The elevator capsule descended the shaft. Through the sealed glass doors, the levels zipping past outside got dirtier and more decayed, like a time-lapse video of fruit turning bad.

But Luci barely noticed.

Both her hands were hooked through the handholds of a shopping bag. As she rocked on her heels, it slapped against her knees. But that didn't darken the smile lifting her cheeks up.

She'd read on the starnet that The Alien She Loves is a Fake! was an excellent yuri manga, and now she had all seven (so far) volumes in her sweaty little hands. It followed the romance between 'Megum', a girl who pretended to be a member of the alien Skrooit race so she could get admitted to the prestigious academy her mother attended, and Kaguya, a spacey girl who had a fetish for Skrooits. Little did either of them know their homeroom teacher, Hoshinise-sensei, had concocted the entire Skrooit species as a bored grad student, and it had somehow gotten out of hand and snowballed into a cult. Now, the apathetic, perverted Hoshinise-sensei was very eager to punish Megumi for violating the many rules of her 'culture'.

As Luci flipped through the first volume in the aisle of Neon Nihon, she'd been thoroughly impressed by the sheer quality of the manga's contrived romcom nonsense. After a few hours browsing the store, she'd decided to add it to her manga collection.

Luci wasn't an expert on classical manga by any means, but she had read a bit here and there. It was kind of shocking just how little had changed over the ages. Some cultural critics, Rsh told her, came up with the theory of 'nostalgic entropy'. As the digital age got rolling, people were no longer forced to create new ideas out of vague half-recollections. Instead, they just instantly recalled any piece of data that had ever been digitized, and then spent time on the antiquated predecessor to the modern worldnet endlessly debating them. The collective memory of humanity became a closed system, one where people endlessly regurgitated the same ideas from their childhood in twenty-year cycles. No new data — as far as style was concerned — was being created anymore.

And, according to the theory, the problem was even worse when it came to Japanese media, since the Japanese lived isolated from the rest of the galaxy aboard their massive starliner.

Kind of glad I don't know the classical stuff, she thought. I'd rather just … live in blissful ignorance about my favorite manga all being rip-offs.

The capsule's whirring slowed down. Gulping, she faced the doors like they were an airlock about to open on a hostile alien landscape. She wrapped her hand around the plastic bag's handle to secure her grip on it.

I'll die before I let somebody steal my yuri, she thought, sweating.

The doors slid open, and she prepared to step out of the capsule.

Then she noticed an Aldobohbeh shuffling towards the doorway. It looked like an orange, veiny beachball with four squat legs. Its head was a dome stuck at the top of its eight-foot-tall body. From where she stood, she could barely see it over the curve of its massive girth.

It reached the threshold of the capsule, and it paused.

Swayed on its stubby legs.

Is it wondering what to do next …?

Then, it inhaled and sucked its body mass up into a rectangle, like a refrigerator. It was barely big enough to squeeze through the doors. Its head was completely blocked from sight.

It can't see me in here, can it?

As the Aldobohbeh inserted itself into the doorway like a block in a niche, Luci lunged for the narrowing gap. She twisted sideways to skirt past its warm, veiny skin, but the glass door's edge snagged her shoulder blade. Then the alien's dense mass squashed her against the hard edge, and she felt like it was slicing her back open. She turned her face away from its skin, but it rubbed her cheek like a bag full of pus.

Aw, I'm gonna be sick!

No matter how much she squirmed, she remained crushed against the side of the door. She couldn't breathe, and given the fetid flesh shoved against her face, she didn't want to, either. The Aldobohbeh continued to push its massive, fleshy bulk into the narrow opening with a slippery squish, like a number of bodily functions not fit for polite conversation.

Then, the Aldobohbeh passed through the door just enough for Luci to wiggle free. She popped out and staggered away from it, gasping for air and rubbing her face with her sleeve.

She looked over her shoulder. The Aldobohbeh stood right in the middle of the capsule. It kept its refrigerator-shape for a moment. Then, like it was undoing its belt after a long day of work, it just completely let itself go. Its girth ballooned outward and squashed against the round glass walls, filling it completely like medicine inside a transparent pill.

Ugh, I need a shower, she thought.

As she hurried up to the caged intrapanel outside the office, she fished her keystick out of her pocket and passed its business end through the bars to press it against the touchscreen. Once the door unlocked, she slid it back down into her pocket next to her wallet.

Back at last! she thought.

On the way to her bedroom — which was just a disused office with a cot — she gazed at the shopping bag full of manga. She basked in the glory of Girl x Girl. That gentle aura that healed the heart after a weary day. A soothing sound wave that harmonized her body. Purely sonic vibrations that relaxed her into a state of bliss like air from her lover's mouth whispering into her ear.

She reached her bedroom and hit the intrapanel to open the door. After a quick shower, she'd settle in for some relaxing quiet time with her gorgeously-drawn girls …

Wait, wasn't there something else I was supposed to do—?

"Ramirex!"

As the shout echoed down the hallway, a terrible shock sent Luci's body into spasms. Her hands hurled the bag into the room like she was flinging evidence into an incinerator to destroy it. The manga volumes sailed through the air, hit her cot, and spilled out of their bag. Those precious volumes landed on the dirty carpet, and —

Luci gasped.

— one of the covers got bent.

She swooned, sagging against the doorway and gripping it tight just to stay on her feet.

"Ramirex!"

Ay caray! Luci thought. She's just around the corner!

She dove into her bedroom and hammered the inside intrapanel to seal the door. When she locked it, a red border glowed around the screen's edges.

What am I gonna do?!

Then the woman outside rapped the door.

"Ramirex? Answer me! Ramirex!"

The knocking stopped. Then, her finger started to hammer the bell icon on the outside intrapanel with just as much intensity. A chime sounded from the intrapanel. The audio clip never got a chance to finish, since every time she jammed the bell icon it started over. It looped through the first note-and-a-half ad nauseum, and quickly grated on Luci's nerves.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Ramirex!" Philomena bellowed through the door.

Luci tapped the icon on the intrapanel to open a comms channel to its twin outside. She cleared her throat, then leaned forward till her mouth was just inches from the touchscreen.

"Y-Yes, Philomena?"

"Where's that Cartoobian Moishmush?! I've been waiting for hours! My face is … crying out for a good scrubbing, so I can wipe all this vom— Er, disgusting poor people grime off my pores!"

"Um, just a minute! It needs to … to ferment!"

"Ferment?!"

"Haven't you ever used Cartoobian moishmush before?"

"No."

"Well, I'm …"

Luci peeled herself away from the door and ran to the desk. She yanked its drawers open, one-by-one, but found nothing useful.

"… looking at the instructions! They say it needs to ferment, so …"

She dove toward the bins holding her belongings, undid the lids, and rifled through her stuff. But she found nothing in the way of beauty products except a single stick of deodorant.

"… just hang tight, alright?!"

On the other side of the sealed door, Philomena let out a sustained groan.

"Ramirex, open the door!"

Luci cast her eyes around the room, looking for a lifeline.

"Can't. Um, it'll spoil the fermentation. The instructions say it's very delicate."

"I want to see these instructions!" Philomena shouted. "Let me in!"

Luci pressed her palms to her temples and swirled them around. Trying to coax her brain into coming up with an idea.

"No, no, no," she said. "You can't create any, um, micro-changes in air density."

"Well … then I'm going to stand right here until it's done. I am your boss, and if I find out you've been slacking, then it's out the airlock, got it?!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

She whirled around, her eyes doing a sweep of the office's corners. But they found nothing, there was nothing that could help her in the bedroom/office. She was trapped in here with her own stupidity, it was as deep as a black hole, and she was falling, falling, falling into the event horizon—

The vent.

The vent!

She hurtled to her cot, vaulted atop it, and hooked her fingers into the slats of the metal grate high on the wall. She yanked it hard; it came free so easily she fell off her cot and landed on her ass. The floor walloped her hips and sent a bolt of pain up her spine.

"Aaah!" she seethed, her body seizing up.

"What was that?!"

"Just helping it ferment! Look, the instructions are very specific. It needs absolute silence for the next, umm … five minutes! So gotta stop talking now!"

She rolled onto her feet, piled the bins with her stuff onto the cot, and used it to boost herself up to the vent. Inside, it was dark and cramped. As a starship engineer, she didn't mind going into tight spots, but …

What am I even doing?

She stared down the metal duct. A shadow in the shape of her head blocked her view. She could barely see anything.

Making Philomena happy, she answered.

She crawled fully into the vent, digging her fingers into the ridges where the sections were joined together, and hauled herself up the cramped tunnel. Her boots kicked the metal and helped propel her forward. She tilted her head back to see, while also ducking it to avoid banging the top. Her neck ached from the awkward position. She turned a corner and entered the main duct. It was mostly dark, but some light shafts came through the vent covers.

Wriggling through the cramped vent, she peeked out through the slats at the rooms she passed.

What do I do?! What do I do?!

There was Corvo's room …

Rsh's room …

Philomena's room …

Ooh, a purple bra and panties on the laundry pile!

Luci, focus!

She rounded another corner and collided face-first with a bundle of cables stretched across the duct. She swatted them away, muttering under her breath.

"Ack, who the hell put this here?!"

"Well, excuse me," a voice said.

Luci immediately shoved herself backwards. Her ass struck the wall of the junction, sending another bolt of pain shooting up her spine.

The 'cables' disentangled themselves from the vent.

"Can't an Ooploopod catch a nap around here?" the thing said. It sounded choppy, like somebody talking into a very fast fanblade.

An Ooploopod.

They looked like black rubbery jellyfish, and they could move very quickly on their flexible tentacles. Rather than mouths, they'd evolved vibrational membranes that could mimic a wide range of sounds to scare off predators. Due to their hostile homeworld, they were very adaptable. They liked to squat in ventilation systems and observe other sentient life forms. Supposedly, they could become fluent in any language after less than a week. From what she heard, they'd make a killing in the translation business, but — in the absence of their natural predators — they'd become layabouts and couldn't be bothered.

"No, you can't 'catch a nap' around here," Luci barked.

Her voice echoed just a little too loudly for her liking, but with all the stress she was under, she had trouble keeping calm.

"You want to sleep in our offices," she said, "then you pay rent!"

"Unionizer!" it spat at her.

She gasp-scoffed, her voice turning into a hoarse wheeze from the stress-induced tightness in her chest and throat.

In the corporate culture, 'unionizer' was one of the most vile insults. Long ago, 'unions' were allegedly these organized crime syndicates who strongarmed employees into giving up their wages so they could launch sabotage campaigns and blackmail poor, innocent, hardworking executives. These days — long after the unions had been outlawed — the insult was tossed around so much it meant basically nothing, but usually people said it when they thought somebody was trying to weasel money out of them.

However …

Luci was from Asilo, where the corporate culture had gained no traction whatsoever. Given the way her family's business had been forced out of the skies, she found the 'poor, innocent, hardworking executive' stuff pretty fishy.

But she wasn't about to take this squatting jellyfish's insults lightly.

"Get a job, or get outta here!" she spat back.

She breathed heavily, her cheeks burning. But she felt kind of relieved. After bottling up her feelings outside the office, it was refreshing to unload on this squatter. After all, it was in her home, taking up space and talking back to her. She had every right to be pissed at it.

"Screw you," the Ooploopod said. "This station was made with metal they mined from my homeworld. I got more of a right to be here than you do!"

"Oh, yeah? Prove it."

"Pfft! Come on, kids. We're leaving."

As the Ooploopod bounded away on its tentacles, a dozen high-pitched chittering voices followed it. It paused at the bottom of a vertical junction. Light shone from above, flickering as it passed through some unseen fanblade. The Ooploopod launched itself upward, its feelers banging against the metal as it thrust its weight through the air. Its offspring hopped up after it.

"Let's see if podbrother-seven found a place we can crash."

Luci crawled to the base of the junction.

"Freeloaders!" she shouted up at them, as loud as she dared.

Then she moved on. Continued peering out the vent covers as she went past. But there was nothing out there that'd help her, nothing at all. She peered down at the breakroom, then moved on.

The warehouse is mostly empty, but maybe I can find something—

Wait!

She backed up a bit and peered through the vent cover again … and finally saw her way out of this. She hooked her fingers through the slats and pushed it open.