Stay away.

The message played on a loop in thousands of different languages. Ziquecha wasn't the most educated Zorphian, but he knew these two words almost by heart in every language, and that’s not including the melodic-songlike languages; he was, after all, one of the custodians for this section of space.

There were five in total. The company liked to call them custodians, but they were more like mechanics. Their sole job was maintaining the multitude of relays and warning off anyone who came too near. This section of space had been quarantined, after all.

Ziquecha was out in the Qa-1 node. One of the relays had been damaged by micro debris and was on the fritz. He was in the middle of replacing a conduit when his headset buzzed. Ziquecha sighed and braced himself for what was coming next. A slimy voice piped straight into his head, and it always caused Ziquecha to contort in disgust.

"Hey Ziq, have you checked your radar?" The voice squelched and sounded like it was licking his ear. "I've had a reading for the past 5 U-hours on my long range. It doesn't seem like it's getting the message."

This was Byiomidob, a Blymobian. Ziquecha had to force the frustration out of his voice; after all, it wasn't Byob's fault that whoever coded the auto translator for his race was a bastard.

"Hey, Byob. I've been out fixing a relay. I'll get right back to the station and see if I can contact them manually."

Ziquecha grabbed the wrist of his envirosuit and hit the command to recall to the station. Personal short-range teleporters were still fairly new and still a bit disconcerting, but the valuable time he saved with them outweighed the discomfort. As he arrived back in his office, his vision blurred and blacked out for a short time, his brain short-circuiting from the overload of new information. He forgot to close his eyes again. His vision would be back shortly, but he still had a job to do. He stumbled along to the control center. He could finally see again by the time he got there, and sure enough, there was a constant ping on his radar. He grabbed the transponder and started his script.

"Unidentified ship, this is Station 4529 of the Quarantine zone. You are about to breach the perimeter. Turn around now, or I will be forced to destroy you. I repeat, turn around now. If you continue any farther, you will breach the zone and be eliminated."

Per protocol, he had to keep repeating this until they left, but he had done this enough times. It was most likely someone on a party ship or out for a joy ride. Once they heard the message, they would leave. He would give them a minute; some auto translators were slow.

The minute was up. Ziquecha repeated the warning on multiple channels. Were they going to continue anyway? He had full authority to stop anyone from entering by any means. Even so, he never thought he would have to use it.

"Unidentified ship, this is Station 4529. If you continue, I will be forced to destroy your ship. Turn back now. This is your final warning."

Ziquecha put his key into the control panel and turned it to arm the fence, a highly volatile plasma fence that was kept just unstable enough to atomize anything that came near it. The company did not want anything to enter the Quarantine zone, not even debris. Ziquecha tried to hail them one last time.

"Come on, turn around. I don't want to have to use my company-mandated therapy after destroying you. It is such a nuisance. Just go back home."

Still silence. With a sigh, Ziquecha pressed the button to power on the plasma fence and stared at the radar panel, waiting. The constant ping finally disappeared. His headset buzzed again. Byob.

"Had to use the fence, huh? That sucks. All that paperwork, and 3 U-weeks of therapy. Sorry, Ziq. I'd hate to be in your place right now."

"Yeah."

It was all Ziquecha could come up with. Byob was right, after all. He pulled up the incident folder and started to fill out the use of plasma fence form. It was going to be a while before he could get back to fix the relay.

Ziquecha had thought about quitting many times. He thought about it again now, but he couldn't really complain. The company was really hands-off. As long as he got his job done and filled out all his reports, he wouldn't hear anything from them. He got a free place to live and was provided food. The pay was actually decent, not that there was anywhere for him to go and spend it. Even the solitude was nice, mostly. He would have to try and reprogram the auto translator to give Byob a better voice. Most of all, the job was simple. While he had to warn people off, his most important job was to stop the race that was inside from coming out. There was already a giant asteroid belt that was put in place that stopped most of that.

He had done some research on them, too. Only one planet in the system was habitable. The race there called themselves human. They were so busy selfishly fighting amongst themselves that very few things came from the Quarantine zone. It would be another 500 U-years before Ziquecha had to worry about anything from the Quarantine zone coming out.

Yeah, Ziquecha thought to himself. It's a pretty simple job. I'll just deal with the forms and therapy. My life couldn't get much easier than this.