Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee

Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136

David stared out at the open sea, and made a noncommittal noise. He was wearing a long dark coat similar enough to the one he’d let me borrow, but the fabric on his felt scratchier. “Not sure how to put this without maybe committing a cross-cultural faux pas. Do you guys ever speak poorly of family, or is that anti-herd behavior?”

I snorted. “Half of being in a herd is gossiping about who is or isn’t conforming properly. Lies are predatory, but there’s nothing more preylike than swapping hateful truths.” I shook my head. “Honestly, my own parents were boring and status-obsessed, and thought innovation was ‘an unnecessary risk’. That’s why I ran off to the city to study distilling. Had to get away from their naysaying until I had a product to debut for the orchard.”

Hopefully they’ll turn up alive someday, said the odd voice. It’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead.

David nodded, the sides of his mouth curling up slightly in a reluctant smile. “Alright. I suppose I've been honest with you so far, and you haven’t run away screaming even once yet. If you can handle learning how many eggs we use in baking, you can probably handle me bitching about my parents.”

My face fell. “Wait, are most Terran baked goods going to send me into anaphylactic shock?” I wasn’t horrified, but I was deeply hurt. “I’m being excluded! This is discrimination, darn it!”

David chuckled. “Anything I cook for you should be safe,” he said, “and yeah, why not, we can pick up some vegan muffins or something if you like.”

I nodded satisfactorily. “Very well, I accept your terms. The other half of being in a herd, after all, involves copious amounts of sugar. I don’t make the rules, but I do apply them arbitrarily.”

David laughed, but continued. “Anyway, I was telling you about the waxing fortunes and waning virtues of the ancient and noble House of Brenner.”

My eyes widened. “You’re nobility!?”

David shook his head. “No, not at all, not even a little. But let’s see… we’re meeting my cousin, Samuel Brenner, and his wife and daughter, Erin and Helena.”

“Right,” I said, recalling human naming customs. “The family name usually stays the same throughout the male line in the family, but everyone has one or two personal names.” I looked at David more closely. “Do you have a second personal name?”

David sighed deeply. “It's Lee. David Lee Brenner. My cousin Samuel is Sammy Hagar Brenner.” I stared at him blankly, not getting the importance of those names. “David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar were old musicians, the first and second singers for a band called Van Halen. I'll play them for you sometime when we’re back at home. The names were my uncle’s idea--Sam’s dad. Fun guy, despite his terrible taste in names. Real artsy sort. I respected him.” David shook his head. “He passed away fairly young. He went on a nature retreat in the woods to paint, and suddenly stopped answering his phone. They went to check on him and found his body in the cabin, right next to his easel.”

I grimaced. Hardly an uncommon fate in the Federation, but it never got any easier to hear. “Predator attack?” I asked.

“Nah, heart attack,” said David, grimly. “They could have saved him if there had been anyone else nearby to call for help, or if he’d been somewhere an ambulance could reach, but he wanted some peace and quiet while he painted.” David sighed. “He probably should have taken better care of himself in any event. The man loved his late-night whisky and tater tots.”

I blanched, as some of the blurrier memories of the night before seeped back in. “But… but we like late-night whisky and tater tots!”

David nodded sagely. “And that is why we exercise, and why living more than twenty minutes away from a hospital is suicidal behavior. But I digress. So my uncle, Sam’s dad, passes away, and my dad, Sam’s uncle, kinda takes him in.”

I nodded. “A sadly common story in the Federation. Everyone knows a child or three raised by extended family after the unthinkable happened.”

David turned away from the water briefly to look at me, horrified. “...We were actually both in college already,” he said, slowly. “Sam just needed a hand getting his career launched, and a roof over his head while he did. My parents stepped in, and he ended up working at my dad’s company for a bit. Really busted his ass, and worked his way up to some kinda associate VP position before he sought his fortunes elsewhere.”

I perked up. “Oh! Your dad runs his own company! That's neat.”

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“No, he doesn’t,” David snapped, genuine heat entering his voice for the first time since I’d met him. “I run my own company. I’m in the kitchen twelve hours a day, plus prep time and research, trying to make the best damn meal anyone who walks through my door has ever tasted. My dad answers three emails a day and then fucks off to the golf course for cocktails and boasting.”

I was ready to change the subject to something that bothered David less, but the critical voice spoke up.

He left an opening in his reasoning, if you want to win the argument, she pointed out. Also, hey, I saw that! ‘She pointed out’? Stop gendering me, that’s another step towards accidentally treating me like a separate person. Come on, you don’t call your own liver ‘her’, do you?

I mean, we could try calling her, said the odd voice, but I don’t think Madame Liver is on speaking terms with us after last night.

Focus on the conversation, I insistently thought back at them. Do humans like having holes poked in their arguments?

Well, for a socially-minded predator, said the critical voice, argument is probably a type of dominance display. If you cave on purpose, he might like you more, but if you push back, he might respect you more. But he also might see it as a threat, and get angrier. Hang on, let me make a probability-weighted flowchart…

You’re overcomplicating and overgeneralizing, interrupted the odd voice. We’re not writing a sociology thesis on humanity itself. David, specifically, enjoys arguing.

What are you basing that assessment on? the critical voice asked.

Instinct.

“Wait, so did your dad inherit the company, or…?”

David shook his head. “No, it was always his.”

I gestured towards the point. “Then surely he had to work hard to get to the point where he could take it easy, right?”

David stared at the sea in silence for a bit before answering. The green hills in the distance in front of us drew steadily closer. “...it’s not the kind of work a good person does,” he said quietly.

I shrugged. “Alright, I guess I’ll just ask: what do your parents do?”

David sighed. “My father does something indecipherably predatory involving finance; I think it boils down to pressuring people into buying insurance policies they’ll never use, and pocketing investment management fees on investments that require no management, but I start wanting to throw up every time I try to wrap my head around the exact details of it. He’s casually dismissive of anyone with a lower net worth than him, and bitterly jealous of anyone with a higher one.”

David grimaced as he continued. “My mother spends his money and gossips; I don’t think she’s gone more than twelve sentences without saying something at least slightly racist since the 2120s.” He shook his head, and his lips curled back in disgust. “Seriously, in her reaction to First Contact, she said she was ‘pleasantly surprised’ that Noah Williams had ‘chosen to contribute to society’, but that he should ‘really leave diplomacy to someone with a more suitably even temperament’. I asked her to clarify what exactly she was insinuating, and it was a lot of variations on ‘oh, you know how those sorts are’ until I decided to leave the party early before I started shouting.”

I squinted in confusion. I understood the cadence of those dismissive comments--my parents had been known to say similar things about the Yotul--but the deeper context flew clear over my head. “Wait, why was your mother saying racist things about Noah? Aren’t you two from the same ethnic group? You’re both Americans?”

David looked at me with a mix of sadness, pity, and amusement. Whatever, I still felt proud of myself just for being able to decipher that complex of a human facial expression. “Chiri… suffice it to say that not every nationality is also an ethnicity. The United States, in particular, is an unusually multicultural nation. I think the borough of Queens had the world record for most languages spoken per square mile for years before the Feds blew it up. So yes, there have been some… intercultural tensions over the years.”

I nodded along. Human tribalism was baffling. “Alright, well, you were saying about your cousin Sam?”

David shrugged. “What’s to say? He’s still in finance, but he tries to be a good person despite that. Erin’s been a good influence on him. She does a lot of litigation on contingency for people who need it, and Sam’s income stability gives her the freedom to take on riskier cases. And Helena’s adorable and precocious.” David smiled warmly, just thinking about his little relative. “She’s been wanting to meet an alien ever since she first saw the Venlil on TV. I hope I didn’t overstep by mentioning you.”

I smiled as best I could. I meant it authentically, but smiling was a human facial expression, and I’d only learned to do it a few weeks ago. I was still practicing. “Sure, I like kids,” I said. “Haven’t actually met any human ones yet, though. Anything I need to know?”

David shrugged. “They can be a little bit energetic and tactile, I guess. She’s already four, though, so she should be able to behave herself with some prompting.” He patted me on the shoulder reassuringly. “Just get my attention if you need help.”

Our destination drew close enough to be visible. A large single-family house on a hill overlooked the sea, with a dock down below it. As we pulled in, I could see a human male who looked similar to David standing on the docks, holding the hand of a meter-tall human girl with slightly fairer hair who was practically bouncing in place and alternating between waving to and pointing at the boat.

I waved back.

The bouncing intensified.

Oh, this is going to be fun! said both voices at once, one sincerely, one sarcastically.