Memory Transcription Subject: Benwen, Nevok Intern

  Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137

  The meeting wasn't going to start for a bit, so there wasn't much to do except wander around the offices. Sitting while I ate would have been nice, sure, but I hadn’t had a lot of freedom to wander around back in the PD facilities. It was nice to explore a little while I finished my breakfast pastry. The tea was interesting, to say the least. Warm, with a splash of some sweet syrup. It was a pale tan color, and had an interesting herbal and woodsy taste to it. It was probably caffeinated, but I'd find out for sure in a bit when it kicked in.

  I turned a blind corner and nearly had a heart attack. The smaller Arxur that has been following Sifal around was standing guard outside of her office again, just like yesterday. The guard's eyes, finely tuned to track the movement of prey, spotted me in her periphery. Her head swiveled to face me, and I froze.

  After a long moment, the guard blinked and turned away. If the other Arxur on Seaglass were as calm and goal-oriented as Sifal was, it stood to reason that this one's orders to focus on guard duty took priority over any instincts to attack me. My own instincts told me to back away slowly and turn down a different corridor…

  “Hey,” I said in greeting, walking towards the Arxur for some reason I couldn’t put words to. She was just standing there, after all. It was like… I don’t know. The urge to gawk at the sight of something dangerous, if it didn’t actually look too dangerous.

  The guard’s head whipped back around. I flinched as she squinted at me, but she still refused to move from her posted spot near the door. Not that she needed to, I supposed. She had a gun, after all. She could always shoot me and then save my carcass as a treat for later.

  “Hey,” she said back, her voice gravelly, but neutral. She stared at me with suspicion. That was normal behavior for a guard of any species, right? As long as I didn’t try to make a break for the door she was guarding, I’d probably be okay. I kept a few good paces of distance between us, just in case.

  “I’m Benwen,” I said, flicking my ear in greeting.

  There was a long pause before the guard responded, never breaking eye contact. “...Zillis,” she said. Her species had no particularly visible ears, but she raised her tail up high and mimicked my gesture using the tip as best she could. Her eyes flicked down ever so slightly, like she was staring at my delicate underbelly or something. Wondering how I tasted, probably, or maybe just reminiscing on the flavor of-- “What is that?” she said.

  I blinked, and looked around on my person, trying to puzzle out what part of me was somehow unidentifiable. “Huh? What’s what?”

  “The object you’re holding,” Zillis said. “The white and brown not-quite-cylinder. Sifal was holding one. What is it?”

  I looked down at the paper cup in my paw. “Oh! This is tea. It’s hot water with, uh, medicinal herbs in it. I added sugar to mine, but Sifal wanted hers plain.”

  “Can’t eat sugar,” said Zillis, still staring. “Bad for us.” Was her mouth starting to water? Wait, was she even looking at me, or was she staring at the tea?

  My eyes flicked back down the hallway the way I came. “Did you, uh, want me to get you one? With no sugar?”

  Zillis’s eyes narrowed. “...why?”

  I looked around, helplessly. “Uhh… because you’re on guard duty? You probably can’t leave this spot to get one yourself.” Also, a second Arxur in the office canteen in one day would probably cause a full-blown stampede.

  Zillis nodded vigorously, the most emotion I’d seen from her. “Yes. Commander Sifal is counting on me to guard this door for her. She’s very important, and she gave me this task, and I want to impress her.”

  I blinked in surprise, as everything suddenly made sense. She was Sifal’s me!

  “Oh, I think I get it!” I said, in recognition. “I’m in the same situation with Debbin. He’s very important, and helping him with things is a big opportunity for me. I’m kinda scared of messing it up.”

  Zillis squinted at me. “If I screw this up, they’re probably going to beat me and starve me,” she growled. “What do you have to be scared of?”

  My eyes widened. I tried to stay calm. There was an indignant Arxur in front of me, and a lot of trauma finally behind me. “They’ll lock me up and shock me with electricity, probably,” I said, miserably.

  Zillis flinched in surprise. “Wait, what? Why?!”

  My head hunched down below my shoulders. “Because if I fail, it means I’m not able to fit in, so they need to correct me.”

  The Arxur looked… crestfallen. “I thought you guys had it easy in the Federation,” she said. Ancestors spare me, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was about to cry. “I thought someone, someplace, had to have it easy. Even if it didn’t get to be me. Maybe one day, I’d get a do-over, somehow, and I’d get to live where it wasn’t awful.”

  “I mean… it’s not so bad here on Seaglass,” I said. Herbivores were supposed to help each other. Zillis very obviously wasn’t an herbivore, but I still felt compelled to cheer her up. “We’re far away from everyone bad for now. And hey, things are kinda starting to look up for us!”

  Zillis nodded. “Yeah. I think Sifal’s trying to make things better. She freed you, and she’s letting me practice piloting, even though I’m not supposed to yet.” She blinked, baffled by her own memories. “Even Debbin said I could practice piloting. I don’t know why.” She locked her eyes back on me. “What’s he plotting?”

  I flinched back a little, but I was mostly just confused. “Huh? I don’t think Debbin’s plotting anything. He was probably just being polite. It’s not really a big deal if you want to become a pilot in the Federation. We’re usually desperate for pilots, especially military ones. Everyone’s too scared.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Hrm,” said Zillis, pensive.

  “Why aren’t you supposed to be a pilot yet?” I asked.

  The Arxur lowered her head. “I have to prove myself as a raider first. I have to get big and strong and… and able to chase down prey. If I don’t, they hit me, and they make me go hungry to teach me a lesson.” There was a bitter snarl at her lips, and I tried not to react too much to the sight of her sharp teeth. “But there’s no lesson! If I can’t eat, I can’t grow!”

  I tried not to visibly take a step back. “Have you eaten today?”

  “Yeah,” said Zillis, sighing. “I ate before I left the hab facility. That’s the rules, now. Sifal doesn’t want us hurting any of the prey here, so she makes sure we never get hungry.” She shook her head. “And that’s the other new thing! The humans taught us how to grow meat in a vat. Like some kinda… hydroponics thing, but for cattle instead of cattle feed. But like… if we don’t have to hunt or raid anymore, how am I supposed to prove myself now?”

  As the only prey in her line of sight, I had an urgent vested interest in steering her away from trying to prove herself in the old fashioned way. “Well, Sifal’s changing lots of things,” I said. It still felt odd, that she’d ordered my release, when the Federation itself said I wasn’t ready yet. “Maybe she’s going to come up with a new way for people to prove themselves.”

  Zillis nodded, glumly. “I hope so. How do you guys prove yourselves in the Federation?”

  I shrugged. “I guess by showing off how helpful we can be to someone important.” I let my ears bounce a little to convey happiness. “We’re probably doing it right now! You with Sifal, and me with Debbin. We just gotta do the best jobs we can!”

  Zillis’s tail seemed to swish in a way that meant happiness in a number of species. “I’m gonna try my best. Thanks.” She licked her lips again. If she specifically wasn’t hungry, then she was either thirsty or nervous. “It was nice talking to you.”

  “Thanks!” I said. “It was nice talking to you, too.” I honestly meant it, too. It was surprising, finding an Arxur with nearly the same problems as me. They kinda just seemed like people, like Tika had been saying. It was getting less and less scary, seeing them around, just being people. Standing guard, ordering tea at the canteen… “You know what, let me go get you that tea,” I said, wanting to be helpful. “You want the same one Sifal got? I think she got a tincture for alertness and focus.”

  Zillis’s eyes widened. “Yes! Please. That would help me be a better guard. Thank you!”

  I nodded happily. It kinda felt like I’d made a new friend, odd as it sounded. “Alright, I’ll be right back!”

  I trotted back down the hallway towards the canteen. The line had reformed, and without an Arxur around to clear out the room, I had to wait in the line again. The same clerk was still working there, and once I got to the front of the line, it took her a moment to realize who she was speaking to. “Hi, what can I get…YOU!?” she blurted out.

  I bounced in place, a little too happy with myself. “Another cup of the tea you served the Arxur lady earlier,” I said, primly. “No sugar.”

  The clerk made a face like she’d bitten into a piece of fruit that had gone moldy, but she complied in short order. “Will that be all?” she said, through gritted teeth.

  “Yup! Thanks,” I said, preening just a little too much. “Keep up the good work!”

  The clerk’s eye twitched, and mine didn’t.

  I practically trotted back down the hall. As I rounded the corner, though, Zillis wasn’t alone this time. Debbin, evidently, had finished his breakfast and was trying to make light conversation with Zillis, who seemed to keep trying to look away from him. That probably wasn’t the worst scenario? I’d gotten the impression that she was just a nervous or shy person. Her face lit up when she spotted me, though. Debbin turned to see where she was staring, and he looked pleased to see me… until he turned back to Zillis and looked confused.

  “Hey, you're back!” Zillis said.

  “Yup! Brought you that tea you asked for,” I said, handing it to her.

  She took a sip, as Debbin looked more and more confused. “Tastes interesting,” Zillis said, raising it slightly to me in acknowledgement. “Thanks!”

  “No worries!” I said, happily. “Us assistants gotta look out for each other.”

  Zillis nodded in agreement. Debbin looked a bit disturbed, but I couldn’t tell which specific reason why.

  Debbin shrugged, and his distress faded away like it never was. Merchant-Princes like him knew how to control themselves better than most herbivores, which helped them talk people into more favorable deals. “Alright, well, good to see you two getting along,” the Chairman said. “The meeting is scheduled to start shortly. Should we adjourn?”

  Zillis and I shrugged. “You’re the boss,” we said, in astonishingly close to perfect unison, given the translation gap. “You tell us.”

  Debbin snorted. “Alright. Zillis, please go get Sifal and Laza, and bring them to the big corner conference room. Benwen and I will see you there shortly.”

  Zillis nodded, and entered the door she’d been guarding. Debbin and I went on ahead, and I was conspicuously aware of how stiff Debbin seemed, when it was just the two of us. Did being near a person with predator disease make him uncomfortable?

  “Are you holding up alright?” Debbin said at last, after a long moment of silent contemplation.

  “Yes, of course!” I said, trying to sound more excited than anxious. “You asked me to do some scary things, and I’m trying to do them.”

  Debbin’s eyes narrowed. “What did I ask you to do that was scary?”

  Ordering food at the canteen for the first time had been scary, but it wasn’t supposed to be. I tried to think of a different answer. My eyes flitted back down the hallway we were leaving. “To… work with the Arxur?” I said, tentatively, and tried not to put too much weight onto how frankly heretical and treasonous such a request was, in the Federation.

  Debbin sighed, and threw a paw in the air. “Fair, fair,” he said. “What’s Zillis’s deal, anyway? I can hardly seem to get her to talk to me.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure,” I said, “but I get the impression that she’s shy, and maybe specifically scared of authority figures?”

  Debbin balked. “What? Why? Authority figures are there for everyone’s own good.”

  That hadn’t really been my personal life experience, not even in the slightest, but I didn’t want to lose face by correcting him. “I don’t know if that’s true for Arxur authority figures, though,” I said instead, trying to speculate wildly from what little I knew. Food in PD facilities was bland and miserable, but I’d never been starved on purpose like Zillis had. That felt needlessly cruel. “I think she’s worried that you’re being insincere when you’re nice to her. Like you’re trying some kind of predatory deception on her.”

  “Hrm,” said Debbin. “That holds water. I’ll think on it. Good insight, though, Benwen.”

  I tried not to show how happy I was at even that small bit of praise.

  The meeting eventually started, as Debbin, Sifal, Laza, and even Zillis and I, all filtered into a conference room with a display, so we could all look at numbers and things while we discussed where the company should go.

  “So I’ve been reading up on our corporate charter,” said Sifal, looking tired but jittery. “It looks like we prioritize efficiency in extraction, somewhat, but the resources themselves don’t get shipped off to the central military government, they get shipped off to some ineffable entity called ‘The Free Market’?”

  Debbin’s eyes went wide. “Ancestors spare me, Sifal, please tell me you’re just fucking with me.”

  Sifal held her hand out and wiggled it.

  Debbin buried his face in his paws and screamed. “Why are you making the Terran gesture for ‘I dunno, kinda’?!”