Humans can warp probability. 

I read this book, a hard sci fi novel in high school. Fucked if I can remember the title but the basic premise was that there was a brain-nanite thing that you could inhale and it would change things. Also the Aliens enclosed the whole solar system in some sort of shield. Nothing in, nothing out. 

There was a woman who was part of an experiment in probability. Her brain-mod would allow her to not only predict, but alter the ‘up’ or ‘down’ spin of some sort of ion or another that was completely random. 

But think about it. Humans are against ALL ODDS the craziest, most intelligent, cruelest, most compassionate, gentlest, harshest beings. There’s no predicting a human because we don’t actually follow the universal laws of probability. To attempt to graph our behavior patterns in a sane quantifiable manner leaves you a little nuts. We perservere, survive. We have NO CHILL when it comes to some things, and are extremely lax about others. We can’t really be predicted, because we’re always altering our realities. 

Even our greatest heroes face ‘impossible’ odds and survive. Especially, even. A human is at their shining best when the entire universe is in a point of flux. When choices become the most important things we have. We stare into the blackness between the stars and wonder. Hope. Dream. Wish. We change energy with a thought. We reach out and touch not just things but people, hearts, minds. 

Aliens just watch us and are either baffled, indulgent, or terrified. We’re tiny beings in the grand scheme. Numerous but fragile. Perfectly adapted to hostile environs. We have taken aggressive adaptation to the point of modifying our bodies for our environments synthetically. We can take a situation from ‘we’re all gonna die’ to ‘holy shit we lived’ with just one flash of genius. We can stare into the face of danger and smile. We live for those life or death adrenaline scenarios. Some of us have made entire careers out of being batshit crazy. 

Humans warp probability. 

It’s technically classed as a psi ability in some alien lexicons, but one that’s passive. There’s various grades of it too. Captain Kirk, for instance, is like ‘Let’s make some noise’ and they all survive. Han Solo says ‘Never tell me the odds!”. Arthur Dent reaches into a bag and produces the question that fits the answer. River Tam turns the tide of battle with a mental flip of a switch. Samantha Carter again and again builds doorways between stars, sometimes with nothing more than her wits and the equivalent of a paperclip and tinfoil. Jane Foster survives longer than anyone else ever has with the literal force of chaos flowing through her veins. If she wasn’t human, she’d never have lived long enough to save her world. 

These are all people who are extraordinary, who through their sheer humanity have built new futures. 

Aliens can’t quanitfy us because we’re chaos in motion. Rogue physics, the edges of cosmic constants. Variables with no fixed value. We make choices, and reach out and touch other beings, and we take logic and probability and the most likely outcome of things and twist them into new shapes. It’s more than just creative thinking, high-stakes adaptation, or even empathy. 

A human can literally even the odds. 

That’s why alien crews like keeping humans around. We’re crazy and unpredictable and able to survive just about anything. We’re loyal for the most part, to love or money or Crew. Once a human decides that you’re theirs, they will literally warp the universal constants for their crew. 

That’s our alien superpower, I think.