---Friction---
---Alchyinad’s perspective---
“She. is. insufferable!” decries the agitated Terran, his face glowing brightly with the heat of his anger!
“I can see her behaviour has upset you.” I observe.
“‘Upset’ don’t bloody cover it!” he proclaims “She ain’t been on board for two weeks and she’s already pissed off just about everyone in Triple M, Plus Ultra and Elysium!… Most of the rest of the crew too, I’d wager!… I was humpin’ some crates, the other day, and after I was done strappin’ ’em down, she came and took photos of the fuckin’ straps! I asked her what she was doin’ and she sneers that she was documentin’ the frayed fastenin’s! Frayed!!!”
He holds out his hand in a gesture of ‘can you believe it?!’
“They weren’t frayed, I take it?” I ask.
“No they were bloody not!… They had some superficial scuffs on ’em but they were absolutely not frayed!… If you want pristine straps then what your askin’ for is brand new straps for every time you strap somethin’ down!” he says, waving his hand to emphasise the ridiculousness.
“So how did you respond?” I say, curiously.
“I calmly told her that the crates are self securin’ and ain’t required to be strapped down! I only do it as a belt-and-braces measure… You wanna know what she said…?!”
“Tell me.” I invite, calmly.
“She said they might not be required to be strapped down but, if they are, regulations require unfrayed straps!… The straps weren’t fuckin’ frayed!!!”
I don’t ask the man to calm himself since nothing is less calming than to be told to ‘calm down’ when you’re experiencing what you view as righteous anger!
Instead, I ask “Did you say that to her?”
He gives an exhausted exhale “Not in so many words… I said ‘I don’t believe the structural integrity of the straps has been compromised, Ma’am’.”
“It sounds like you handled that very maturely.” I smile.
“Yeah… Tcakqaal and Emiko spoke to us about her the day after we pushed off from R’qal… warned us that she’s a flamin’ bigot and that she’s gonna be lookin’ for stuff to take umbrage with! They told us not to loose our tempers with her… even if she provokes us. If we shout at her, if we act aggressively, it’s gonna look bad!… I almost think she’d want one of us to hurt her… just to fuckin’ prove her right about us!… Tcakqaal’s theory is that she’s gonna change her mind about us once she gets to know us… I don’t see it happenin’, personally!”
“Yes, I imagine it would be difficult to change your negative opinion of a group with whom you approach every interaction with needless antagonism.”
He nods then says “Oh, yeah!… She and her husband came and watched us trainin’ with Shīfu the other day and they was makin’ snide remarks the whole time! Or… she was! The guy was just doin’ that simperin’ little giggle of his at all of ’em!… Shīfu didn’t acknowledge ’em and so, neither did we… until…”
His bright face twists.
I prompt “Until?”
“It was time for meditation… she kept makin’ her little comments. Now, Shīfu’s the most easy goin’ kinda guy you’d ever wanna meet! Not at all the kinda brutal hardarse you’d picture if someone told you to imagine the deadliest man in the universe! I guess he’s been so far above everyone else for so long that he’s sorta come to look at the world as like a … ‘joke’’s not quite right… not ‘plaything’ either.”
“An entertainment, perhaps?”
“Yeah! That’s more like it!… Y’know? Like he’s just happy to be wherever he is! Like he just finds everythin’ so delightful!… There’s one exception… one thing I’ve seen piss that man off…”
“People disturbing or otherwise not respecting the act of meditation?” I suggest.
The Terran places a forefinger on his nose and points to me “Bingo!… He gets up, walks over to ’em and tells ’em they’ve either gotta leave or keep quiet… Like, he weren’t shoutin’ or nothin’ but you could tell he was about done with their shit! You wanna know her response…!?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Please.” I smile.
“She made fun of him for bein’ short!” he purses his lips and gestures his irritation with a jab of his flattened palm “Short! Like he ain’t the most dangerous man alive! Like he wouldn’t be able to kill everyone abord with his bare hands if the mood struck him! Like he ain’t the founder of an entire temple school and in the Shaolin lineage of what’s gotta be thousands of people! NoOoOoOoOoOo… he’s just a short man! Like she ain’t 135cm odd, herself!”
“Did Yuán seem bothered by this?”
“Nah… like water off a duck’s back to him! He just repeated that she needed to go without the option of stayin’ quietly this time. But, like, that sorta ain’t the point! Like, of course he didn’t get to where he is risin’ to petty insults by pettier people, like that! But I was livid on his behalf! Seein’ her disrespect him like that made me wanna fuckin’ strangle her!”
He realises what he said a moment after saying it and clarifies “That was not a statement of intent! I am not going to strangle her! I was just very angry, is all I mean!”
I giggle “Don’t worry, Victor. You’re still a long way off from the point where I would actually judge you to be a danger to this woman. I can distinguish a Terran who is upset from a Terran who is dangerous… You’re reacting less angrily to this woman than my husband did(!)”
His face falls and I instantly realise I’ve made a mistake.
“What she say to him?” he asks, his tone low and level but calculating and penetrating!
“Oh… nothing important…” I lie, unconvincingly.
“I don’t know your husband, Alchyinad… but from what I hear from my friends whose therapist he is… He don’t strike me as a man who’d get angry over ‘nothing important’…” he nearly growls, his unblinking eyes fixed on me.
I sigh “She… demeaned our… marriage… and used the word… ‘miscegenator’… to describe me.”
The man takes a deep inhale, audibly shuddering with rage. When he exhales, his breath is so hot that it remains visible for a second or so after passing his lips.
Before he can say anything I hurry to reassure him that “It’s fine, Victor! Like ‘water off a duck’s back’! The opinions of small minded people don’t bother me!”
“That woman…” he says, still clearly furious “…is not redeemable! I don’t give a shit what Cap says! She’s not going to sit down for tea and biscuits and suddenly be cured of her bigotry!… And I think it’ll be a waste of our time trying to help her! She’s a hidebound, dyed in the wool zealot and insisting on her coming on this mission has lost me what little respect I had for Tcakqaal’s Clanmother! Either, Raarakot is so stupid that she’s managed to stay ignorant of Waqa’arc’s hatefulness… or she knows and doesn’t fucking care!”
I give a mirthless smile and respond “I can tell you’re angry, Victor… You know how?”
“Context? Tone? Facial expression?” he provides, face still a mask of cold fury.
“Nope… it’s because you’re pronouncing the phoneme at the end of your progressive verbs as /ŋ/(!) ‘Going’, ‘trying’, ‘fucking’…”
He keeps looking at me for half a second before bursting into laughter.
I inwardly sigh in relief at having, somewhat, defused the anger I carelessly engendered in my client.
I’ve really got to get better at keeping my personal stuff to myself!
“Victor…” I smile “…when you are confronted with a person who has (seemingly without cause) decided to make life needlessly difficult for you, friction is to be expected… but, I just want to ask, when you get angry at this woman, who do you think is hurt more by that anger? Her… or you?”
He thinks a moment then answers “Me, I think… Don’t reckon she’s hurt at all! Almost the opposite! It’s like she enjoys whatever rise she gets!”
“And are you OK with that? With allowing her to gain enjoyment from your pain?”
“No.” he answers, simply and immediately.
“So, what do you think is the healthiest course of action to take when facing provocation from her?”
He sighs “…Healthiest thing to do’d prob’ly be to just ‘let it go’, ‘disengage’… Shīfu says ‘anger is like a hot coal you grasp with the intention of throwing it at someone. You are the one who gets burned!’ but, like…”
“It’s easier said than done? Releasing this ‘hot coal’?” I smile.
“Exactly! It’s one thing to, with cool blood, be able to objectively say ‘risin’ to the bait prob’ly ain’t healthy’ and a whole other thing to keep your blood from boilin’ when she starts intentionally pushin’ your buttons and gettin’ under your skin!”
“I can imagine!… Emotions are not something that can be easily subjugated to logic. We are, all of us, dual beings… an emotional and a rational. Both have their place… you can’t rationally appreciate the taste of good food, the enjoyment of a good joke, the warmth of a loved-one’s embrace… but, sometimes, our emotions intrude into places where they are not helpful to us… This is an unavoidable part of life. As far as nervejacking technology has come, no one has ever succeeded in creating a device that would allow people to simply turn off their emotions and become entirely rational beings, to my knowledge!”
“I don’t know as I’d want to use a thing like that, if it did exist!” he answers, contemplatively.
“I don’t think I would either…” I smile.
“I’ll do my best to detach myself… it ain’t gonna be easy, though!”
“It won’t, I’m sure… Let me just be clear, Victor; feeling emotions does not make you a bad person. Getting angry does not make you a bad person. If it did, there would be no good people(!) I would personally suggest emotional management rather than suppression… it should be much healthier!”
He smiles at me and then checks his holopad “Alright, Ally… It’s been a good session…”
“You don’t need to leave right away if you’re not done talking, Victor.” I say, conveying with my tone that I’m fine whether he stays or goes.
“’Preciate it, but I’ve gotta go get into my uniform and check my gear… We’re degaussing at an out of the way deathworld system in a bit and I like to be ready for action in times like this, just in case we get any nasty surprises! We don’t usually but it don’t hurt to be prepared…” he answers.
“Alright, Victor… I’ll let you go… Here’s hoping for no ‘nasty surprises’(!)” I grin.