understand. "Ah. So the acid is used to neutralize the toxins?"
"Nuh.... it really isn't." Human Bob burped in an ominous fashion. "Ge' back, I'mgunnablowanotherchunk..."
The regurgitation was liquid, and not at all related to 'chunks' as far as Gryxnu could figure. Humans had confounding terms for everything and worse, those terms became memetically infectious. Nevertheless, ze ran the scannable content past the ever-growing list of things that were toxic to Humans. In the process, ze found an awful lot of compounds that were toxic to everyone else.
Ze did what ze could for their ailing Ship's Human, monitoring her body for stress signals beyond the impressive Human tolerances and administering what care ze could whilst containing the pathogens.
When ze got a moment, ze would have to write some papers about this. Or at minimum, some kind of log...
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / focalpoint]
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