“I’ll keep this brief, as you both have quite a bit of paperwork to get to.” Dae Yeong sat on the other side of a conference room table from Alex and Carbon, leaning over it as he slid them each two stacks of paperwork. Archaic, certainly, but still the most official. “Do not speak to anyone about anything you experienced in any fashion for the duration of your mission, without a signed order.”
“Oh, well, that shouldn’t be too hard. ‘So how was it?’ No comment.” Alex crammed another mini muffin into his mouth and washed it down with passable coffee. The program at least had the good sense to have food waiting in the conference room. He pulled the mountain of paperwork over to himself and shuffled through it. At least a dozen manila folders, all legal size and many of them finger thick, were stacked on top of a pile of pale blue paper with Tsla text peeking out at him. He’d see about getting a translator when he got down to those.
“I would recommend more tact, many people will never fully understand these circumstances and answers like that may put them off. But you are essentially correct.” He leaned back in his chair and looked between them. “If either of you have any questions, I will be available to you until you are done.”
Carbon shook her head and Alex shrugged as they started in on the forms.
It was basically what Dae indicated, but full of lawyer words that Alex had a tenuous grasp of. His eyes darted over to Carbon with a touch of envy. Her stack was shorter and the CPP had a personal AI waiting for her when they arrived, giving her near-instant access to any sort of reference material she needed. He got to ask questions.
The sheer volume of the forms was unsettling, but each covered a unique aspect of the mission and the many, many things that went wrong. There was the original mission non-disclosure agreement and the new extended non-disclosure agreement. Then there was the encounter with the Eohm, which included special agreements for being in control of a government vehicle when it sustains damage, being attacked by hostile nonhuman entities, using emergency equipment, and using a government vehicle outside of normal operational parameters, to start.
That didn’t even eat up half of the pile. The rest covered seeing, touching and boarding an unknown object, using unidentified technology and having an alien foreign object implanted. It was a strange mix of documents that hadn’t been altered in decades and a few that had been finished just days ago. It was only the second time in 60 years humanity had found abandoned technology, which had only been an old tkt settlement. There wasn’t a lot of precedence.
Alex took his time reading everything that had been put before him, even if it was slow going. It at least appeared that Carbon was doing the same. They took a break after an aide had delivered lunch, several hours into the day. By the time they had pushed through to the Tslao paperwork, they had been there for just over eight hours.
Dae locked the signed forms up into two different briefcases and handed them off to another aide, securing the door as she left. “Thank you for your patience with this. Many returning crews chafe at having to go over paperwork and there is usually much less to do.”
“I kind of expected it. Had a lot going on, you know?” Alex stood, stretched and leaned back against the table.
Dae shook his head. “Officially, I do not. So that you understand, Alex, that alone is almost too much information for you to give out.”
“Oh, yeah. This is going to take some getting used to.” He rubbed his eyes, which reminded him of how much his wrist hurt from all the writing.
Carbon pushed her chair away from the table and stood apart from both of them. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Yeong. If it is not troublesome, may I be shown to my room? It has been a very long week.”
“Of course, Shipmaster. Both of you have been given diplomatic quarters for the time being. It breaks with the decompression routine, but there is enhanced security and privacy up there.”
“That will do fine, thank you.” Carbon smiled faintly and gave him a shallow bow, little more than an incline of her head, some sort of formality. She’d done the same thing to Alex when they had first met, without the smile.
“I could stand to get some rest, myself.”
Dae nodded and led them out to the elevators, waving his badge over the call pad for an express that bypassed the rest of the hotel that occupied this portion of the upper tower in the station. It was very well appointed, with wood accents and a thick carpet and not a hint of the blue-gray paint that seemed to cover most everything else on the station.
The floor they stopped at was more of the same, Dae showed them down a side corridor and dropped Alex off at his quarters before leading Carbon further down the hall.
The room felt strange. It was nicer than anywhere Alex had stayed before, just short of being what he would consider opulent. Lots of real wood, granite counters in the bathroom and a king sized bed. At least the package of clothing they had left for him on the dresser was just standard CPP issue station gear. He picked it up and headed for the bathroom.
Quarantine had bothered him a little, but that was still a very compact area. This was just... enormous. The bathroom alone was larger than his cabin on the Kshlav’o had been. There was elbow room when he changed his clothes.
Maybe it was better in the dark. He crawled into bed and tried to get comfortable. “Lights, off.”
He waited for several minutes. It didn’t get better. He still did not like the dark. The room still felt empty and now he couldn’t tell where anything was. Maybe he could sleep in the closet. Fold up the comforter and make a little bed...
A knock at the door interrupted his descent. Alex wasn’t sure he had heard it until it happened again. Someone was actually knocking on the door, not using the call button on the lock.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He shuffled over towards the door controls in the dark and thumbed the button to activate the viewer. Only the top half of a head was visible, clearly Carbon. Probably no one else on the station had blue-black fur and antennae, anyway. He hit the panel, squinting into the light of the hallway. “Hi.”
Carbon pushed him back into the room and closed the door behind her, resting her head against his chest and slipping her arms around his waist. “I have missed you, Alex.”
“I missed you too.”
Carbon dragged him back to bed, not that he resisted. In the darkness the room still felt wrong, but Alex found it much more tolerable with Carbon’s back against him. She draped his arm over her waist and shifted her head around on the pillow. Her antenna landed on top of his head with a muted thump and they shifted down into the shared existence.
”This is nice.” Carbon’s mind felt smooth and hard, still prepared to deal with stresses beyond her control. There were little chips and cracks, though they seemed to be dissipating.
”It is. We should do this more often.” The Alex part warmed with mirth and cozied up to her.
Carbon began to shift, still smooth but less rigid as she relaxed. ”I would find that desirable. I have been thinking about our relationship, Alex.”
He wasn’t sure what to make of that. He assumed it wasn’t bad, it didn’t feel bad when she had said it. He lacked the skill to successfully hide the burst of anxiety that it caused. ”Go on.”
”I wish to continue with this, but I fear you will be ostracized by your species if we do.” Carbon tried to ease his fears and radiated a calm presence.
It actually worked very well, settling Alex down as he thought about his reply. ”I don’t know if ostracized is the right word. It’s new territory, I’ve never heard of anyone else having a relationship like ours. There have been a few instances in human history where parallels could be drawn.”
A hopeful sort of curiosity. ”How did those turn out?”
”In the long run or short term?”
Followed immediately by disappointment. ”Ah. I had hoped that your race would be more accepting, you seem to deal with change well.”
”Really? Us? It takes decades before you see any social norms change...” He pondered that for a moment, ”Two generations, probably.”
Carbon was quiet, ruminating and growing discouraged. ”I had hoped that there might be some refuge for us with one of our races.”
”The Tslao will not be accepting of this either, I take?” He couldn’t avoid the worry lacing through his thoughts, an uneasy sense of loss already seeping in.
She gave a sort of short, sharp laugh, sarcastic and pained. ”No. We are very insular, Alex. We do not like change, I fear the reaction would likely be worse from my people.”
”You don’t seem to mind change.” At least, she didn’t mind him.
Carbon shifted, softer but still pessimistic. ”I am an individual with an unusual upbringing. When I was a child, we were taught that humans were dangerous and unpredictable, like wild animals among the stars. Had I not seen them, interacted with them myself... I would have believed it.”
”That does explain why we’ve always had cool political relations.”
A pulse of agreement. ”Before the disaster, the number of my people who have met humans did not even number into the hundreds. Many were terrified at how quickly you expanded your borders.”
”Wow. Okay... I probably keep a closer eye on things like this than most people, but that’s not how the Tsla’o were portrayed in history classes. I guess that concealing yourselves thing worked a treat.” Alex unfocused, silent and contemplative. ”I don’t think we will be entirely alone here. My mother already likes you quite a bit.”
Carbon rippled with a burst of shock and surprise at that. ”She does? I thought I had been rude the first time you passed a message from her to me?”
”Oh yeah, you snapped at me good for that and I, uh... I just started making up replies for you.” It had seemed like a civil thing to do at the time, but saying it now was just embarrassing. “Nothing crazy, just polite responses that didn’t really amount to anything. I didn't want her to think you were mean.”
Embarrassment and a curious type of admiration marbled her presence. ”Thank you for protecting my honor when I had done nothing to deserve it.”
”I figured you were having a hard time. You looked like you were. I just wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.” Alex warmed, unaware that he had been doing her a favor at the time. He’d mostly been doing it for his mom, who’d been more interested in aliens than he ever had. ”What about your father? Would he accept us?”
”I do not think he would react well.”
Her answer had come so quickly he was sure she had already been thinking about it. There was no hesitation, no more consideration to be done. She’d had a week to do nothing but dwell on things. ”Oh. Your aunt?”
Fear spiked in mind, cold and crisp. "No! No. She would never."
That her reaction was strong enough to make him afraid as well, an echo of the ‘narcotic effect’ he had learned about before, was surprising and unsettling. ”Okay. Well... At least we have my family.”
”Is that enough?”
”It’s a start.”
Carbon thought on that awhile, bemused. ”It will have to do. I think we should do our best to keep our relationship hidden, until we have better gauged reactions to it.”
”I agree. Are you going to keep coming over?”
The answer was coy and practically dripping with anticipation. ”No.”
”Liar.”
A memory of a smile and a laugh. ”You are not the only one with a room, Alex.”
He gave her that. ”I don’t know where yours is.”
”It is the next one down the hall. How do you think I got here so quickly?”
”So should we trade off nightly?”
”We will decide what to do when the time comes.”
Alex did the closest thing he could do to grinning. ”So every other night?”
”That sounds fine.” The Carbon part was amused by that, but quieted and became serious a moment later. ”Will you do something for me, Alex?”
”Sure, name it.”
”It has been a long week, will you show me a memory? An exciting one?”