The Assistant plopped a sad-looking bowl of goop onto her tray and sighed. Choices at the TPL cafeteria weren’t very appetizing, pretty much like choices at any cafeteria in the galaxy.
Wilted salads. Suspiciously perky fruit salads that tasted slightly of fermentation. Steaming trays of mystery meat in mystery sauce in an array of mystery flavors: dark brown, that unsettling cream of mushroom color, dark green, probably spicy red, and the purple one, which she was not going to try.
She went for a couple of cookies, and a few pieces of fruit. The goop sat there, quivering slightly, unsettlingly like Glorph, only without the occasional eyeball. As she carried the tray to a table, she watched it slide around, and imagined tentacles coming out of it.
The room was full of the desultory diners who had no choice but to eat at the cafeteria for lunch. Coworkers waving arms as they continued a debate from their office, solitary folks grabbing a moment with a good book or just mindlessly scrolling on their personal devices. Whole tables of people scrolling mindlessly, lounging on plastic and steel chairs designed to make them uncomfortable enough to move on and make room for another patron.
She found a spot at a pretty empty table and poked a spoon dispiritedly into the goop. It did not scream, recoil, or otherwise react, so she tentatively gave it a taste.
It was surprisingly good! She was addressing it vigorously when a shadow crossed over her food.
“Zobek! Ni lu bisa wexa tu?” A large and handsome Hansian sat down across from her. His cheekbones looked like they’d been sculpted. His shoulders were broad. His biceps bulged. He looked like he had stepped out of central casting for a Drawermol movie hero, except of course for his glasses.
“Oh, hello?” she said, and adjusted the glasses on her own face.
“Raluan Lewakrest,” he said, introducing himself. He was big and solid enough he fidgeted in the chair, and seemed completely unaware of how physically imposing he was. She shrank back a bit in her seat, as he unloaded an impressively stacked plate of mystery meat, salad, rice, and drinks from his tray. “This place is amazing!” he said, looking around the utterly bland cafeteria. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
“That’s… a lot of food!” she blurted, instantly regretting it.
“I know,” he said, looking abashed. “I missed breakfast today, and lunch, and will probably miss breakfast again tomorrow, so I figured I better load up now since I may not get to later.”
“It’s not healthy to miss meals like that?” she said, as he reached for one of his drinks and basically drained it all in one long gulp. She stared at his bobbing Adam’s apple as he drank and drank, and when he slammed the glass down and wiped his mouth with his other arm, she noticed that his hand made the glass look tiny.
“I know, I know. My mom used to say, tuma le nayi, momo le puna. Uh, it sort of means ‘eat when the food comes and keep your boat full.’”
“Sorry, I don’t know much about Hansian culture,” the Assistant said. “Keep your boat full?”
“It just means don’t waste what you’re given. Ooh, is that goop?” Raluan reached his impossibly muscled arm towards her bowl and was about to dip a massive finger in when he stopped.
“Oh stars, I am so sorry. I almost stuck my finger in your food. Acting like home again. Sipis, I’m such an idiot!”
“No, no it’s okay,” she said, even though it was decidedly not okay. But his good cheer was somewhat overwhelming, and there was something about him that seemed like a little boy lost. If she told him to keep his long-fingered hands to himself he might actually do it, and how often did someone like this even speak to her rather than gaze past her like she wasn’t even there?
He’d already pulled his hand back. “No, no it’s not… I’m sorry. I don’t even know you!” Then he grinned at her full blast. “I’d like to, though! I’m new here, you know!”
His eyes were absurdly blue, like tropical ocean water. Oh dear.
#
Raluan was a new arrival, working in the new immigration facility that was being set up. “Nothing exciting,” he said, “just sorting out the filing system.”
She loved filing systems, of course, and they immediately fell into a deep discussion. Immigration’s system was suffering from facet collation drift, as the settler taxonomy was outgrowing the original schema around function and origin.
“I’m worried about canonical path collapse between the personality collations and the self-reported profession logs — they’re resolving through the same administrative root.”
He kept pushing his glasses up his broad Hansian nose as he talked, and he had a habit of pulling them off his face and rubbing under one eye. But his passion for what he did was contagious.
“So you have a systems-level problem of category entropy over time,” she offered, and he was off to the races again, salting his speech with Lewa Han she didn’t understand, waving his arms wildly. She couldn’t help but laugh.
“But enough about me, what are you doing here in this amazing food emporium? What was your day like?”
She couldn’t tell him, of course. Not after the day she’d had. Not the whole truth, anyway.
“Well,” she said, “it’s related to Immigration actually? I work over in Special Projects, and I’ve been asked to come up with a branding campaign for…”
His huge eyes got even wider. “You work for Bunten?” He slammed both palms down on the table, and both trays jumped. Wow, he was strong. He just stared at her. “You work for Bunten,” he said, caressing the word with his tongue like it was candy.
She looked away. “I mean, I’m just her assistant, it’s nothing special…”
He took her hands in his. They were warm, and soft. “No, it is special. You’re special. Special Projects, that’s…” He let her hands go, and threw his arms up in the air. Her hands felt cold where he had stopped touching them. “That’s the pinnacle. Only the best of the best get to work there. It’s real problem-solving.” He looked at her, clearly very impressed.
“Oh, nonsense,” she said. “It’s not that big a deal…” But she trailed off, because she knew it actually was, especially given what she had learned about her job. “Uh, I mean, a huge chunk of my day was spent catching Charli?”
“Charli?” he said, leaning in.
“Yeah, he’s this sort of space otter that was caught nosing around the docking bay, and so they sent him to Special Projects because that seems to be where all the weird stuff gets sent? That’s a lot of what I file away there.”
“A space otter? We have luhari back home, they’re good luck! But they can’t fly in space. They wouldn’t be able to breathe. How does Charli breathe anyway? Or withstand the radiation? Wow. Does he guide lost spaceships home, like luhari do? Not spaceships, boats, they guide boats. They play tricks too sometimes.”
The flood of words was a lot, but she managed to say “Tricks, that he does.” She had no idea about any of the rest of it, given that Charli had spent most of his time running inside the walls of the giant wall-sized computer and monitor bank.
“You can’t possibly spend your day chasing an otter,” he said. “That doesn’t have anything to do with immigration. Explain more!” He leaned forward again. This time, he did dip a finger in her goop, and then delicately licked it off his finger. Fascinating.
“Wow, that’s good.” He looked surprised.
“I know, right? Um, so, what I’m actually working on is that we need branding for the immigration program? You know, now that we’re expanding in this sector, whole new waves of humans from all the planets are finally being allowed out into the Garden, and we need something that makes it seem less…”
“Intimidating?” He leaned back and crossed his arms. Biceps bulged.
She squeaked. “Terrifying?”
“Terrifying? Is it? I mean, the Garden is wonderful! I never dreamt that it would be so… amazing! Shinar seems so small to me now.”
“A planet nearly got eaten today!” she said.
He had the grace to look abashed again. “Sipis, I know. I know. It’s not safe out there. But it’s still magical. I mean, it’s a galaxy where there are singing asteroids and space otters and talking tentacles and…”
“Talking tentacles?”
He looked somber for a moment. “Yeah… I know, the Adversary is no joke. It’s… evil actually, I shouldn’t make light of it. Bug in the programming. I talk like that when I get nervous. Makes it seem smaller, like a glitch in the system… I…” He froze suddenly, a grimace on his face. She almost reached out.
Then Raluan shook off the serious moment and grinned. “So you need a way to make it all seem welcoming! Well, the luhari welcome us when we come back into port. Maybe your Charli can do something similar. When the poor huddled masses teeming in their millions show up at my workstation to get their stamps and profession certifications, maybe they need a friendly luhari to offer them hospitality!”
“And help,” she added. “The point of the program is that it’ll be a contact point, a liaison for new arrivals?”
He slammed his hands on the table again. It was hard enough the bowl of goop jumped and spattered. “A hospitality and resource liaison!”
Goop had landed in her hair.
“You see!” He was grinning wildly. “Hurl. Hurl!”
She was picking the goop out of her hair with a napkin, utterly embarrassed.
“No, I don’t, I…”
“H! R! L! Initiative! Charli!”
She was confused. But he had grabbed his own napkin.
“Hold still,” he ordered. Then he dabbed at her hair, then her cheek. “You’ve got some here…” He dabbed by her nose. “And here…” He was close, leaning over the table. She could feel his warm breath. He ran a finger down a loose strand of her hair, pulling goop out. Then he popped his finger into his mouth, sucked the goop off, and sat back. “Mm, so good!”
Flustered, the Assistant stood. “I have to go.”
He was crestfallen. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get delicious goop all over you.”
“It’s fine, really, I just need to get back to work,” she said, holding her tray in front of her like it was a defense.
“Well, don’t forget. Space otter. Mascot. The name is almost there already!”
The lightbulb came on. “Harlie,” she said. “The… hospitality and resource liaison initiative?”
He grinned. “A celestial initiative. C. H. A. R. L. I.”
She smiled. “That… actually works?”
“I hope I see you again, miss!” he said, standing suddenly. One of his drink glasses tipped over, but it was empty and didn’t make that big a mess. He swept some sort of Hansian bow, and declared, “Where the waves go, yes — may your boat be steady.”
“You, you too?”
He grinned. “I hope I see you again.”
As she walked away, she admitted to herself she felt the same way. But visions of cartoon otters were already dancing in her head.
#
Raluan Lewakrest rounded the corner of the hallway that led to the kitchens. When he got to the blank part, no one was coming either way. He tapped a quick pattern on the wall, and it slid open.
Inside it was dark, and the circuitry’s glow was comforting. As the secret door slid shut, he pulled his useless glasses off his face and tucked them in a pocket. He cracked his neck, and rubbed at his eye more firmly than usual.
The eyeball withdrew in its socket, irising away like an unfolding flower. From within his skull the telescoping sights of his true eye unfolded across his face and snapped into place. As he dropped his disguise, digital code began to scroll across his vision, and the augments and circuits popped out from his skin. Muscles coiled more, and the ribbing of the conduits and cords of his artificial arm became visible.
:: WARDEN LEWAKREST, :: came the voice into his auditory implants. :: REPORT. ::
“Subject is unquestionably expert in filing systems and library science. As briefed, she works directly with the Commissioner. It’s possible she was responsible for the destruction of the Artifact, but I doubt it. She seems inoffensive and timid.”
:: THE PROBABILITY OF THE ARTIFACT WANDERING PAST BUOYS BROADCASTING MUSICALS SEEMS VERY LOW. ::
“Agreed, sir. But in the interview, I couldn’t detect any ulterior motives or Clave sympathies.”
:: VERY WELL. CONTINUE TO ENGAGE. WE CANNOT TOLERATE HUMAN INSUBORDINATION LEADING TO MORE DESTRUCTION OF THE LEGACY OF OUR MASTERS. ::
“No, sir. The loss of the Artifact was a terrible blow.”
:: INDEED. WE CANNOT TAKE ACTION AGAINST BUNTEN ON THE EVIDENCE. SO CORRECTIVE MEASURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN. ::
“Sir?”
:: BUNTEN OFFERED OTHER WORLDS INFECTED BY THE ABERRATION IN TRADE. WE DO NOT KNOW THOSE COORDINATES. BUT WE DO KNOW THE WORLD THAT THE ARTIFACT SOUGHT FOR ITS NOURISHMENT. ::
“Pyromycis?”
:: YES. IT IS NO MORE. ::
“Sir. The rules must be followed.”
:: YES. ::
The Servitor voice paused.
:: WE DESTROYED A FEW MORE WORLDS IN THE SAME SYSTEM WHILE THERE. THE MESSAGE SHOULD BE RECEIVED. YOU HAVE DONE WELL, WARDEN. ::
Warden Raluan Lewakrest felt the programmed sense of satisfaction rise within him, the feeling he got when the rules were followed, and the order of the Galaxy was maintained. The feeling of clean code, fast execution, and no bugs in the system. He held on to that feeling until he felt the Servitor disconnect and the link broken. Until his systems told him he was no longer watched.
Then he let out a vast staggering breath, pushed those feelings away, and sank down against the wall. A system’s worth of planets, he thought to himself. All those lives.
He recited the secret mantra to himself. “The goal is reprogramming. The goal is reprogramming. The goal is respect.”
Then he stood, his usual iron resolve reasserting itself. He could put up with their rigidity and callousness if he and the other Wardens could just reach that goal. As long as he didn’t let the feeling of power the implants gave sweep him away. As long as he didn’t let the feeling of clean code sweep his whole mind away.
He slid the panel open, shifting from one role to another as he did all day every day, his cybernetic implants folding back into his flesh. He banished the lingering seductive feeling of the Servitor whispers in his mind.
Someday, he swore, they’d respect human life. And in the meantime, he’d continue to do their bidding, and spy, and lie. And probably ruin some lives himself along the way.
But he had to admit, she was kind of cute.
That might be a problem.