Goals Align Outbound

The room full of roses vanished as the door hissed shut behind Jack Solko. He had a stupid grin on his face and he stood there drinking in the freshly carbon-scrubbed air from the vent registers. Had recycled air always tasted so good? Jack noticed the dazzle of navy blue zig-zags in the ceiling and wondered if that had always been painted there.

This is gonna be great! Who’s this Selene … nah, that doesn’t matter—all that matters is Taru-san wants me to help her pretend to be already involved. Oh, I’m sure it will start as pretending. I’ll play along. No need to rush. Girls like her like dependable guys. And at first that’s all I’ll be. Dependably in the way whenever Selene swings by. At first, Taru-san will let me take the lead and excuse her from whatever dates and meets Selene suggests, but after a while, when Selene manages to catch her without me for once, Taru-san will say she already made plans with me. She’s an earnest girl, so the lie will be awkward at first, but the more often Taru-san says she’s meeting me the more natural it will sound to both of them. Some of these dates will never happen, but others we’ll go out and do as friends, so that Selene can’t ask around and take hope that no one has actually seen Taru-san and I together. And then, one fine day: when Selene finally realizes there is no room for her in Taru-san’s heart, she’ll start giving the two of us space. Maybe she’ll find someone else to love. Either way, the whole fake-dating arrangement will become suddenly unnecessary. One of us will say, ‘we did it, all’s well,’ and we’ll break it off. But by that time we’ll have spent weeks or even months flirting, kissing, holding hands, and spending time in each other’s company slowly unfurling our hearts. Taru-san will be glad it’s over at first, but then as the days go by, as we drift apart, as she sees other women inviting me to the places we used to go, she will almost run back to me. Almost. She’ll hesitate and tell herself it was meant to be this way. Then she’ll spot me with some guy friends and hear me admit that I wish that our relationship had been real, and—

“Um ….” whispered Nekkau.

Jack suddenly remembered that he had a woman—cyborg, or perhaps robot, Jack wasn’t sure yet—half-a-head taller than him folded over his shoulder. Her legs dangled behind him. Knees tapped at the lower part of his back and up front Jack felt a gentle pressure that he tried not to think about, after all he would need to play the faithful boyfriend in a few hours, or maybe a few minutes, and he needed time to get into that mindset. Best start the method acting right away.

“Did your batteries run out again?”

Her chin tapped the bottom of his ribs as she nodded.

“Oh. Well … we can’t go back in the apartment right this sec. Kinda told Uranishi-san that we’d be heading to the commissary for food.”

“Elevator.”

“Okay.”

Jack negotiated a closed hand onto the small of Nekkau’s back, for stability. So long as he stood up straight and walked smooth, Nekkau didn’t slide around much on Jack’s shoulder. He wouldn’t call her heavy—not even if you paid him to say so—but having no counterweight on his other shoulder made the walk awkward. As they went, they collected amused glances.

Well. This is the weirdest thing I’ve done all month, Jack thought as they slipped into the a mercifully empty elevator. “Where to?”

Nekkau’s drowsy finger reached up and hammered on the ‘open door’ button five times, to which the elevator responded by closing the doors and whisking them up and along the station’s central filament to a droplet of offices. Spit out by the elevator, Nekkau pointed their way past door after decadent door to an office that seemed so tucked out of the way that Jack wouldn’t have been surprised if the words ‘broom closet’ had been painted on.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, I guess.”

Beyond that door awaited a floor of dark emissive tile, sleek chrome accents that chased each other through textured slate walls, a lingering of cedar from the wood-oil soap that hunted dust to extinction in every nook and cranny, and there at the far end guarding the door to the real office beyond: a desk with a real human secretary. Also, owl pictures. Everwhere. 16K HDR DSLR photos of owls that burrow; minimalist watercolors of owls mid flight; oil-on-canvas owls with cartoon proportions.

“My uh …” Jack considered the unfamiliar surroundings and what to say while Nekkau weighed on his shoulder. His arm tingled toward sleep. Surely Nekkau wouldn’t have asked to be brought to someone who didn’t know at least as much as he did.

“My friend here has run out of battery.”

Nekkau issued a tired grunt to back him up.

The secretary took a glance at Jack and a long look at Nekkau, then pressed a streamline button hidden in the desk’s surface. “Ms. Carver, the anomaly is here to see you again.”

Through an invisible grill in the desk, a sunset voice dripped: “Tell her I’m busy.”

Nekkau, who had been hanging ragdoll this entire time, went stiff, and Jack felt her weight shift as she scrabbled down and off of him onto the floor, from which she clambered up over the desk.

“But I’m on critical reserve power.”

“You look as energetic as ever,” the secretary said.

Taking advantage of his newfound freedom, Jack massaged his shoulder and took a moment to inspect the owl pictures. Adorning the wall behind the secretary was a rather good amateur’s close up shot of a great horned owl—the photo was accompanied by a small bone-white plaque with black text that admitted the photographer’s inexperience and explained the owl had happened to be perched on the eaves directly above their door when they arrived home from work one day.

Damn, that’s lucky. I guess even amateurs end up in the right place at the right time now and then.

While Jack moved around the gallery, Nekkau and the secretary wrestled for control of the intercom button.

“I’m not on reserve power. Yet. But I will be soon if you don’t let me in.”

For the moment, the secretary had the upper hand, with both her hands arched over the button. Nekkau switched from trying to sneak around the sides to forcing the secretary’s hand down.

“Why not go back to the surface? You’ve recharged there for a thousand years.”

“It isn’t good anymore. I only get 10 percent. I need Elaine to—”

A hidden door swished open two steps from Jack, and through it stepped the station director, Elaine Carver. The director possessed all the prime aspects of a contrail—silent motion, a pearl’s shade of pale, effortless posture, and not much curvature. She kept her silver hair wavy-loose and short, and wore a brown-bordering-on-black geometric necklace that joined her v-neck in diving past her collarbone.

“Woah.”

Elaine Carver turned an amused eye to Jack. “Can I help you?”

Did I say that out loud? Shit! Recover recover recover—

“What’s your necklace made out of? At first I thought onyx or jet, but those materials are much glossier.”

“It’s gutta percha.”

“Very cool. It’s lovely.” Jack mentally patted himself on the back for not flirting.

“Well.” Elaine pointed with a glance to Nekkau, who had resumed her slumped over out-of-battery act atop the desk while secretary searched for the leverage to roll her off. “Thank you for helping her get here. I’ll see to it she gets what she needs. Have a nice day, Mr. Solko.”

Jack wagged a teasing finger. “Friends call me Jack.”

An eyebrow soared. “Are we friends?”

“That’s where I’d like us to start.”

Damn it! What is wrong with me? Why can’t I keep anything platonic for 2 seconds?

Elaine offered something halfway between a chuckle and a scoff. Descending music in her voice as she said: “Guys like you …”

… Oh? Jack’s train of thought didn’t just derail, it also plunged into a ravine and took the bridge down with it. Do I have a chance?

“… are the worst. Good day, Jack.”

“Alright. See you around.”

Jack made his graceful exit before the opportunity and door closed. That left Nekkau feigning critical battery depletion on the secretary’s desk … with the secretary still trying to roll her off. She employed that secret gravity-increasing don’t-move-me technique known to every house cat and turned a mournful look toward the director.

“Well, I did promise your teammate ….”

Nekkau sprang up at once and tried to follow the director through the door to the inner office, only for the door to seal in front of her. Just as Nekkau started to complain, the door opened again and Elaine came out with a slim white module in her hand. The director dodged behind and lifted the back of Nekkau’s shirt.

“What have you two been doing—” the secretary began, but she stopped her blushing when she saw Ms. Carver take the end of Nekkau’s shoulder blade mounted tail and connect it to the white module.

Nekkau went rigid. Power surged through her circuitry and threatened to overwhelm her millennia-old capacitors. Just like the stress tests she had been subjected to her first year before roll out. Okay, not just like before. Before her skin hadn’t crawled away from the itching heat in the wires. Before her tongue hadn’t recoiled from the taste of carbonate ozone.

“I don’t like this.”

“No, I didn’t think you would.” Elaine Carver disconnected the quick charging module and tucked Nekkau’s tail back under the shirt. “I know you like charging the slow way, but I’m not some surveyor anymore. I’m the station’s director. Yes, most of the tasks are delegated, but I still have to keep tabs on everything—there’s would be competitors to run off, conflicting contractor schedules to rectify, supply chain’s a mess—it’s all … fascinating. This huge 5-dimensional jigsaw where the gears have to mesh perfectly but they keep changing shape, where nothing ‘just works’ without Sisyphean effort.”

Nekkau stared blankly, and the director’s eyes went soft with a smile. “Sorry, rambling again. Short version: I don’t have time for the slow way these days.”

“What about me?” Nekkau asked coldly. “Do I waste away on ever shrinking charges because you couldn’t make time?”

“No. I already gave you a solution.” Elaine wrapped a warm arm around Nekkau’s shoulder. “But I guess I’ll have to be clearer: I put you on a team so you could have whatever you need, by learning to ask and negotiate for it.”

“From Uranishi? From Solko?”

“Don’t look so glum. This is how people work. They need you just as much as you need them.”

With those words and a kindly push, Elaine Carver guided Nekkau out of the office. Oh, she promised to see Nekkau around, and that they’d still be friends, and it was all kind, and all sweet, all thoughtful, and all the biggest bullshit Nekkau had heard in a thousand fucking years!

You just want me out of your way so you can put your little important feet up on your big important desk and watch the stonks go up. Organic beings needing each other? Okay, sure, that’s instinct and eons of evolution at work. But me needing them? Them needing me? There’s no reason for that. Not in their biology. Not in my programming. Who the heck does Carver think she is, pawning me off on some strangers? Was I just a pet potted plant to her? Well, screw all that. If these so called ‘teammates’ had needed me so badly, why didn’t they look for me when I wandered off during the mission? No. I won’t reject the notion, because I can do better—I’ll disprove it and lay the evidence bare at Carver’s feet! Once she sees that it was really just Uranishi that needed Solko and Solko who needed Uranishi, why, Carver will have no choice but to admit she was wrong and get some capable subordinates for once so she can have some free time.

As Nekkau stalked off and punched the call-elevator button, the anger in her circuits cooled and rearranged into the crystalline structure of a plan.