After the gift-giving was finished, Sophia and I went around talking to a few of our friends. Nisha was one of the first we ran into and she instantly gave me a big hug with a smile.
“Thank you for the jewelry, where did you get it?” she asked, sounding exuberant and more than a little tipsy.
“The workshop, of course.” I answered, grinning a little. It was not easy to surprise Nisha, thanks to her empathic senses, she would instantly notice if you were up to something, but apparently, she had mistaken my pride about making a great present with pride in my ability to pick out presents.
“You made them? I should have known.” she admitted, grinning while giving Sophia a hug as well. “Can you guess which of your gifts was mine?” she asked, looking mischievous enough for me to make a guess. But I knew that accusing her would only play into her games so I blanked my expression, telling her that I had no idea, causing her to grin even more widely and lick her lips in a imitation of my earlier antics, causing Sophia and me to join her in laughter.
Suddenly, her expression turned sad, almost morose, and she looked past Sophia and me, to someone behind us.
“Tanisha?” I asked, seeing her expression causing her to nod sadly. It was a problem the two of them had made me aware of months ago, but solving it was not as easy. I had been concerned with Tanisha and her drinking, sadly she had been backsliding after Sophia came to the Island and I had asked the two of them for advice. She was my roommate and I did not want her to be miserable or flunk out anymore than I was interested in her stumbling into the room falling down drunk, reeking of liquor and sex. But I had been clueless how to help, thus asking them.
It had not taken them long, Nisha had apparently realised it upon one of their first meetings, to figure out what was going on. Apparently, Tanisha was attracted to me, in a romantic fashion. That alone would be no problem, at least in my opinion, I could apologize to her, reminding her that I was in a relationship with Sophia and did not return her affection. Hopefully, she would understand and we could remain friends.
If only it was that easy.
No, the real problem was that Tanisha had yet to understand what was going on, or as Nisha explained it, she felt attraction but according to her upbringing, she was only supposed to be attracted to males. As such, she could not be attracted to me and tried to find a relationship with some guy but she could only get into it when drunk. I had no idea how to solve the problem and it irked me, wanting to help but not knowing how. So, for now, Sophia and I kept to her room when we needed privacy, only interaction with Tanisha in public settings, trying not to rub her face into what she was missing.
“I wish I knew how to help her.” Nisha sighed.
“I agree, if she continues like that, she will have to drop out at the end of the year.” I joined Nisha in sighing.
“And there is nothing either of you can do about it, so don’t get so down. It’s a party, remember. She needs to make the first step on her own, it’s one nobody can take for her.” Sophia reminded us, before her smile turned a little wicked and she continued. “Well, not unless someone was interested in her and willing to give her a little push.”
“Hey, I was just not interested in anyone…” I interjected, remembering how she had kissed me for the first time.
“And you certainly didn’t walk into a streetlight, right afterwards.” she reminded me, causing me to blush and Nisha to laugh.
“I did not know you had seen that.” I mumbled, causing the other two to laugh louder. “But in the end, I am glad how that turned out.” I smiled at Sophia, causing Nisha to make gagging noises.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Go, go be adorable somewhere else. I have a hot date with another drink.” she told use, pushing Sophia and me towards the dance-floor.
“She’s concerned with something.” Sophia noted, while we headed the way we had been pushed.
“You think the Tanisha-situation is bothering her?” I asked, worried that Nisha might be more affected than me, maybe due to her empathic abilities. I was still not quite certain how those worked, despite trying to get Nisha to explain them. I could understand the words she used but forming a concept how exactly her ability worked eluded me. Not that it was the only ability that eluded me, I had been unable to define any ability in terms I could actually use. They seemed all to be subjective to the user and purely instinctual. I had learned to control my own ability, at least to a point and with Galatea’s help, allowing me to use a trance-state while in our shared mental space and that way, Galatea could observe my mental process.
Sadly, that helped only so far, as it seemed that I was making intuitive and mental leaps that left Galatea clueless how I got to certain points, it was as if I was skipping the normal development process, arriving at the end without taking the intermediate steps. So far, I had yet to arrive at wrong conclusions or make errors how to actualise my ideas, but I was not too happy with it. If I wanted to call what I was doing science, I needed to understand the intermediate processes, maybe even how my brain worked. Sadly, that was something I was far from and my ability was not helping.
“Maybe. If she wants to talk about it, she knows that both of us care.” Sophia said, shifting our course away from the dance-floor and towards Leona and a couple of her friends. It seemed more dancing would have to wait.
“Mother, the last automatic-test just finished. You told me to tell you once it did.” Galatea told me, as we were talking with Karen some time later. It had taken Sophia and Karen a few days to come to some kind of understanding but once they did, they could argue for hours, just for the sake of testing their mental mettle. Both shared a strong interest in human and humane solutions for problems, but what exactly such a solution should entail differed in their respective minds.
To me, the solution more often than not involved tossing the human part of the problem and looking for a technical solution so the interruption was welcome.
“Do you have the results?” I asked, shifting quite a bit of my attention into our shared mental space, asking Galatea to help me pay attention to the conversation, otherwise they might notice a glassy look in my eyes.
“Of course. Let me show you.” with that, she shared loads of data with me, showing the latest and hopefully last, stationary test of the engines for my aircraft. The performance data was right were it was supposed to be, with only small variations from the expected parameters. Those were expected and would hopefully even out over time. While the nanites were the best means of production I could imagine, they were not perfect. Only almost, as the precision showed.
“Do you want to give a present to ourselves?” I asked Galatea, feeling a little impish.
“Maybe add a sled paint-job and fly across a few towns?” Galatea retorted, causing me to chuckle under my breath.
“Uhoh, you should pay attention to the outside.” Galatea warned me and when I focused, I noticed that Sophia and Karen looked at me a little shocked.
“What did I chuckle about?” I asked Galatea, feeling a little panicked.
“They were debating how to end child-labour in the third world, especially when it comes to clothing-manufacture.” Galatea explained, causing me to internally groan.
“I am sorry, it is just that I think it would be a lot easier to get rid of the incentive. How did other manual labour jobs change? Automation. As long as it is cheaper to get the work done somewhere else and pay a pittance in labour-costs, you will not solve the issue. But if you keep the labour within the country you later want to sell in, you pay a lot more, which is the whole problem. Now, if you have a robot that is able to sew whatever you need in seconds or minutes instead of hours or days, you shift the incentive.” I managed to cobble together a way to make my chuckle sound less horrible.
“But that only takes away what little money is shifted, so the overall problem remains, maybe gets even worse.” Karen disagreed.
Meanwhile, I could see in Sophia’s raised eyebrow that it would not be the last I would hear about my behaviour, she knew me well enough that something like that was not the cause of my chuckle.