Categories
Stories They are Smol

Smolive Garden, Chapter 13: The first booth scene

Tyson grunted as he hefted the filled plastic drink pitchers onto the table, the multiple buttons, ribbons, bells and doodads pinned to the straps on his suit jiggling with the effort. “That’s one redleaf tea and one sparkling mist! I’ll come back for your appetizer orders in a few minutes.”

“[Thank you very much.]” Sesame said, dipping her head slightly at the jingling,  retreating warmcuddle as she picked up the pitcher, centering it on her side of the table.

Sreshec – known by the warmcuddles as Azul, since she never bothered to change her nameplate – looked at the pitcher with rapt attention. It was a warmcuddle establishment, sure, but she had assumed they would make some concessions to the biology and comfort of their multi-species patrons. The booths were the first indication of this, and the menu of drinks was the second; there were staples for every race, with most of the menu being cross-species compatible, if not a little unpalatable without some doctoring up.

However, the drinks were served in a warmcuddle drink pitcher – at least, that’s what Azul assumed; given it’s size, the relative size of an average warmcuddle and the fact that she had trouble gripping the handle, she deduced it was simply re-purposed from being a shared carafe into a single drink order. ‘[But why?]’ Azul thought, pulling her own drink forward to mimic her boothmate. ‘[Aesthetics, or cost cutting?]’

“[You know they do wash these out after every drink.]” Sesame said, smiling as she sipped her sparkling mist from a side of the pitcher that had a little dip in it. “[It’s fine. A little awkward, but fine.]”

“[That’s good to know.]” Azul said, chuckling softly. “[I was just trying to understand the theme of this restaurant: at first, I assumed it was secretive, exclusive fine dining. Once I came in, it looked more like a…]” Azul paused for a moment as she searched for the properly unoffensive words. “[Family-style restaurant.]” Azul took a moment to look up at one of the warmcuddle turret ball gunners, who was aiming his weapons from booth to booth while shaking his arms and torso in mock recoil, a military-style helmet bouncing up and down on his head as he apparently got into the really good shooting. “[Family militia, maybe.]”

Azul gripped her pitcher of tea and pulled it halfway to her lips, before realizing she might be using the wrong side of the carafe. She turned it around in her hands a few moments before shrugging and dipping her head down, taking a very un-ladylike slurp from the top.

Sesame pointed at the spout of her pitcher. “[Fluid only.]” She then pointed to the dipped side. “[Fluid and ice. Also a good place to drink from in a pinch.]”

Azul smiled, as she took a proper sip from her pitcher. “[Thank you.]”

“[Is that what I should expect?]” Sesame asked, leaning back against the booth wall. “[If I want to be like you, I have to be always on? I’ve noticed you haven’t stopped studying this place since you got here, and at first I thought it was novelty, but now I’m not so sure.]”

“[Ah.]” Azul swayed a bit from side to side in thought, eyes wandering before eventually settling on looking only at her boothmate. “[Yes and no. You’re never truly ‘off’ once you get good at something, but that doesn’t mean you obsess over it night and day. You become a student of the industry, and your hobbies start to overlap with what you do for a living.]”

Azul looked at the laminated menu that was left with her, and gave an appreciative rumble. “[That kind of background always-on is also a good indicator of if you’re ‘doing what you love’.]” Azul said, anticipating one of the most-asked questions she usually got from her juniors, and smiled as Sesame started to take quick notes.

“[Often times, people will be misled into doing something professionally that they enjoy as an amateur hobbyist – for example, someone who likes to cook goes and becomes a professional chef.]” Azul purposefully slowed down her conversation as her companion furiously wrote on her tablet, the stylus tapping a staccato rhythm against the screen. “[But in a job, you’re going to have bad days… weeks. Months. Sometimes longer – the point is, something that you used to pick up and put down when it got difficult turns into something you must grind through, and that starts sucking out the joy of living. Going back to our chef example, an amateur chef can always order out when they’re too tired to cook, but a professional one can’t. Eventually, you’re stuck in a job you hate, have nothing you like to do for fun anymore and have nowhere to go.]”

“[But earlier]” Sesame started, pausing as she finished up her notes. “[You said your hobbies mix with what you do for a living, and that’s how you know what you love.]”

Azul took a sip from her pitcher, trying to slot her thoughts into the right words. “[That comes eventually. First, you start off with something you’re good at doing, something you’re passionate about doing, not necessarily what you love. As you get better and better at doing the job, you want to be better. So for my own example, I started off running a few restaurants as part of a team in junior management, then was given a shot with operating a fusion joint by myself, and worked my way up from there. As you get more knowledge, you seek more knowledge – that’s the student of the industry bit – and then you start gaining professional curiosity.]”

Azul looked around, asking rhetorical questions as her gaze covered the restaurant. “[How does the competition advertise their main courses? What are the new tastes coming out from the fringe settlements? What about from new immigration patterns? How do you position yourself to attract a certain type of person?]” Her eyes settled on Sesame again, and she shrugged slightly. “[Now I find myself not only as a galaxy-travelling gourmand, but someone who enjoys eating out and going to clubs – I’ve developed hobbies from my job that reinforce my performance at the job, and I can pick them up or put them down as I please.]”

“[As an aside, for here, specifically?]” Azul flipped the menu card over in her hands, showing Sesame the front and back. “[As the humans say, ‘game recognizes game’. Menus without prices very much speak to the affluent clientèle they’re trying to catch, I haven’t been able to identify any of the food on this menu, which given my expertise usually means it’s something exotic in either ingredient sourcing or culture-of-origin, which given the context of where we are makes perfect sense. Combine those two data points with the dust-and-mist secrecy to just get here and the blackmail threats once you get in… there’s a lot of self-selection going on, so whoever put this together very much thought this through.]”

Sesame nodded with an inscrutable expression. “[I could see that, a lot of that. Have you worked with humans long, or before?]”

The two Jornissians noticed that their server was approaching again, and both sat back to give the server their full attention.

“Ladies, good evening!” Tyson smiled, running a hand through his short-locked curly black hair, his brown eyes beaming with genuine warmth. “Your hostess has already been selected; Anne Marie saw you come in, Sesame.” He said with a smile, hooking a plastic numbered card on the end of the table facing the kitchen. “But that just means she’s going to get fatter-“

Tyson’s conversation was interrupted with a loud “HEY!” coming from the kitchen, but he pressed on anyway. “So we need to know what she’s going to get fat on. Any ideas for appetizers?”

“[I’m… going to let Sesame order for me.]” Azul said, and tilted her head at Sesame’s surprised expression. “[What? You’re a local here, you’ve had more of this food than me. Give me something hot and sweet to start the meal off right.]”

Tyson coughed into the crook of his elbow, failing to hide his grin as Sesame sighed. “[It’s not that kind of dinner, and I don’t even curl that way.]” 

“Sure thing, I totally believe you. So?” Tyson asked through a wide, smug grin.

Sesame inhaled, deeply, before losing an internal battle with herself, looking at Tyson flatly. “[I hate you. Pepper poppers snake style, holy frittatas and volcano dip to share.]”

“Aaaalright.” Tyson drawled out the first syllable, writing the order on a paper notepad. “If you need anything else, ask your host when she arrives – otherwise, I’ll be back when I see you’re thirsty or done with the first course.”

“[Thank you.]” Azul said, and was rewarded with an adorable little bow before the server turned on his heels.

“OI KITCHEN!” Tyson yelled, walking away from the booth and through the double-doors, bellowing the entire time. “TABLE NINE WANTS PYTHON PECKER PUNISHERS, RENEGADE ANGEL AND A MAUI WOWIE, SNIDDY STYLE.”

“[I. Hm.]” Azul said, blinking slowly as she watched the scene unfold, before turning to face Sesame again. “[I don’t know… if I should be offended or what. Are they all like this?]”

“[The adults at least hide it better.]” Sesame grumbled, sipping from her sparkling pitcher. “[Which is why I asked if you’ve ever worked with them before – and uh, before we continue, you know I have no trouble with anyone who-]”

Azul waved her hand, rolling her arm in a placating gesture. “[Don’t be so sensitive; not everyone’s out to trip you up and punish you when you fall. You were saying?]”

Sesame placed her drink back down on the table gently. “[I was just taking mental note of your diagnosis of this establishment, and I’m beginning to see how you could come to those conclusions. I’ve also realized one of my own competitive advantages, which I think means I’ll have a higher perch when I finally start job searching.]”

“[What would that advantage be?]” Azul asked, resting her arms in her lap as she leaned back.

“[I know how the humans operate.]” Sesame said with a slight laugh, turning to look as the double-doors swung open to show Anne Marie in all her glory, half-crouched and smiling wide under the burden of a titanic amount of flair.

“Well hey there, stranger!” The small warmcuddle called out, bouncing her way over to the booth, purposefully making as much noise and distraction as possible as bric-a-brac, junkque and shiny bits cascaded off of her uniform. With absolutely no forewarning or acknowledgment of the dining party Anne-Marie scrambled over the cushion to crawl over Sesame, the local very much reacting to the new intruder like one would a friendly, but frustrating cat. “Where’s my finished homework? Where have you been? Who’s your friend? What did you order?”

“[Weren’t you the human who checked us in?]” Azul asked, somewhat rudely pointing to the offending warmcuddle. “[Shouldn’t you know?]”

“So?” Anne Marie asked, kneeling on part of Sesame’s coils much to the Jornissians’ slight discomfort. “That doesn’t mean I remember anything – that’s why I write it down somewhere!”

Sesame shot Azul a half-smile and a shrug, as she casually knocked the warmcuddle flat onto her coils with an idle push of her free arm. “[You’ll see what I mean.]”

Categories
Stories They are Smol

Smolive Garden, Chapter 12: Check-in is at 6PM, Chicken at 9.

The klaxon suddenly sounded, the preparation room bathed in an eerie red light as from multiple entryways the human crew rapidly assembled. Each of them were kitted out in a custom suit, bright and colorful yet hiding civilian-grade armor protection, emergency padding, and dozens of holsters and pouches.

Some of those holsters and pouches were filled with innocuous things: extra cutlery, menus, straws, crayons and playmats (for the young and young at heart). Other held more fun and exotic things like grenades. Flash grenades, of course! Any damage to the establishment or innocent patrons came right out of their pay, and they weren’t about to not pay taxes on less money, after all.

Each human lined up, side by side in almost perfect military precision, heels snapping together smartly as they stepped into their assigned spots for roll call. There were only two people in the room who were not so attired: The first was Anne Marie, who had very much altered her suit to look more … authoritarian, with epaulets, a half-cape made from an old tablecloth, and dozens upon dozens of receipts stapled to her chest, forming an interesting medal collection of past customers and harrowing tips. The second was an incredibly bewildered and concerned Tik’akri, who started to have a sneaking suspicion that she was losing managerial control, and that she may want to do a mandatory video tape training about it.

“READY FOR FLAIR CHECK!” Barked Anne Marie, as the dozen or so humans began slapping stickers and kitschy crap to their suits and harnesses.

“[Ah.]” Tomtom said, clacking her claws against the back of her clipboard-tablet in growing concern. “[Anne Marie?]”

“Oh Captain My Captain!” Anne Marie responded, spinning around on her heels to face her manager. “What can I do for you, glorious leader? We’re about to start our pre-shift war chant-slash-sacrifice.”

“[Is that why I’ve been seeing so many opened stuffed animals in the dumpster out back? N-nevermind.]” Tomtom shook her head, making a mental note to ask Brian for control of her own camera security system. Again. “[Not important – can you please introduce me to these… wonderful new strangers that are in my kitchen? Possibly by first explaining to me, uh, why they’re here?]”

Anne Marie saluted with the wrong hand. “Certainly, el Presidente! Do you remember what you told me last week?”

Tomtom stared into the middle distance as she racked her brain. “[Things under the sink are not ‘cultural heritage sites’, tips must be shared with cook staff, you must sign off on reading the employee handbook, you cannot start a ‘holy war against the degenerate red tables’ no matter what you say your employee manual says-]”

“No no no. I mean the stuff about scaling up, expanding our footprint, all that kinda marketing crap that doesn’t really mean anything once you think about it.” Anne Marie interrupted, rocking back and forth on her heels. “You specifically asked for, and I’ll quote, ‘I don’t know, people who like money and have loose morals I guess’, unquote. Well!” Anne Marie grinned, waving her hand at the unknown crew, who all cheerfully waved or saluted back.

Tomtom sighed, screwing her forward eyes shut. “[Of course you’d take that at face value. Of course. Have we put them under any forms of contract?]”

Anne Marie’s grin wavered a bit. “Well… define contract.”

“[Alright, shift is starting in 10 minutes so we’ll get back to that. Have they agreed to the emp- the correct and legal employee handbook?]” Tomtom asked, correcting herself mid-sentence.

“Photocopier’s out of stygian blue, so it can’t print.” Anne Marie replied, sheepishly. “But they all promised they’d comply!”

“[But you hired them because they had quote ‘lose morals’ unquote]” Tomtom said, performing the human gesture for quotations with her claws.

“Well yes, but they’re the right kind of loose morals!” Anne Marie protested, placing her hands on her hips and puffing out her chest. “And I know loose morals when I see ‘em! Wait.”

Tomtom inhaled deeply, centering herself as she focused. Her father still hadn’t returned from a quick grocery run, so they still had time to go through an interview, a rapid-fire employee orientation, get some documents signed, and possibly a crash course on server etiquette.

Tomtom’s head twitched ever so slightly as she heard the back door crack open, the offending plasteel slab bonking against the wall as her father walked into the kitchen with an armful of boxes. “[Hey! I’m back, I’m back!]” He cheerfully crowed, dropping the boxes at the end of the prep-station island, looking up as he dusted his hands. “[Just so… you… know.]”

Tictac stared at the new humans, who had placed stickers and ribbons and all sorts of things all over their bodies. The one nearest to him gave him a sheepish wave, faux-feathers flittering off his forearm and onto the floor. Tictac took one look at the strange human, and turned to his daughter. “[This is your dishwashing liquid; you soak in it.]”

Tomtom let out an exasperated, gutteral groan, her body sagging in defeat. “[Daaaaad-]”

“[Don’t you Dad me, you little chirper.]” Tictac replied in the tone of chastising parents everywhere. “[I’m just the fry cook now, and if these new friends of ours aren’t out of the kitchen by the time I finish prepping the sous stations, I’m going to force them to help.]”

“Right!” Anne Marie cheered, clapping her hands together. “You’re out of touch, and we’re out of time, so let’s get down to business to sell these buns.”

The assembled humans groaned, but generally remained in line while Anne Marie paced back and forth in front of them. “Green Team is assigned to the Green tables, your job is conversation, level two cuddling and menu recommendation. Remember, your patrons are here for the friendly package. We’re not Waffle House, for fuck’s sake, so no fighting.” A third of the humans did various forms of salute, and it was only then that Tomtom realized that the bright and eye-watering colors that they had slapped on their suits were there on purpose.

“Blue Team is security!” Anne Marie barked, and was rewarded with an overly-enthusiastic “OO-RAH” in response. “Aah, my PDF friends! Ball turrets in every corner, and we’ll definitely need double-exposure over Red Team. Since we don’t have any of those nice, new powersuits-“ Anne Marie stressed, giving a pointed look to Tomtom. “-make sure to use the mouseholes we’ve drilled into the wall supports.”

“[Wait you did what to my walls?]” Tictac said, suddenly looking up from the mountain of cabbage he had been chopping.

“[Don’t mind him, he’s just the fry cook.]” Tomtom replied, cutting her father off with a sarcastic smile. “[Do continue the orientation, Anne.]”

Anne Marie replied with a double salute, using both hands, before turning back to her team. “Remember your shell order: Rock salt, rock salt, buckshot, slug. If you’re getting past slugs just switch to DU-lethal or incendiary.”

“[Sunbeam I don’t like those words.]” Tomtom said, looking between his daughter and the unleashed humans. “[Can we talk about this?]”

“Shift starts in 5 minutes and we charge by the planck time!” Anne Marie beamed, before firing off multiple salutes to Red team, who eagerly returned each one with laughter. Anne Marie made her way down the line to the final section of crew. “And you, my fellow Expanders, men and women after my own heart.” Anne Marie paused for a moment, placing her hand over her chest. “You, I have no words save for three.”

Grinning a feral grin, Anne Marie spread her arms out wide, and uttered a phrase unknown to the Karnakians in the room, but made them shudder with fear all the same.

“Go goblin mode.”

Sreshec tugged at her blouse, realizing much to her dismay that she was very overdressed. She had chosen to accessorize her attire with a jeweled necklace and artisan hood-clamp; both of those went into her purse the moment she stepped outside and actually got a look at the place. The transport that she had rented was a luxury model, granted, but not one that would raise too many suspicions given the overall income of the planet. That, combined with her formal attire and presentation was supposed to give off the airs of someone who was well-to-do, but not necessarily powerful; an approachable, lower-upper class, or upper-middle class.

However, the shopping center that the warmcuddle sent her to was not exactly in an upscale location. Sreshec’s hunch was that only deep pockets could have funded such an enterprise, but the pressure-washed sidewalk, the re-painted storefronts and the broken cart return very much spoke otherwise. Her only real indicator that she was in the right place was the professionally-maintained ‘run down’ storefront she stood before; whomever had boarded up the windows made sure that no graffiti touched them, and whatever sign used to advertise this space was removed, but the dust of years had been cleaned off from the wall behind it leaving only a faint gray outline of what once was. Whomever had put this together had done so amateurishly; you have to let a little grime seep into the corners to give it the recently-abandoned look.

“<First time?>”

Sreshec turned to look at a fellow Jornissian who was many centuries her junior, and whom she had mistaken as just a random stranger who just-so-happened to be shopping at the mall.

“<Pardon?>” Sreshec responded, doing her best to keep her voice and actions neutral. “<May I help you?>”

The younger Jornissian sighed, swaying to the side in a tired gesture. “<You don’t have to play coy with me, I’m here to go eat with the warmcuddles too.>”

Sreshec’s mind went into overdrive: was this a fellow customer? A federal agent? Perhaps, she had been tailed from the station and this was corporate espionage? It wouldn’t do to have another Dewdrop Hotel incident…

The other Jornissian sensed Sreshec’s pensiveness, and shook her head in a very warmcuddle motion. “<I’m a student at [Peaceful Progress University], my name’s Seseren, and I’ve been eating here for literal years.>” Seseren said, with the exasperation that only comes when youth must explain things to the aged.

“<Oh.>” Sreshec said, the realization that the person she was talking to wasn’t part of some intricate game of intrigue and was, in fact, just a local hitting her square between the eyes. “<Sorry, yes. My name is Sreshec, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.>” Sreshec said, dipping her head in polite greeting. “<I apologize for any earlier… awkwardness; I’m not from around here, as you can tell.>”

Seseren returned the greeting, waving her hand dismissively. “<Don’t be, don’t be. It’s basically an open secret at this point; every day a couple of foreigners come to this parking lot and disappear into this ‘run down’ building.>” Seseren laughed a bubbly laugh, covering her mouth with her hand. “<Sorry, it’s just, anyone with any observation skills would know what’s going on!>”

Seseren smiled, holding her messenger bag in her arms and against her stomach. “<But the rules are different for locals, so it’s no big deal. They should be opening now, if you want to join me.>”

Sreshec paused for a moment as the sheer serendipity washed over her, before shrugging. “<Certainly! At this point, I’ve been made – what do I have to lose?>”

“<That’s the spirit!>” Seseren said, turning to slither to the front door. “<So if I may ask, where do you come from? What do you do? You’re very well… paid.>”

“<Isn’t it impolite to pry?>” Sreshec replied, building a mental profile of the young lady she walked with.

“<For all you know we could be entering a drug den – one of those really bad ones you see in the movies.>” Seseren replied, smiling. “<You could be my mark!>”

Sreshec hummed softly, making a point to pause just on the sidewalk as she looked the place over. “<No, I think not – this doesn’t remind me of any of the brothels I’ve been to, and half of the real hard stuff would’ve caught this place on fire long ago.>”

“<Whu. Wait – brothels?!>” Seseren replied, pausing halfway through opening the front door.

Sreshec laughed. “<Oh, so now I’m not allowed to tease? That’s no fun, and speaking of: I work in hospitality, if that answers your question.>”

“<I…guess it does.>” Seseren said, tilting her head to the side as she opened the door completely to enter the waiting room. “<If we sit at the same table, I’d love to pick your brain; I’m trying to figure out what career I really want to pursue, and I’m a bit overwhelmed.>”

Sreshec dipped her head again as she entered the surprisingly dark entryway, the sunset’s dying light snuffed out as the door closed behind them. “<I’d be happy to.>”

“[Happy to what?]” Intoned a modulated voice, and Sreshec turned to look at the deeper, darker part of the waiting room. As her eyes rapidly adjusted to the low light, she noticed that calling it a waiting room would be a generous assessment: with it’s spartan features, sound-dampening walls and apparent automatic weapons installed into the ceiling, it was less ‘welcome area’ and more ‘maximum security prison.’ The only hint of there being any form of ‘welcome’ were the benches near the booth at the center, and the few food vending options to bide your time until you were called in further.

“<Hey there, warmcuddle-doublechecker!>” Seseren said, cheerfully waving to the human behind the booth. Sreshec continued to make mental notes as she moved to the side, letting the local do the talking.

Doublechecker smiled and waved, the paper ribbons stapled to her chest fluttering with the movement. “[Hey hey, glad to have you back today! You know you don’t have to keep camping out here, right? We can take care of ourselves.]”

“<You once got lost in my house, doublechecker.>” Seseren deadpanned, while the warmcuddle frowned.

“[All your walls look the same and it’s a damn tunnel complex. It’s not my fault you don’t live in boxes, like civilized people.]” The warmcuddle retorted, making the motion of holding a box in her hands. “[Nice, neat, logical. Not loopy. Speaking of, you in the back.]”

Sreshec slithered forward to the front of the booth, mindful that the turrets seemed to track her. “<Yes?>”

“[Hold still.]”

Sreshec got as far as “<Excuse me, what?>” before she was bathed in an almost nauseating sensation of light and force, a tingling sensation pricking her entire body before just as quickly going away. She steadied herself against the booth for a moment, attempting to both blink away the spots in her vision and force down the sudden vertigo.

“<By the cold, wet void, what was that?>”

“[Correct! Don’t worry, that was a totally probably safe scan that you just went through, but you look like you can afford medical so you’ll be fine.]” Warmcuddle Doublechecker said, as Seseren’s body shook with light laughter. “[Now, is it a table for one or two? Are you vouching for her, [Sesame]?]”

“<I am not.>” Seseren, nee Sesame said, shaking her head in a human manner. “<We just met out in the lot.>”

“[Alright. Drop everything you’ve got in the basket here-]” Doublechecker said, sliding open a teller box from just below the booth window. “[and I do mean everything. Also, we’ve been recording you since you came in, so do give us verbal confirmation if you’re here alone or not.]”

Sreshec composed herself as quickly as possible, murmuring a barely audible “<I guess so.>” as she unceremoniously dumped her purse and jewelry into the teller box.

“[Awesome.]” Warmcuddle Doublechecker said, slapping the box shut underneath the teller booth glass. In the same swift motion she slid out a single, laminated sheet of paper; Sreshec reeled as her mind attempted to find any proof of culture, prices or food but only found legalese and T&Cs. “[You’re leaving everything you’ve got with me, there’s multiple dampener fields in there, so don’t use an implant to broadcast or record or your brain’ll fry! At least, that’s what the vendor told us when we paid him in cash for all this stuff.]”

Sreshec wobbled back to her full height, attempting to regain what little dignity she had left. “<I see, and I agree to the terms.>”

The warmcuddle clapped, smiling. “[Oh that’s wonderful! We can edit that wherever we need – thank you! Now, really simple rules: You never lead, you only follow. If a warmcuddle tells you to do something, you do it, and if they tell you to stop you stop. Understand?]”

“<Yes.>” Replied Sreshec, slipping into the comfortable persona of a corporate lead before a legal team.

“[If you fuck up, you get shot – and yes, we do live ammunition here. First few will be non-lethal, and after that, well. You were assaulting warmcuddles in their own restaurant, so that’s on you, legally. My advice, as always, and it’s always ignored is that if you see us pull a piece you keep your peace. Capiche?]”

“<I understand and will comply.>” Sreshec responded surprisingly cooly, even though her core was on fire with the twin emotions of fear and excitement.

“[I already know the scribblings of the guy who sent you here…]” Doublechecker trailed off, before giving a very pointed look at the paper. “[…fucking degenerate. If we like you and get to know you, you come back. If we don’t like you, you don’t come back. You make it a problem, we show edited but unquestionable proof of you committing multiple regional-class felonies to our court system.]”

“<Piling the pebbles on our side of the board, aren’t we?>” Sreshec said with a slight smile, and was rewarded with an honest, but wry grin.

“[Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Now, I don’t see an indicator on your pass so I have to ask here: Red or Green?]”

Sreshec stilled her breath and thought quickly. ‘<Red means stop in warmcuddle signage, but it also means luck to some cultures. Green means go in the same, and also means the same in other warmcuddle cultures. Green is also the color of their homeworld flora, for the most part, so it could be a growth option, whereas red is the color of blood, but also meat, and some of their favorite fruits. If we do a side-by-side comparison, what would the safest bet be?>

Sesame coughed, softly. “<You may want to rephrase that question, Doublechecker. I don’t think she got any form of orientation.>”

The warmcuddle shook her head slightly. “[Thinking with his crotch again, alright. Do you want a warmcuddle as a dining companion, or do you want burgerslut?]”

Sreshec blinked, slowly, as the options were boiled down to something that seemed incredibly logical and something that seemed…par for the course.

“<Companion.>”

“[Green it is! You and [Sesame] want to sit together?]” Doublechecker said, as she buzzed them in.

The older Jornissian looked at her younger counterpart, Sesame, who was trying and failing to hide her hopeful excitement at the prospect, and decided to do her one good deed for the day. “<I’d be happy to.>”

Categories
Stories They are Smol

Smolive Garden, Chapter 11: Conspicuous? Me? Never!

Warmcuddles really are a marvel.

Sreshec smiled to herself as she flipped through her notes, the din of Gentle Expanse’s spaceport settling into a nice background hum. The evening spent with the two Dorarizin had paid off in a wealth of information given both explicitly and implicitly; Sreshec liked to think that it was her feminine wiles and quick wit, but if she was being truthful it was probably the addition of unlimited, high-quality intoxicants of their choice on demand helped tremendously as well. After she had cracked their outer shell and given them many assurances that no, she wasn’t a cop, and no, she wasn’t interested in smuggling or kidnapping – and she absolutely wasn’t into warmcuddles like that – they opened up.

Somewhere, down on the planet below, was a restaurant that achieved everything her and her management group were trying to accomplish: free-range warmcuddles, in a safe environment, providing a unique dining experience – and, of course, charging an arm and a leg for the whole thing.

It turns out that all of her underlying assumptions were incorrect; she shouldn’t have been looking at the “traditional triad” for answers to her problem! The solution to her restaurateur woes laid with, of course, the warmcuddles themselves. Specifically, it rested with the more entrepreneurial warmcuddles who didn’t want to bother with such things as red tape, zoning restrictions, or paying taxes yet still wanted to provide a unique dining experience.

“<Unfortunately, I still have to.>” Sreshec mumbled, taking a sip from a prepackaged vending-machine tea. Part of the information that she gleaned from the two Dorarizin – Borkbork specifically – was to not look like you’d say the phrase “do you know who I am” or “let me talk to your management”; to that effect she traded in her 45,000GRC management power dress-suit for a 45GRC oversized soft top, her palladium credit chit was turned in for a modest debit card, and her travel kit was replaced with… whatever off-brand mass-produced crap the travel store had in stock.

She tapped the bottom of her can against the food court table, scrolling through more notes as she tried to blend in with the rest of the crowd. Finding a contact, according to Bluebell, was as easy as walking up to one of the warmcuddle guides and just talking to them – but that couldn’t be all of it, that would be way too easy. Sreshec continued to scroll through her notes, recordings and other miscellaneous data, trying to find the simple thread that connected this apparently planet-wide network of illegal warmcuddle businesses together… and came up with nothing.

Sreshec looked up, eyeing an inconspicuous booth in the middle of the warmcuddle section; every so often she’d accidentally make eye contact with the warmcuddle who was manning the booth, and would make a point to look past them so as to not raise suspicion. Whether or not it was working… she couldn’t say; of all her skills, ‘staking out an illegal underground restaurant group’ wasn’t on the top of the list, but she hoped the general volume of people would keep her out of the little warmcuddle’s mind for long.

So Sreshec sat and waited, and scrolled and thought; it was the same booth as the one Borkbork and Bluebell approached; it matched the exact same location from the security footage her group acquired ‘specifically for layout and traffic flow purposes’ – which was technically correct, so they weren’t breaking any laws. Yet. But was it the same warmcuddle? The Humans were much more picky about the data they shared, and she couldn’t get an employee roster no matter how much she, or her team of lawyers, tried.

Borkbork’s cheerful description of “The most adorable and pure reddish-pinkish-white [warmcuddle] with the tiniest lil chompers and bright, innocent eyes, just tall enough to hug forever” helped absolutely not at all, and so she sat and studied. Most likely, she’d get one chance at this; if she failed, not only would the network know that one of their gateways was compromised, but she herself could never try to probe another “in”.

After a few hours, the general background sound of the food court terminal died down, and Sreshec looked up from her tablet to note that she was relatively alone. The major cruise ships had already offloaded their passengers, the exosolar business rush had come and gone, and save for the people like her who were waiting for another transport there were just employees and maintenance crew doing what they could in-between rushes.

“<Fortune favors the bold.>” Sreshec said to herself, clicking off her tablet and sliding it into her pack. With a few practiced, deep breaths she centered herself, took off her “I’m just a nobody” mask, and put on another.

Mike spoke into his collar as the deep-blue Jornissian finally made her way over to his booth. It wasn’t that he – or security – were worried about her; she obviously carried no weapons, wasn’t aggressively postured, and looked about as dangerous as a doormouse. Well. Relatively dangerous; Mike wasn’t about to go out there and salsa with the strange snake-lady, after all, but he wasn’t worried about having to dip out of his booth or call for backup. No, the reason why he spoke hushed tones into his emergency vox was for an entirely different reason, and he had about 50GRC riding on him knowing the crowd.

The Jornissian made her way over to the roped section and paused for a moment, taking a look at the empty maze. Mike really had no idea why it always mesmerized the xenos, but he’d honestly pay to know: were they fascinated by puzzles? Did they think the rope maze had a deeper meaning? Was it something cultural? Mike mentally shrugged, before tapping at the glass and waving the woman over.

“Hello valued traveler!” Mike began, as the frumpy-looking Jornissian looked at him and smiled in an incredibly awkward way. “P-please note that you’re in the human-only section; more species-appropriate accommodations can be found to your right.” Mike motioned with his hand, and watched with piqued curiosity as the xenos didn’t follow his movement, but kept her eyes locked to his.

Ah. He totally was going to win that bet.

“Ma’am, can I help you?” Mike ventured, as the Jornissian continued to study his features, the tour guide starting to feel less like a person and more like a piece of meat.

“[Oh! Sorry, are you Greg?]” She asked, pushing her arm out of the oversized sleeve to scratch at her cheek.

Mike leaned back, somewhat stunned. “I’m… sorry, whatnow?”

“[Greg, the Human!]” The Jornissian said cheerfully, pulling out her tablet. “[About so tall, bright cute eyes, pinkish-white? You’re him, right?]”

Mike inhaled, deeply, as he steadied himself against the center console, a million thoughts racing through his mind – but the loudest one, by far, was deafening:

“Are you really his nerdy bookish Jornissian girlfriend from another system?! Really?!

Sreshec paused for a moment, flicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she took a split second to think about what the warmcuddle just said and the trail she was sliding down, and if she really wanted to go that route.

“[Y…yes?]” Sreshec ventured, tilting her head to the side. “[Are you Greg?]”

“Wh-NO!” Mike said, slamming his palms against the table. “We look nothing alike! Don’t you even know what your boyfriend looks like?!”

The two aliens stared at each other, the silence immediately turning awkward as Mike studied the now incredibly uncomfortable Jornissian with a deep scrutiny. Mike leaned forward, slightly, as he ventured a gentle, but powerful question.

“D…do you think we all look alike?”

“[Wh-whaaaaaaat? Noooooooo, absolutely not! All warmcuddles are unique-]” Sreshec said, rapidly scrolling through her tablet notes, burying her head slightly into her baggage as she denied anything and everything. Mike watched her for a few minutes as she sputtered some obvious HR nonsense as if it mattered, the Jornissian trying to backpedal furiously while still staying in place. Mike had to admit, she was cute when flustered, but now was neither the time, nor the place.

 “Look. I can obviously tell you’re not from around here.” Mike started, placing his hand on the glass between them in a placating gesture. “So how about you tell me your name and we start from there?”

“[Oh! My name is Sreshec.]” Sreshec said, dipping her head slightly.

Mike hummed softly. “Wow, you got that nameplate translated right over! No human-given name though?”

“[Ah, no.]” Sreshec admitted, placing her tablet in her bag as she gave the warmcuddle her full attention. “[Do I need one?]”

“It’ll help. Usually we go by what your name of origin means in parts, and then try to find something out of there. However, I’d just call you Azul – it’s a very fitting name.”

“[Blue?]” Sreshec said, tilting her head to the side. “[It’s very… obvious, isn’t it?]”

“Obvious doesn’t mean bad, per se.” Mike said, waving his hand dismissively. “And if you don’t like it, you can always get it changed by filing some official paperwork. But, now that I at least have your name, Azul, why are you here? How can I help you?”

Sreshec smiled. “[Well, I was looking for Greg-]”

“No.” Mike interrupted, giving Sreshec a very flat look. “You’re looking for Greg, but that’s not why you’re here.”

Sreshec’s heart skipped a beat, a painful icy pit growing in her chest. “[I-I assure you, I really am looking for Greg!]”

“Alright. Let’s say that’s the case.” Mike said, crossing his arms as he studied the puzzle in front of him. “You’re a strange Jornissian looking for my coworker. I might know how to get in touch with him. Why are you looking for him?”

Sreshec swallowed, her mouth suddenly and unreasonably dry. “[I … am his out-of-system girlf-]”

“Nope.” Mike interrupted again, adding in a sigh. “Lie to me again and I’ll ask you to leave. Now.” He sat down on his swivel chair, hands resting on his terminal keyboard. “Why do you want to talk to Greg? For real, this time.”

The two sat, staring at each other, separated by triple-reinforced glass for a few moments before Sreshec decided that the game was up, and it was best to come clean – well. Mostly clean.

“[I need an access code.]” Sreshec half-lied, omitting an incredible amount of detail as Mike leaned back in his chair, a wide grin spread across his face.

“Well, well, well. How the turn tables have… turned. Table.” Mike said, radiating a smugness that vindicated at least 5 generations of his ancestors. “Exactly what kind of access codes are we talking about here? Like, stuff we can resell, stuff the adults should know about, or maybe a private code to an apartment planetside?”

Sreshec blushed furiously and screamed internally. It was one thing to have screwed up her operation; that’s fine and it happens and you learn from it and move on. It was another thing entirely to be teased by a warmcuddle – a species she wasn’t even attracted to! – and to have absolutely no way to clear things up! She ground her teeth together, clenching her jaw as she tried to think of something to say as the warmcuddle just continued to radiate an absolutely intolerable aura.

‘<They scanned his ID.>’ Sreshec suddenly remembered, a desperate plan of action forming in her mind. Quick as a flash she rummaged around her pocket for her real, actual ID – the one thing she couldn’t downgrade – and slapped it against the window with a resounding smack.

“[Check ‘em.]” Sreshec said, summoning as much confidence as she could as the nonplussed warmcuddle scanned her ID with a handheld device. She watched as his expression went from nonplussed to surprised, to downright confused as he looked at her, then her ID, then the information that was on the screen.

“Wh- wait, who? How-“ Mike began, but was immediately cut off by a looming Sreshec, who grinned not-at-all-kindly.

“[I’m here because I know what you did. We know.]” Sreshec stated, lying through her teeth.

Mike, for his part, furrowed his brow and leaned forward, scowling. “Listen, threats don’t work here, and they sure as shit don’t work on me, so how about-“

Sreshec needed something else, something to push… ah.

“[We have the search engine history to prove it.]”

The change was immediate; Mike broke out into a cold sweat, his body trembling slightly as the color bled from his face. “H-how? I was behind seven proxies… how?!

Sreshec pressed her advantage, tamping down the morbid curiosity of what she just happened to uncover. “[Not important – what is important, is sharing those codes. You know the ones – to that place in [Three Hills].”

Mike frowned, then scrunched up his nose – Sreshec admitted it was kind of cute – before looking the Jornissian up and down again, and not at all unkindly. “Fuck’s sake… so you lead with the ‘Greg’s girlfriend’ line? That’s a new one – but if you know that much about us, th-then you want it too!Mike accused, shaking his finger at the blue stranger. “So don’t you start kinkshaming me!”

Sreshec clenched her tail as she so desperately crushed the thousand questions she wanted to ask and the dozens of misconceptions she wanted to clear up, the warmcuddle blushing fiercely as he ripped off a piece of paper and began to scribble on it.

“If you’re here for that, then fine – you’ll want to find the place that isn’t there, say this phrase-“ Mike underlined a part of the message he was writing out, “- and that’ll get you in. If you have problems, ask around; I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure out who you should talk to, especially if you’re part of that community.”

With a “[Wait, what?]” and the sudden sliding open of a transfer tray, Mike practically shoved the small slip of paper into the Jornissian’s waiting hands. He looked to his left and right, before holding his thumb and pinkie finger to his face.

“Call me!” He said, before immediately shutting off the glass, leaving an incredibly disturbed Sreshec looking at herself in the reflected mirror. She looked herself in the eyes and felt slightly dirty, but couldn’t figure out why. Sreshec looked down at the slip of paper in her hand, the tiny writing itself probably worth 5 or 6 figures on it’s own.

If only she read warmcuddlese.

Categories
Stories They are Smol

Smolive Garden, Chapter 10: Willing Rube

Sreshec leaned back in her bowl chair, the exhaustion and frustration of the past few weeks replaced with a tentative curiosity. Gone were the mountains of paperwork and the carefully curated 3D prints of various solutions to esoteric problems; instead, simple relationship maps adorned the wall, each tied to a singular news story.

Here, in [First Shoals], a story of an out-of-towner stumbling onto an illegal trade ring. There, in [Silver City], a high-speed bust of illegal warmcuddle food carts. On another wall panel, the story of a fake chalet that was built for voyeurs illegally viewing local “guests” and was only busted after a gang of pesky warmcuddle kids decided to poke around. Every wall had something like that plastered over it’s frame; a literal warmcuddle-interest piece dissected into it’s component parts, further cataloged with notes and graphs in an attempt to put together a quantifiable value to qualitative data.

But all of the stories she followed were somehow off.

Sreshec examined her earliest handiwork, and the piece that she returned to after every subsequent story was broken down into it’s component parts and questions: The DILFs at fraternity row. It was the perfect template piece that raised all the red flags in the back of Sreshec’s mind, and slowly she started from the beginning once again.

Two Dorarizin males, from far out of system, pick a random college in a random college town far away from any of the major tourist hot-spots for some reason. They have no family here, they have no friends here, they have no business interests here, but somehow they’re able to integrate into the local culture, captivate college students – which, Sreshec admitted, wasn’t that hard – but most importantly gain access to the warmcuddle areas. From what Sreshec knew of the recently-tamed pests, they were still mostly-feral and only bonded to one or two handlers; rare and prized were the Moths who grew up sociable enough to work at petting zoos.

This means out-of-towners were shown an intimate view of local, unique warmcuddle culture, and given the nature of the Moth industry in general, that view was most likely in the presence of a local warmcuddle. It was everything she was trying to do – so how did they do it?!

Sreshec dunked her hand into a bowl of trail mix, idly stirring the produce of a dozen systems as she thought. Any legitimate entity would be advertising an experience like this with a marketing budget the size of a small moon even if it was only targeted at the ultra-luxury market, meaning that whatever was going on was either (1) bespoke, or (2) random happenstance.

Sreshec would have counted the DILF dynamic duo as a random, happy happenstance, but then she began to see the same story repeated everywhere. The stories were mostly the same: Whoever put this together always had an out-of-system client, it always involved the locals, it was primarily warmcuddle focused and warmcuddles, to some degree, helped in the execution of the experience.

It was too scattered though, too decentralized to find any form of progression from one event to the next. Sreshec pulled out a twisted root of Grish, snapping the tart treat in her mouth like a carrot as she mulled the situation over in her mind; it couldn’t be just one group – nobody was iterating on past wins, and the industries that kept cropping up were far too diverse to fall into any one company’s wheelhouse without being a massive mega-conglomerate, and, well. She was having problems; what hope did anyone else have?

“<No. Multiple smaller groups, perhaps?>” Sreshec muttered around a full mouth, grinding  the root down slowly as she continued to think. The groups couldn’t be regional; every city seemed to have it’s own unique problem, and that problem wasn’t repeated anywhere else…so how?

“<Or maybe I’m trying to dry my bread before it’s mixed.>” Sreshec said, tapping the grish root against her snack bowl, as if to make a point. “<Focus on the sales funnel, not the business process. How did they find their marks? How do you advertise that you’re an illegal business to foreigners without them immediately snitching t->”

Sreshec tensed, slightly, as the truth slapped her right in the face mid-monologue: the triad population wasn’t the ringleader in these instances, it was the warmcuddles. They had the criteria, they made the plan, they picked the marks and they called the shots. That’s the only reason why so little prison time, if any, was being dished out for these otherwise horrific breaches of health & safety – it was the warmcuddles all along.

“<Oh you little bastards.>” Sreshec sighed out, narrowing her gaze at the “random” human who was involved in the DILF Diaries, the small alien smiling wide as he brushed down his moth. “<Don’t you give me that look.>” She warned, pointing the leftover grish root at the wall panel accusingly. “<You lied to me. You lied to me because I didn’t expect you and that’s not fair.>”

Sreshec smiled at the little bastard in question as she popped the last half of her snack into her mouth, her jaws snapping shut around the morsel of food. “<So, now we’re faced with the billion credit question: how do I make myself a mark?>”

The Karnakian ran her talons against the fired mineral clay, digging furrows into the crafted sculpture piece as it softly produced a sound between a chime and a string instrument. She was playing the soft melody of [O’ii’s’’s love ballad], providing a gentle background to every conversation within [The Starlight Flower]’s VIP deck. The patron list for the night read like a who’s-who of the system and regional scene, with politicians, artists, business moguls and generally upper crust people filling out every seat, stool and bowl that the space station had.

The only lone exceptions kept to themselves, in a high Ultra-VIP booth overlooking the rich, powerful and influential. They were recent criminals – wandering vagrants, really – and it was slowly starting to dawn on them that maybe, just maybe, they were out of place.

“[Soooooooo….]” rumbled Bluebell, stirring a free drink that would otherwise cost a month of his wages. “[Exactly how did you get these reservations?]”

Borkbork hummed softly as he cracked the mollusk egg over the rapidly-heating shot glass, picking the concoction up and slamming it back just as the ovum began to sizzle.

 “[Kooh! Wow~!]” The dorarizin coughed, placing the crystal glass back on it’s serving plate. “[That’s… that’s a heady feeling.]”

Bluebell sighed as he pulled up a small gel pearl with a disposable silver spoon, biting the drink and snapping the spoon off at the thread, gnawing on the bowl and all. “[You know, you can’t keep dodging my questions.]” He said, mumbling around a partially-full mouth.

“[Oh, alright.]” Borkbork replied, smirking. “[I just know you won’t believe me at all.]”

Bluebell leaned back against the plush seat, staring at his friend across the small table. “[Try me.]”

Borkbork mirrored his companion, grinning as he bounced his back against his backrest. “[I got a galnet message that said I won a contest I don’t remember entering.]”

“[I hate you.]” Bluebell said, chuckling. “[But seriously.]”

Borkbork shrugged, resting his hands on his lap. “[I am being serious. The message came straight from this place, I called the number to check and…]” Borkbork waved his hand idly to the left, pointing at the planetrise visa that framed the backdrop to their conversation. “[So here we are.]”

Bluebell frowned, flicking his ears in thought as he furrowed his brow. He studied his friend for a few moments… and found that he wasn’t lying. Bluebell turned his head and studied the people below; every so often he’d catch one of their glances as they looked up, and just as quickly they’d look away.

“[I wonder why.]”

Borkbork leaned forward once more, preparing a second shot of the inebriating concoction as the Karnakian’s song finished up. “[No clue, but I’m certain that the empty third seat at our table holds the answers.]”

“[Maybe. I was just thinking this table was a default three-seater.]” Bluebell said, looking to his right at the empty bowl seat. “[But I guess that would make no sense in a place like this; everything is custom, so everything is here for a reason.]”

“[I think we’ve been found out.]” Borkbork stated, cracking open another egg. “[But, obviously the cops don’t have this kind of budget.]”

“[Well I didn’t talk!]” Bluebell said, leaning forward to pick up another small spoon, stirring his drink to a froth with a bit of nervous energy. “[I know you didn’t either, which means we were most likely spied on – so possibly the broken circle? The 8 sisters?]”

Borkbork flicked his ears in the negative, lowering his head slightly as his shot was almost finished cooking. “[I think that’s a bit too much of an overactive imagination. With the amount of red tape we had to go through just to visit this system, you think a crime syndicate could pull of tugging this station here for nefarious reasons without alerting a few rangers?]”

“[Fair point.]” Bluebell replied, stopping his spoon to watch the little pearls of his drink bounce against the silver obstacle.

“[Do you…]” Borkbork started, before trailing off, looking past his friend as the door to their private booth opened up silently. The deep blue Jornissian that stood there was clad in a form-fitting iridescent black dress that shimmered as she slithered towards the duo, the small micro-drone lights that trailed and orbited her as much a part of her ensemble as anything else. As the small robots circled her, it was immediately evident that a significant part of her exposed skin was covered in a pattern of small gems, each one shining brilliantly in the fleeting light. Bluebell quickly followed his friend’s gaze, turning around in his seat to watch the newcomer with interest, and couldn’t help but notice that the Jornissian’s dress had a very interesting cut to it.

“[Good evening, proud lords.]” The Jornissian said, dipping her head as the jewels that were adhered to her hood shone in a dazzling pattern in the micro-lights. “[I’m very glad you two could make it. My name is Sreshec, and it has been a pleasure to be your host.]”

The two Dorarizin shared a look with each other as their mystery benefactor took the empty seat at the table. With a wave of her hand she placed a drink order, and after only a few moments the private bar on their level had created, plated, and served her drink. She took a sip of the steaming liquid, dragging out the long pause as long as she could.

“[Well…Sreshec, thank you very much for the invitation.]” Borkbork said, tilting his head back in a gentlemanly greeting. “[I have to admit, I was very surprised to receive it.]”

“[Well.]” Sreshec chuckled softly, dragging her finger along the rim of her glass. “[I saw your news story and just had to get to know you both a bit better.]”

“[Ah. That explains the cut.]” Bluebell said, letting his spoon rest inside his drink. “[While we are both very flattered by your advances, both of us are happily married with many, many pups.]”

Sreshec laughed, softly, covering her mouth with a free hand as she did so. “[Oh! Well, I will admit that thought had crossed my mind, purely given your respective physiques, but no. This-]” Sreshec said, motioning to her outfit. “[-is for another target tonight. However, you two are my VIP guests, so it’s only right that I take care of you both first.]”

“[Is that innuendo?]” Borkbork asked, innocently, as he pointed between his friend and the host. “[Are we still doing innuendo? I haven’t had to flirt in a few years so I’m a bit dusty on it.]”

“[I promise you, honored father.]” Sreshec said, dipping her head slightly as she picked up her drink once more. “[There will be nothing untoward happening to you tonight.]”

“[Well that’s no fun.]” Borkbork pouted, the line delivered just as Sreshec started to sip her drink. He looked away, but studied the Jornissian out of his peripheral vision as she struggled to not cough up her drink. “[Here I thought I was going to be given an indecent proposal or two.]”

“[You know I’d be first.]” Bluebell said, grinning, as he spooned out another pearl of intoxication. “[You always need to be warmed up a bit.]”

“[Ah!]” Borkbork said, leaning back against his seat. “[But once I’m fired up I don’t stop, and I’ve never had a complaint yet.]”

Sreshec continued to cough silently, her torso heaving with the effort to get under control. After a few moments she swallowed hard, before clearing her throat. “[Be that as it may, gentlemen, I do have some things that I’d like to ask you.]”

“[Oh, well, the secret really is to roll your tongue as if you’re pronouncing the letter ‘q’.]” Borkbork replied immediately, earning a light kick under the table from his friend for the trouble.

Sreshec tilted her head slightly, turning towards Bluebell as she motioned to Borkbork. “[Is he… always like this?]”

Bluebell sighed. “[Every moment of every day – but that’s neither here nor there. What kind of things are you curious about? What could possibly interest you about two average vacationers on a long trip to a foreign land?]”

“[Ah, well. That’s exactly what piqued my interest, if I may be honest.]” Sreshec said, pointedly looking at Borkbork before picking up her glass again. “[You two had a very interesting experience with the local college, from what I gathered – but that’s not what I’m interested in. Instead, let me … tell you why you’re here.]”

Sreshec held her drink in her hands on her coiled lap, running her thumb along the ridge. “[Two people of modest means find themselves in a working town, far from any resort, attraction or interest, and within a day have apparently warmed up the warmcuddles to the point that they’re vouching for you against the local constabulary. People like myself have to go through some rounds of training, sensitivity courses, and a dozen other things just to be left alone in the same room as our little friends, yet you two bypass the line within a day of planetfall. So how does one come into a strange system and pull that off with no connections, resources or motives?]”

Sreshec raised the glass to her lips, and paused.

“[How did you do it?]”

Categories
Stories They are Smol

Smolive Garden, Chapter 9: The only news is Local news

It wasn’t, really, white noise.

White noise, as we humans know it, is usually something that’s supposed to blend into the background, much like an off-eggshell white paint, or a beige carpet. White noise machines create a gentle, blank roar that’s used in hospitals to let people rest, in libraries to keep things quiet over the murmuring of guests, and in bedrooms and hallways across human-occupied space to let us get a nap in-between shifts. It’s a great way to increase the baseline decibel volume that a human will outright ignore, and has been used to great effect throughout the galaxy in mostly-harmless pranks.

However, this wasn’t that.

Another core tenant of white-noisiness was the fact that it was not meant to convey information; the effect was lost if you were actively paying attention to the noise, or were trying to use it for information. This is why it was usually a static roar, a babbling brook, the sound of rain against windowpanes or the rustling of wind through leaves; the goal was always something non-specific and non-threatening. Roughly 50 separate newscasts playing at once was not what anyone would consider “white noise”, but it was for Sreshec, because she was finally, truly, and utterly done.

She was done with making things perfect. She was done trying to do what was best for the customer. She was done trying to appease her C-suite peers, she was done trying to figure out proper taste profiles, and she was done with warmcuddles. Her jaw clenched at the thought of those little bastards, existing, having demands and putting them into law – who do they think they are?!

Sreshec groaned as she splayed out over her model table, sliding her head over the edge in exhaustion to mimic an upside-down version of the scream. As she let the muscles in her everything relax, her view moved from dozens and dozens of moving screens to stacks and stacks of highlighted notes, paper, scrolls and printouts, the silent mountain a testament of her work, and it’s ultimate futility. To the right, the mountain of Food Safety Law; to the left, the hills of Fire-safety regulations. A distant plateau in the back could barely be seen, but Sreshec had heard tell of the famed Uluru – a natural formation of big data analytics, and in the far back of her hemisphere office, blocking out the very sun itself, the most intimidating peak of them all: Mt. Personal Safety Law & Regulations.

Everyone was wrong. The warmcuddles weren’t harmless; they were an active menace and had declared war against the galaxy! A war of red tape and bullshit!

Sreshec continued her revolution over the table, starting to coil face-down on the floor like warm soft serve. Eventually enough of her went over the table to slide off it completely, and the totally-an-adult Jornissian power-executive let out a little whine as the warm floor embraced her totally.

“<Why did I volunteer for this? Scratch that, why did I fight for this position? Ugh.>” Sreshec grumbled, unprofessionally rolling onto her back on the floor as she spoke over the murmuring din of the local and regional newscasters. Most planets followed pretty basic newscasting spheres of influence; local news, regional news, planetary, system, system-regional, and the amount of players shrunk the higher up in the ladder you climbed until there were only one or two that played at the top. It wasn’t maliciousness that culled competition, merely overhead, and that’s the problem that Sreshec was fundamentally facing. The goal of her past few months was to find a way to create a luxury experience with real warmcuddle ambiance; no one had been able to do so yet, and so there was no competition to copy – or buy. Therefore, she could either:

1) Build a luxury resort and restaurant complex – which was expensive enough already – but to the exacting and downright unreasonable demands of the Warmcuddle inspectors, thereby multiplying costs by a factor of 10 and putting the breakeven point sometime around the next galactic rotation.

Or

2) Give up.

Sreshec stared up at the ceiling, the dozens of local newscasts taking pity on her as they looked down from above, eagerly reporting the good news of crop yields or rezoning ordinances. Sreshec let her brain empty for a bit, and thought hollow thoughts; the floor was a little cool, she should really move away from the utilitessian interior design – exposed radiation shields were homey but not pretty, once she finishes this job she should hit on that cute sous chef on level 3 to celebrate… he looks young, so it could be fun.

Sreshec chuckled. “<Maybe I should settle down then. I have enough money and this is a growing system. It wouldn’t be too hard to migrate and find someone… countryish. They wouldn’t care what I used to do and I wouldn’t tell them.>” She sighed, her gaze falling onto a random patch of newscasters, and it was then that Sreshec realized something incredibly obvious: There were a lot of warmcuddle-interest stories. Warmcuddles climbing trees! Warmcuddles getting stuck in trees. Warmcuddles climbing rocks! Warmcuddles getting stuck on rocks and having to be moth’d out. Warmcuddles climbing other citizens! Warmcuddles getting stuck in –

She raised her brow. “<Well that mayor’s career is over.>”

With idle interest she turned onto her side, tilting her head back to focus more on that core group of 8 screens, and just let the babble flow into her. Silver City board of blah de blah Mt. [Mothington], illegal to carve a giant moth, blah blah double illegal making a moth based religion. She cut the volume down on the other 56 screens with a yawn, and boosted the volume on the four she was focused on. These were secondary… tertiary cities and towns’ local news, and it was interesting to see how the warmcuddles had partially integrated into the surrounding area. New barrier erected in kindergardens to allow for earlier exposure and integration, a mixed-use park with a running track was going to open up soon, there was a domestic disturbance at some Dorarizin-founded university last night involving the entire Varsity Hunt team, 5 decoy erzets, the college lighthouse and at least one tamed moth.

Sreshec smacked her lips as she muted all other streams with a flick of her wrist, focusing solely on the most outrageous story. The warmcuddle caretaker of the semi-feral beast was giving his statement, the news crew somehow keeping a straight face as the warmcuddle brushed down the moth in question, who he had named “three piece”. This was apparently incredibly important, as the warmcuddle started to just chant the moth’s name as he brushed it. The camera cut to the station again, and with more context – and some really interesting camera footage, a story of two out-system DILFs coming down for a party night turned into, well.

“<Fines, most likely.>” Sreshec commented, interrupting the newscaster who so rudely continued to speak. “<They had warmcuddles vouching for them, so nothing’s going to stick.>”

Sreshec let the news babble over her, before they switched to commercial. With a commanded thought she muted everything, and found much to her curiosity that she couldn’t hold any other thoughts in her mind; the last story stuck with her.

Why?

*pek-*

Ti’miquek paused for a moment after flipping the pancake, tilting his head to the side as the dense pound-cake dough slapping against his wok with enough force to dip it.

*-pekpekPAKPAKBLAM-*

“[Ah.]” Ti’miquek said nonplussed as the sound abruptly stopped. Setting his wok back on the open flame he reached up, resetting a counter that he never thought he would create, nor use.

SHIFTS WITHOUT GUNFIRE: 0

HIGHEST SAFE SHIFTS: 1

“[One day we’ll break another digit.]” Ti’miquek said, nodding his head as a grumbling Anne-Marie stomped back into the kitchen. Ti’miquek flipped the pancake once more, uncorking a bottle of his homemade oyster sauce and applying it liberally to the pan as Anne Marie complained, making a loud ruckus as she moved back to the human-only section of the not-on-any-building-code employee’s lounge-and-cupboard. From a few stolen glances it seemed like the front of her suit had some pretty deep gouges in them… so a handsy patron who forgot their own strength. There was a slight ruckus outside his serving window, but Ti’miquek knew enough to leave well enough alone: the pay was great, the risk was unsustainable, and the jail time could only increase from here.

“[Dad you know that’s not going to happen.]” Tik’akri said, his daughter’s wry smile speaking a thousand words in an instant. “[I’d say we’re pretty good as an operation.]”

“[I am but the poor humble line chef.]” Ti’miquek said, plating the sizzling-hot “dessert” on a cast-iron tray. “[I have no idea what’s going on here, officer.]”

“[Dad.]” Tik’akri trilled, busying herself with a dozen little tasks. “[It’s fine. We do another few months of this and we’re set – all of us. No one’s seriously injured-]”

“[Yet.]” Ti’miquek flatly interrupted, alternating peaches and onions along the cake disk. “[I don’t think the money’s worth the risk.]”

Tik’akri sighed and turned around, resting the side of her hip against the kitchen sink. “[We have had some minor issues, but the liberal use of… protection has stopped anything from getting out of hand.]” Tik’akri said, counting off her fingers. “[Our marketing network is only getting better at vetting potential new customers, and with our password changes we won’t have un-vetted people coming in. The network effect will eventually spread enough that we’re an open secret, and by that time we’ve long since closed up shop and moved on. Even if we are caught – which we won’t be, by the way – the worst thing is that we’re shut down. Nobody’s going to turn on us, and if they do we can say we didn’t know human law and point out our record of safety to defer charges. We’re going to be fine, dad.]”

“That’s her, officer.” Anne Marie said in her deepest voice, cowboy walking out of the employee lounge with a new, mismatched suit top. “That’s the one what turned me into an outlaw.”

Immediately the tension was broken as the two Karnakians literally roared with laughter, Ti’miquek chuckling as he slid the plate through the serving window to someone outside. “[Well, thank you Anne Marie. I’m certain our magistrates will see to it justice is done.]”

“Nope.” Anne Marie said, scrambling onto Tik’akri’s back. “I’m a terminal case and can never go back.”

“[I’m sorry for ruining your future.]” Tik’akri said, tilting her head straight back to look upside-down at her new freeloader. “[You need a break?]”

“Nah. That was the only customer.” Anne Marie said, draping over her manager. “Brian welcomed them in as cunts, Jack was on overwatch and I was, well.”

“[Swiped?]” Ventured Ti’miquek, and was rewarded with a half-shrug.

“More like clotheslined.” Anne Marie said, pausing only for a moment as neither Karnakian responded. “Ah. Uh. So imagine me running into a branch or a pole at chest height-”

“[Oh!]” Ti’miquek and Tik’akri said, the two sharing looks. “[I’m so sorry – I was checking in on Brian so I didn’t see it happen-]”

“Tictac, Tomtom it’s fine.” Anne Marie said, waving her hand dismissively as she idly rifled through Tik’akri’s pockets just to be mischevious. “That’s what the suits are for.”

“[Yeah, but… two humans per table?]” Tik’akri said, changing the subject once she felt her friend was truly out of danger. “[I thought we were only managing one table a night as trials, not because that was our maximum capacity.]”

Anne Marie pulled out a previously-stashed choccy chip bag, rolling onto her back as she popped it open. “Y’all move to fast for us. That Jornissian client – the one that clotheslined me? He knocked the wind out of my lungs for a few seconds. Jack was watching from the bar with his BAR and stopped it from getting any worse.” She looked up, furrowing her brow at the dumbfounded response she received. “What? The system works.”

“[That’s… not the point.]” Ti’miquek sighed. “[Whatever, you’re all adults here. What’s the solution, “boss”?]”

Tomtom thought for a moment as Anne Marie got crumbs everywhere. “[If they developed the system, then we should let them scale it if it truly does work.]” Tik’akri said, shaking her head from side to side slowly in thought. “[Really, everything else is in place. Hey.]”

Tomtom looked Anne Marie dead in the eyes via the back of a particularly shiny ladle that was hanging up on the wall. “[Who do you know that wants to make a quick buck?]”

Anne Marie grinned wide, and pulled out her phone.