Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri, Gojid Refugee
Date [standardized human time]: November 1, 2136
The job market was a mess. Millions of people had lived in New York, and millions more had worked there while living nearby. All the survivors were desperately looking for new jobs or new employees to replace what had gone up in flames. Hundred trillion miles from home, and everything was still fucked. It felt inescapable. Why the fuck had I chosen to stay in New York before the Battle of Earth? I had more claws than there were fellow stubborn fools who’d been stupid enough to watch two homes turn to ashes.
My eyes started to water. It had been becoming a home, hadn’t it? Until I’d ruined it by not being strong enough. Why did I run? That shouldn’t have… it shouldn’t have…
I started crying, and I couldn’t even tell why anymore.
But I felt better afterwards. It was cathartic. Like I’d excreted some certain evil from my bones.
I felt… hollow, afterwards. Just empty. I watched the sun slowly set over the sea and sand off to the right, tinting a distant skyline in bitter orange. The stars began to slowly and faintly show themselves. And, for a few moments, I just was.
My people had been spacefaring for centuries, but I’d scarcely left my homeworld before this. A family vacation here, a trade show there… it had all been curated. I’d never been… I’d never been this alone before. This isolated. Here I was, just… laying on a seashore, on an island, on a water planet, a hundred trillion miles from where I was born. More, if I was being honest. A hundred trillion miles only got you as far as Venlil Prime. Even for comparatively ancient races like the Gojids, you didn’t tend to think about it much. You wanted a job on Leirn or one of the colony worlds--anywhere the rent was cheaper, really--and you just went for it. But then, you didn’t typically find yourself this alone afterwards. It felt so weird, just being the only Gojid… no, the only person for miles in any direction, just being on an abandoned beach like this, watching an alien sky pass you by.
There’s one person nearby, the critical voice pointed out, eventually.
I don’t want to think about him.
Okay. Let’s keep it professional, then. What’s the plan?
Fewer distilleries than I would have liked are hiring. I’ll probably have to sell them on the upsides of hiring a non-judgmental alien. It shouldn’t be hard. I’m practically the only former member of the Federation on the planet who isn’t scared of them. They’d probably be willing to give me a fair shot for the novelty alone.
Nobody spoke, but the word “novelty” seemed to shiver, and I almost started crying again. That was what he’d called me, right? A novelty?
There was a certain yearning, and a certain sorrow. All those kind words, and then the cruel ones. Did he ever really like me at all?
Focus. the critical voice said. What do YOU want?
I drew a blank. The question was too big.
The critical voice seemed to draw into the persona of a Fissan HR Director. Okay, let’s start with the biggest possible picture, then, she said. Which planet do you want to live on? Earth, or some Federation world?
Earth, I responded reflexively like I’d flinched. I can’t be myself anywhere else. I can’t explore this predatory part of me. It has to be Earth.
Fair enough, the voice nodded. What do you want to do?
The question still felt too broad.
Do you want to work as a distiller at someone else’s distillery?
…no. No, I’d always wanted to run a distillery, but the family orchard is gone.
Pieces of some very intoxicated memories flowed in from the past day, and in particular all the bright and innovative flavors of cocktails I’d never experienced before. The Brooklyn cocktail, alone, was an absolutely unheard of mix of barrel-aged spirits and sweet stonefruit.
Do you want to be a bartender? the voice asked.
Again, I hesitated, but…
…no. Not indefinitely, at least. There was a lot that I wanted to learn, but I didn’t want to live as an employee in the service industry forever. My ambitions would die there. I wanted to own my own company.
Doing what?
I nodded to no one. “Selling canned and bottled cocktails,” I said quietly. “Basically every species wants a stiff drink, and there’s this… wild frugivore knack for flavor that no one on Earth has started to export yet.”
Humans are shrewd, said the critical voice. The only thing holding them back from overtaking the Fissans and Nevoks is racism and having a war to win. Even with that handicap holding them back, how are you going to move quicker than them?
My mind raced, as I searched through what little I had. It wasn’t a long list, but it took time just to mentally dig up all the little things that weren’t on my person. If my family was truly gone, then I owned the “company”, so to speak, which was to say: the brand name of a working-class cider with some moderate interstellar name recognition, the ability to get a face-to-face meeting with any of my family’s old distributors, and whatever cash I could finagle out of my family’s raid insurance policies before those particular Fissans declared bankruptcy.
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What if you don’t really own those things?
I almost laughed. If my parents showed up to dispute my inheritance, I’d probably just hug them.
The critical voice snorted. Alright, fair, she said. So… it still sounds like you want the bartending job, at least for the present moment. Room, board, and a way to learn more about cocktails and doing business on Earth. It's got what you need to succeed.
My face fell. Thinking about David was unavoidable. He’d been… great. Last night had been like a wonderful dream. Just the two of us, trying incredible food and drink together, and chatting and laughing together about everything and nothing, like the world had never ended. So why was my heart all twisted up in knots over him?
Look, he did say that the job offer and the relationship offer were separate, the critical voice pointed out. If you have misgivings about a relationship, maybe you just try to keep things professional for now?
“But he’s so fucking hot!” I wailed, throwing my paws in the air. “I mean, come on, girl, you saw him with his shirt off! He has visible musculature! Visible! What species does that?! You could be the strongest Gojid in existence, and it’d all be hidden under the fur, but nope, not this guy! He’s just like… tall, lean, with those bewitching eyes, and it’s like…” I made another noise in my throat. “I’m sorry, you see Takkans, you see Mazics, and you think you understand what evolved furlessness looks like in mammals--all gray and gnarled like a sad tree stump--and then this fucking smokeshow rolls up with soft skin the color of pale wood, but then he’s still got the little tuft of brown fur up top! Like it’s a little garnish! Augh!” I flopped over onto the sand. “And he was so fucking fun to be around, you know? Any question I asked, he answered. Anything I wanted to do or try, he wanted to show me. For fuck’s sake, he offered to teach me how to hunt fish!” I shook my head. “Gods, why did he just have to be such an asshole, too?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m really sorry that I’m an asshole,” said a voice behind me.
I jumped a full nautical mile straight upwards, and my quills flared in panic as I scrambled to turn around. “How much of that did you hear?!” I screeched.
David looked away, but there was a slight upwards curl to his lips. “I decline to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me,” he said stiffly, like he was citing some law.
My face felt warm, and was likely turning blue with embarrassment. “Shut up!” I pointed at him aggressively. “If I wanted to start selling canned cocktails, how would I go about it?” I asked abruptly. I wanted to know, but I also wanted to throw him off.
David blinked. “Umm… well, there used to be industrial kitchen facilities in the city where you could rent out their use for a bit. Like, if you wanted to sell your own homemade pickles or hot sauce or whatever, you could make a big batch there, and they’d walk you through how to jar or bottle it. They even had consultants who’d show you how to start getting your products on local store shelves. I think a few of them also worked with alcohol?” He rubbed his chin. “Yeah, I think homebrewers could get small production runs of craft beer canned and sold that way.”
Small production run. Of course, said the critical voice. You wouldn’t have the up-front costs of buying a whole factory that way. Start small, and scale the business up. Shrewd. This kind of knowledge is why he’s useful to have around.
Can you stop measuring people by their utility to us? the odd voice griped.
“How did you find me?” I asked, glaring at David.
He sighed. “The holopad is still registered to me. There’s a little tracker app you can use if it gets lost or stolen,” he said. “Sorry if that was invasive. You can turn that feature off if you like.” He looked away, and his face looked stricken. “I saw you’d been sitting on the beach for a while, so I just… I just wanted to see if you were okay.”
I think it’s probably safe to say that he likes you, said the odd voice. That’s not the face of someone who doesn’t care.
“You have to watch what you say better,” I said firmly. “And not just with me. You’ve had this like… ‘mean smartass’ streak all day. It’s not okay.”
It could just be a human thing, said the odd voice. Different cultural norms--
No, I wasn’t giving him the wiggle room of blaming this on his species. If U.N. ambassadors could make diplomatic inroads while literally being pecked at by angry alien birds, David could make it through one conversation without making light of my homeworld getting destroyed, or mocking a woman’s religion and culture, or joking about needing some ‘alone time’ with his cousin’s wife.
“I know,” said David. “I’m sorry. I should have known better.” His face had a pained expression. “I do know better. I just let my temper get the better of me. I’ll work on that.”
I stared him down for a moment longer so he knew I meant to hold him to that. Then I sighed and patted a spot on the sand next to me. He sat gingerly, trying a bit to avoid getting sand on his coattails, but it was unavoidable. I leaned my head over on his shoulder. “I do like you,” I said, as we looked out over the water together. “I want… I want it all. I want to make this work. I want to make us work.”
“I do, too,” said David, smiling warmly in the last dregs of fading sunlight.
I nodded. “Alright, you do me now.”
David choked on his own spit. “Pardon?”
“You just overheard me gushing about you,” I said, poking him gently with a claw. “Now you gotta reciprocate: I wanna hear you gush about me.”
David chuckled. “Ah, got it.” He turned to face me head-on, and the vertigo from his eyes hit me like a plunge into the deep dark sea. For all twenty-seven years of my life, I’d been taught to fear the eyes of a hunter like the gaze of an evil god… nothing ever prepared me for the warmth and love flowing out from a man who had his eyes on me, and only me. My skin trembled, and he smiled. “God, I love the way your fur does that little ripple thing like an old Ghibli movie when you’re feeling good. I love how quick-witted and funny you are. It’s so rare to find someone who can keep up with me in a conversation, and throw snark right back at me. It’s been fun! Being with you has been… one of the first times I’ve felt genuine happiness since the bombs fell. You’ve been a wonderful audience for all the cool things I wanted to show off to you, and you’re always so eager to hear more. And it’s…” He slowly, tentatively, reached his hand out towards my face and neck. He gave me plenty of time to pull back if I wanted to, but I didn’t. He caressed me gently, running his fingers through the fur and stroking the side of my face. I shivered again from his touch. “It’s so wonderful, finding someone who’s just so… different, and yet so familiar. You’re beautiful, Chiri, and it warms my heart to look up at the night sky and know, finally, that some small part of the stars loves me back.”
I pulled his face towards mine, and he got the hint and kissed me. His soft lips touched mine, our tongues intertwined, and his fingertips kept caressing my sides as he did. I shuddered just from the feel of him pressed against me, and, my whole body shaking in the throes of passion, I pulled him down on top of me, right there on the beach as the stars slowly came out.
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“The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention.” -John Quincy Adams, Sixth President of the United States