The door beep-booped, admitting Severo.

Antonieta Severo had found her perfect habitat. Danger on all sides. Chaos within. And her in the middle, balanced on the peak of performance, playing one side against the other.

"Good evening," she said. "Are we sharing terrible secrets yet? My government plans to mince Quotidians and stuff them into sausages. Oh, Radicchinho! Doesn't he look cute when he's shocked, Laura? You should try it some time. Why not tonight?" She sat next to Mark. "What else can I say? Chadwell and Nelly are sleeping together, but Nelly doesn't know about what happens when Chadwell gets drunk and Kaliannan's around. Li is actually a life-like robot, and poor Yoshida would be shocked by what Ahmed is doing with his robots."

"Just say, 'I turned off the cameras,'" said Laura, now very aware that something important was going on.

"Ohhh!" said Koen, and Severo winked at him.

"One of the things I said was true."

"Where's your ugly sweater?" asked Mark.

"Where's yours, gato? You are as stylish as an investment banker on his nine-hundredth date. And I - " she put the heels of her hands to her armpits and pressed them down her torso. "I could not help myself."

She was wearing a pearl-colored cashmere top with a neckline that bared both shoulders. She looked as if she could be unsheathed at a moment's notice and used to assassinate someone. Mark's charcoal blazer did make him look a bit like an investment banker, but more like a device that could be plugged into a server and used to mine bitcoin.

Laura and Koen, who were wearing stew-stained cardigans, shared a look.

"What is going on, Mark?" asked Laura. "What is the Human Help Club?"

"Ah," said Severo.

Mark leaned into the candlelight. His pupils contracted. "What good is the Convention?" he asked.

"Its mandate is to stop the next inter-timeline war," Laura recited.

"Don't we all feel safer?" said Mark, which was interesting because although he was being ironic, everyone at the table actually did feel much safer than they had a mere decade before. But most animals quickly get used to new conditions and take them for granted. Humans are no exception.

Honesty did compel Laura to point out, "half the population has already phased out fossil fuels, and we wouldn't be able to do that without nonhuman rehydrogenation plants."

"But that population is still too big, and carbon dioxide is still above the 20th century level." Mark saw that neither of his interlocutors were scared by those statistics, and switched tacks. "And Lithium Borohydride comes with its own problems." Still nothing. "And anyway, what about fusion plants? What about potential teleportation? What about all this garbage they're giving to us to store?

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"It's like the coyote and scorpion," he said. "The scorpion stings the coyote who's carrying it across a river, even though that will mean the scorpion will drown. It's just its nature to sting." He saw everyone was nodding. "You know the story? It's Native American."

"I thought it was African," said Koen.

Severo huffed. "It's a European story, of course. The scorpion and the frog."1

"Get a lot of scorpions in Europe, do they?" asked Mark.

"I eat them fried with chili powder." She tossed her hair. "You tell us what you want to tell us."

"This place is unnatural," Mark said. "Humans can't live like this.

Laura said, "You can educate someone to live anywhere…" she cleared his throat. "But I don't want to."

"I always wondered why the frog doesn't make the scorpion wear a cap on his stinger," Koen mused.

"That's not the point of the story," said Mark. "My point is that nonhumans aren't like us."

Us, thought Laura and Koen.

Severo wondered if he'd put something in this food. "You mean this alien city would be better with no aliens in it?" she asked.

"Well," said Mark. "I wouldn't go that far."

She grinned. "Even with the camera's turned off?"

"I'm saying that there's a human in this city who needs help. We need to help him." And before they could ask who, "you've seen how Graa treats Mr. Grumbles."

Severo laughed, but Koen didn't. He and Mark were watching Laura, who frowned.

Koen felt it. A smile, a frown, a look of anger or sadness in a face that glowed to him like the Pole Star. He had trained himself to to do and say things that made Laura feel safe. Every act became a promise: I will rescue you from all this.

Mark knew that. "Laura," he said, "we can't do it without you."

She looked at her hands, folded around her plate. "I used to like being the super-girl," said Laura. "She can get anything done! But now I feel like I've giving something up. Like every time I go faster, it's because I'm burning part of myself. It's time to stop."

Mark and Koen held their breath. Laura let out hers.

"And anyway, I feel sorry for Mr. Grumbles."

So did Koen. He felt the ape-man's pain as his own, and he wanted to put an end to it. So Koen listened to Laura when she talked about managing interspecies relations and exposing the hypocrisy of the Convention. He raised questions, but not as protests. He exposed flaws in planning and suggested solutions, working to construct success for their mission.

"Kidnap Mr. Grumbles," said Severo. She enjoyed her freedom to utter such dangerous words. She savored even more the promise of more fun to come. "I love it!"

1It is originally Persian. See Arata (2011): "Blumenreiche Handelswege"