Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee

  Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

  Where even am I right now? I wondered.

  Oh no, we broke her, said the odd voice.

  The critical voice tried to sound gentle. Okay, slowly: you’re still in David’s apartment, eating some weird baby predator food and probably drinking a bit too much.

  Not literally! Like, where do I stand on this topic?

  Oh! said the critical voice. Sure, one sec, let me organize those thoughts for you. There was blessed silence inside my mind for a few moments, aside from some idle humming. I couldn’t quite recognize the tune. I rubbed my face. It felt numb, like I’d slept on it, and it wasn’t quite getting as much blood as it would have liked.

  Okay, said the critical voice. Problem One is our understanding of the predator-prey divide. David’s trying to say it doesn’t exist, but that’s ridiculous. Besides, that’s a core belief: it’s a structural support beam for the psyche, and we’re already straining it badly with this silly delusion of being a predator.

  It’s not a delusion! I’m a mighty hunter!

  Sure, whatever. In any event, we’re not messing with that anymore today.

  He mentioned card games, though, the odd voice pointed out. Maybe omnivores get to cheat the system a little and act as wild cards?

  I could swear I heard keyboard tapping noises from the critical voice. Okay, I think we can squeeze that rationalization in as a compromise, but I gotta warn you, you’re pushing it.

  I nodded, internalizing this new belief. Omnivores were allowed to be predator and prey at the same time, kinda. I still needed to explore my predator side, then, for balance and for understanding.

  Eugh, said the critical voice. Whatever. Problem Two is how the Arxur fit into all of this. We’re all over the place on this one. We’ve got the baseline hatred we learned growing up, plus the loss of our family and home, plus all the new vivid firsthand memories of wading through streets full of--

  I tensed up.

  --sorry, all the new memories of our escape from the Cradle, which I will not be elaborating on tonight.

  I relaxed, slightly.

  Right, so, we’ve got our obvious simmering hatred towards the Arxur, but we still need to reconcile that with being on Team Predator now. I heard the weird keyboard clacking noises again. It was like the critical voice was channeling my memories of the Fissan executive assistant character from The Game-Changers. Loved that show. Semi-historical business drama about the opening volleys of the Fissan-Nevok trade wars. That show was the other half of the reason I’d gotten so excited about expanding into new markets for my family’s winery. Business could be such an adventure.

  Glad you like the reference, said the critical voice, but let’s stay on topic. Displacing the blame for our suffering away from the Arxur people and towards the Arxur government would be a pretty handy way to like them and hate them at the same time, but we’d need more proof before we can accept that. This is the first time we’ve heard that the Arxur even have a government. Right now, all we’re doing is getting dangerously close to feeling bad for our people’s tormentors. We can’t deal with that psychologically right now. Ask for more info, first.

  And ask about that last cheese, too! suggested the odd voice. It was white and looked like it had bits of fruit inside of it. The cheese, not the voice.

  “I’m sorry, David,” I started, “but this is… a lot to take in all at once.” I started by tasting the cheese. It was just a bit too dry to spread, per se, but it was soft and crumbly enough to coat the top of the bread without too much difficulty, though bits of it tried to escape like tiny fleeing prey. I bit into it, and found a light and bright flavor with a fun tangy sweetness from the fruit.

  “Cranberry Wensleydale,” he said. “And yeah, sorry if that’s a bit heavy of a conversation topic.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, I asked. Just give me a minute to reset.” I chewed the cheese and bread happily, and emptied the can of wine into a glass. “What’s up with this wine, by the way? It’s similar to what my family sold.”

  David perked up. “Oh! Um, we call it cider when it’s made from apples, but I suppose it’s technically a type of wine, when you get down to it.” He examined the label of his own emptied can. “This one’s from upstate, yeah. It’s a bit late in the season, but if you want to tag along tomorrow on my little boating trip, there should still be some orchards with fresh apples.”

  I took a long sip of my cider, and then chased it with a nice long relaxing deep breath. “Yeah, honestly, just going anywhere sounds like it’d be a welcome diversion. Count me in.”

  David smiled. “I’ll be glad to have you! Besides, it might be useful to pick your brain a bit on what kind of cuisine or ingredients might go over well if I want to start catering to former Feds.”

  I laughed. “I liked the first two cheeses the best--the Camembert and the Roquefort--but I think the cranberry Wensleydale would go over well if you were trying to talk, say, a Venlil or a Zurulian into trying cheese. Lighter and simpler, and the fruit’s a nice touch.”

  David nodded. “Noted. You liked the funky ones, though?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. I suppose so. Call it a scavenger’s instinct, I guess. Do you guys do a lot with, uh, artisanally decayed food?”

  David thought about it. “We prefer the term aged, but yeah. It’s normally used with animal proteins, hence the cheese. Dry-aging steaks--slabs of meat from a cow, sorry--is a popular practice, and certain types of fish can ferment nicely, too.” He rubbed his scruffy chin, and wordlessly got up and walked over to his reading nook. He pulled a book from the shelf and moved it to a side table where it’d be easily in reach the next time he sat down to read. “There was a lot of research a little while back from a few chefs from Denmark and Sweden about root vegetables aged in koji mold,” he explained, as he sat back down. “That might be something worth looking into. Keep it vegan, but explore some funkier flavors.”

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  I blinked in surprise. “Do you cook vegan dishes a lot?”

  David shrugged. “Not often, but not never. Haute Cuisine tends to skew fairly meat-heavy since meat was an expensive luxury historically. There used to be sumptuary laws reserving the right to eat only meat to royalty alone.” He laughed. “But hey, it turns out, that’s actually super bad for humans, health-wise! We’re not Arxur. We do best when we eat a mix of different foods.” He popped some more fruit and nuts into his mouth to drive the point home. “I take a lot of influence from historical peasant dishes when I’m cooking for myself. It’s usually about 80% or so vegan, with one or two meat ingredients for flavor and some nutrition. Not too hard to work around that, though, if I’m cooking for someone with a meat allergy.”

  “Oh, that sounds pretty interesting, actually,” I said. “Can you give me a few examples of--”

  You’re stalling.

  “--why you thought this Arxur you met was a good person?”

  Magnificent segue.

  David stared at me in confusion for a moment, but ultimately didn’t comment on my stilted word choice. He’d only had a translator chip for a few months. He probably just thought the sentences that came out of it sounded weird sometimes. David took a deep breath. “Alright, so, I started with the assumption that Arxur were horrible monsters. I was polite, but cautious. But as we’re chatting, little things started slipping out of her that didn’t quite make sense under that assumption.” He started counting off points on his fingers. “One, Arxur aren’t supposed to feel empathy, but she seemed to have some for fellow predators.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Not for Gojids, they don’t.”

  “Er, at least, for Arxur and humans,” he said, backpedaling. “But when I pointed that out to her, you know how she reacted?”

  I shrugged. “She took offense to it?”

  David shook his head. “No. She was terrified.” He started serving himself some more cheese. I think he just didn’t want to look me in the eyes while he spoke well of my enemies. “She acted like she’d be punished if she got caught caring about others. So I think, ‘Huh, that’s weird’.” David took a bite of cheese. “I start noticing other little details, too. Like, we’re talking about farming practices, and I mention that human farms prioritize, ya know, producing the most food, and she’s just… weirdly surprised by this. Very ‘Huh, what a novel approach’.”

  I squinted at David in confusion. “Speaking as a farmgirl, what else would be the point of a farm?”

  David sighed. “Apparently, the Arxur get taught that it’s more important for farms to teach their cattle a lesson,” he said, a twinge of disgust curving his mouth.

  My quills rippled reflexively, and I tried not to think too much about who the Arxur kept as cattle. “But that’s stupid,” I said. “Counterproductive. Who teaches the Arxur to do that?”

  “Their government, apparently,” David said, bemused. “It’s called Betterment, and it’s a hereditary theocracy.”

  I reeled back in surprise. “They have a fucking religion?”

  Okay, so hear me out, said the odd voice.

  No. Absolutely not. The critical voice was adamant. The Christianity talk was an interesting novelty, but I’m preemptively vetoing any attempts to convert to any Arxur faiths.

  Oh come on, we haven’t even heard the tenets yet!

  No.

  But what if it holds the secrets to being a better predator?

  Not happening.

  You’re no fun!

  Accurate.

  “Yeah,” said David, sipping his cider, and staring into the void. “They’re taught… I’m not gonna get into it, but it's pretty bad. And she's just sitting there, happily enjoying the food I've made for her, and talking about Betterment's teachings--that good is evil, that cruelty is kindness--with this casual tone of a student rattling off something she's learned in school. The same way I'd summarize the Bill of Rights or the Ten Commandments. Just another thing you learn growing up."

  David looked at me, finally, and there was a weight behind his eyes. "They’re actively taught to be monsters. And then starved for good measure.” He shook his head. “Imagine having nothing to eat except other people, but being taught that this was good and proper because they didn't really count as people. Imagine being executed for treason if you ever tried to question that lesson. Imagine being so hungry that you never wanted to.”

  I genuinely struggled to imagine it. When you really broke it down, my government’s lies had been to make me less prone to eating people, not more. I’d never even tasted meat before. Gods, growing up on a thriving orchard, I’d never even really gone hungry before. But this wasn’t really about him asking me to imagine something, was it?

  He’s already seen where that road leads, the odd voice observed quietly. He hasn’t walked it himself, but humanity has been down that path before.

  Humanity’s history got fairly dark, if I recall, said the critical voice.

  But they turned back.

  David held his face in his hands. "So I peeled it back. All the little layers of her self-deception. I took it from her. First, I fed her. She said it was the first time she'd ever felt full. Ever. Then, I soothed her fear of reprisal. She was safe on Earth. On the human homeworld, she couldn't be faulted for obeying human rules over Betterment's. She wasn't blaspheming, she was showing respect to the local customs of a fellow predator." David sighed. "Then I tricked her.”

  I tried not to laugh and cry at the same time. It was a sad story, but… by the all gods, in the end, it was just the damned silver-tongued fae folk doing what they did best. "What was the trick?" I asked.

  David shrugged. "Bait and switch. I mentioned how quite a few of you guys resemble Terran animals? There's a couple Federation species where the nearest equivalent is actually a predator."

  I leaned forward in my chair excitedly. "Which ones? Spill the tea!"

  What the fuck are you doing? asked the critical voice. He’s telling us everything we want to know about the Arxur. How are these sidetracking antics helping?

  They’re helping.

  David smiled a little. “It’s all coincidental, but pfff… I dunno, off the top of my head, the Thafki, the Zurulians, the Kolshians, and the Farsul.”

  His smile faded. “So yeah. I tricked her into imagining a Zurulian as a type of predator. You know, a 'real' person by her standards." He shook his head. "She had a breakdown. Looked sick to her stomach just thinking about the things she’d done. She looked miserable. I asked if she needed a hug, and she said she didn’t even know what a hug was. So I hugged her.” He sighed. “And then she started crying. And apologizing. And begging me to let her stay here on Earth. And I couldn’t, because we’re at war, so I had to send her back into that fucking soul grinder, because I couldn’t do anything.”

  David’s strange eyes kept squeezing shut, like he wanted to cry but had forgotten the details of how. How could a person who loomed so large to me suddenly feel so small? “I’ve got a plan now, I think. I hope. Some way I can be helpful. A way to fix things and protect people. But I worry if I’m going to be fast enough. Everything’s all moving along so fucking quickly. I don’t know how I’m supposed to help the world deal with all this.”

  He gestured vaguely at everything, which had the convenient effect of moving his arms out of the way of his torso. His defenses left open, I lunged forward and stole a hug of my own. His breath caught, and he slowly, gently, put his arms around me.

  This isn’t getting us answers, said the critical voice impatiently. Time is a factor.

  “Relax,” I said to David’s chest. “We’ve got more time than you think.”