Looking Glass



If you're reading this, I didn't give up on translating this from the original prose into some unpronounceable human dialect. More fool I.

I being Re'Kass Sesren, one of many proud legal entities in charge of commercial station Ikktikta, in the Yoru system (which probably means nothing to you, seeing as you've probably never been to the Yoru system or even to a space station). It's not so sought-after a profession as you may think. Everybody on the janitorial staff is also considered 'In Charge,' it's just something the psychology obsessed nuts down in resources thought would be a good idea 'To make sure we all take pride in the valued service we provide.' The only one with any real power is the Administrator, a gas-giant dwelling bag of hot air (literally) who never leaves his office because he doesn't want to have to spend company money on an envirosuit (read: doesn't want to have any idea what's actually going on so he can dodge responsibility appropriately). I, however, require one regardless. Administrators can be useless, us grunts and engineers have to go all over the station regardless of what part of it is set up for what atmosphere. This is the topic of my complaints as I awkwardly clunk down the halls in my four legged, environment controlled box.

"I hear ya," my coworker, Larikkt, sighed, rodent-like head jerking in the universal 'what can ya do?' gesture of employees everywhere, "Bureaucracy's poster child. On the subject of everyone's favorite unpleasantry," she skittered up the side of my suit and tapped on the orange tinted, diamond shaped lens I saw the whole world through.

"I hate it when you do that; it blurs everything as is, I don't need your nails scratching at it."

"Get used to it, Re, because they're bringing in a newbie who'll probably never have seen one of these old clunkers before." Another gesture, this one species specific body language that my translator interpreted as 'this-is-information-we-both-already-share'.

I responded with another universal phrase. "Hrm?"

"The new guy we're getting. That affirmative action paperwork that Gas-bag tripped over. We have to have at least one employee around here who's of a species new to interspecies contact."

I groaned through my translator. I was bad with new people to begin with, now add mutual culture shock to the equation. "You're kidding."

"You didn't pay attention to a single word of what the Admin. was telling us earlier, were you?" The truth was I hadn't. My suit had recorded it, and I hadn't bothered to review it, "We're supposed to set up this Alan Son-of-Smith's room after we're done figuring out what has the methane breathers in the residential section all riled up."

"Wait wait wait, room? Should I get a pod-bed out of storage or something?"

"Dunno if they'd fit in one. I hear they're kinda weird shaped, like these really tall bipeds."

"Do these tall bipeds have names?" I replied sarcastically, "Direct uplink to stationcomp here."

"They're called-" Larikkt made an attempt at the name and broke down into a coughing fit.

"All right, according to this that's an amphibious insect, used to a neon based atmosphere..."
        "No, that wasn't the name, it's some Ch'kkaktim unpronounceable thing," She took a deep breath and spoke again, slower this time, "Yuu... m'ns. Yum'ns." I punched the name into stationcomp and for a second though that the AI was playing silly buggers with me again. I displayed the results on my enviro's external screen anyway, to be sure. They were creepy looking things, tall and narrow like someone had stretched them out. Skin color varied in hue from 'bones left in the sun' to 'bones left underwater'. They were really just a straight line pointing up: legs going up to a body with arms hanging off the top of it, and a head just plunked on top of that as though the gods went "All right, now where do we put this bloody thing?" They had the thinnest pelt I'd ever seen on something mammalian, with a shock of a mane on top as though to make up for the otherwise hairlessness. In short, they were weird.
We were in shocked silence all through the issue with the methane breathers. Finally, Larikkt got over it enough to say, "We have to make THAT feel at home?" I didn't notice at the time, as I was still trying to work out on the enviro's computer how the hell that thing would even sit down. As near as I could tell, it just sort of... folded up. But the computer's guess couldn't be right, what could be comfortable with its ankles behind its head like that? The 'pang, pang, pang,' of my associate tapping on my lens again brought me back. "Re? Hello in there! Help me out here!"

"Right, fine."

"So, what sort of biology could result in that?" She pointed at the picture on my external screen, "Not exactly the most likely looking of designs."

"Now, creationism's a perfectly valid theory for this lot," I joked, "Says here they're primates," I kept looking through it, "Sort of a tribal level family structure, clothing taboo, but that's no surprise with a hairless mammal. Their sense of smell and eyesight's crap, but they've got a pretty good sense of touch and dexterous fingers. Think they're bringing this guy in as a massage therapist?"

"Nah, that would be useful. Hey, whatÕs with these teeth?"

"Says here they're omnivores."

"So are we looking at scavengers?"

"Nope, gatherers and cursoriel hunters. Hey, says here it's a 108-type, like me."

"Oh great, more of you freaks. I don't understand how you species with both sexes capable of intelligent thought get by."

"A lot of the time, we don't either. Somebody else to complain to though, that's worth remembering. Says here these things get kinda moody."

"All right, I think I know how to set this up. Come with me, we got work to do."



The human started laughing when we showed him to his room. The noise was as weird as the rest of them, just this harsh bark. Larikkt and I were both kind of miffed that it said the room wouldn't do. It had taken forever to get that synthetic tree to grow and set up a nest bed in the branches. Finding live prey for it was also a pain, as was getting together recordings of human voices so that it felt as though it was in a crowd of its own kind. To top it off, it didn't even know what the tactile-sculptures we'd found for it were! Fortuitously, it was able to breath Larikkt's atmosphere and was thus bunking with her until we fixed the room up the way it liked. So me and Larikkt sat there nursing a couple of drinks on our off shift, trying to figure out what we did wrong, when she yelped and slammed her hand against the side of my enviro to get my attention.

"You know, I really hate it when you-"

"It just hit me! I was right the first time, Re!'" Seeing as she'd made her way through her ninth drink, I sat up and paid attention. Larikkt's nine-drink ideas were often worth listening to, even if the end results of them were often more interesting than useful.

"Go on," I encouraged her, when it appeared that she'd lost her train of thought, "Tell me."

"Isn't it obvious? We forgot the pool!" She stood there triumphantly for a few moments, positively radiating happiness with her own cunning. I was mildly less impressed.

"Pool?"

"Think about it! The curved, bell-shaped nose to trap air bubbles, the hairless skin that wouldn't weigh it down by trapping water, the weird eyes," Larikkt chortled at her own cleverness again, "I was right the first time! The little chak'takkers are aquatic mammals!"
I immediately got to work on the forms requesting a pool for someones private quarters. Larikkt's nine-drink enthusiasm was infectious. If anyone asked, I'd say I couldn't tell she was drunk. After all, I can barely see a thing through my suit's looking glass.