Stepping into the local Polaris and casually making my way through the crowd of the varied peoples of the frontier, a tired smile adorning my somewhat spacer-burned face. I connect the five small circular metal contacts that lie in a row on the outside of the little fingers MCP joint on any human with implants. It’s so wide spread an action that holding your right hand in front of your midriff horizontally has become the standard greeting gesture over the years since the first CTS, or Cyber Technology Standards meeting took place a few hundred years ago, seeing as most greetings involve inbuilt operator pings, if that’s for information sharing or the wide spread disease tracking programs, it’s common enough to have been adopted even by those few ‘Pure’ in Preservation with no implants.

Having already ordered and payed for my tea the ping to my internal operator took but a heartbeat before i heard a soft voice in my head.

“Table B42, Seat A03. Your order will be delivered shortly.”

Then a short tune played and I hummed along to it with a smile. Anytime you buy from a company founded in NAT space you are treated to that little tune. It’s become known as the national anthem for the NATs and the high and mighty leaders can’t but grind their teeth since they never actually drafted a national anthem into law for some traditions sake or other. That alone is enough for a laugh for most and the fact that’s it’s a more universal communications method than any known languages just makes it all the better.

Walking over to the designated table and seat, clearly marked by my internal operator with a nice and big red arrow hovering over it in three dimensional space, I sat down with sigh, closing my eyes and waiting for the chair to recognise my presence, annoying but like my old pal from home would say “Security, security, security those are the three A’s that make the world go round.” Never made any sense but that’s the way things worked with him. If ever he said something in the slightest comprehensible you knew he had gotten too much sleep, again. Drifting off into old, now painful memories made me miss the first three attempts to get my attention by the waitress. A supposed perk of NAT affiliated restaurants and the like the pretty young woman was more an annoyance than anything, to me at least. I mean I get the whole deal about making sure everyone had jobs and all but what was the point? Why have jobs just for the sake of having them? Why not aim to improve rather than stagnate. That’s one of the many thing about the NATs that seriously confused me, on the one hand they are the leading group in scientific and engineering endeavours, but on the other the most bogged down by traditions and bureaucracy in settled space. Honestly if you want your reputation to be of the most advanced group then why put such focus on luxury and tradition, more often than not shunning discovery in the face of having a young pretty woman walk back and forth all day so that some rich bugger could leer at her while having his favourite flavoured gaseous mixture.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

A light slap and a glare brought me back to reality, looking up I saw the red faced serving girl staring me down.

“Your tea… sir.” the last word putting great strain on her it seemed.

“Yeah that is my tea” i said with a tired but bright smile,

Her face growing redder by the second i slowly and carefully reached out to take the tea, purposefully taking my time about it. When i final took possession of the precious liquid of life i winked up at her and grinned boyishly, something of a normal refrain for me, to see how far i could take the not at all hidden pokes at her profession in an attempt to get them to rethink their life choices and go do something of actual value, if for no other reason than to not have to deal with me ever again. And yes i am altruistic and noble and most certainly, definitely, helping, not ashamed to admit such.

I took a sip, slow, savouring the taste, not breaking eye contact with the girl for a moment. That finally made her snap and without so much as a your welcome, how rude, like honestly didn’t her parents teach her any manners, she stormed off into the staff area of the Polaris.