Memory Transcription Subject: Chief Executive Officer Sifal, Seaglass Mineral Concern

  Date [standardized human time]: January 26, 2137

  “What brought me here?” Vivy repeated my question, quizzically. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  Easy question. I’d planned it, after all. I counted off five fingers quickly. “Small, out-of-the-way, mining colony, aligned with the Federation, but run by a species that was aligned with humanity.” Other hand, three more. “The Federation wouldn’t miss you, Humanity wouldn’t protect you, and the Dominion wouldn’t even notice you were gone.” I blinked, realizing what I’d just said. “Fuck, that sounds dark when I say it out loud like that. I’m sorry.”

  Vivy chuckled. “No worries. So we were just low-hanging fruit, in the end?”

  I blanked for a second as I worked my way through parsing that. Easy prey, more like. “Odd metaphor. But yeah, I suppose so. We just needed the minerals. My poor ship was falling apart at the seams.”

  “I’m surprised you stuck around afterwards,” said Vivy, leaning on the bar. “Most of us thought you’d just grab what you needed and leave, maybe bomb the place on your way out, out of spite. You know. Like a raid.”

  I leaned back on the stool, awkwardly contemplating the series of decisions that brought me to this point. “We were never planning on bombing you,” I said earnestly, “but we weren’t planning to stay, either. That was Debbin’s idea.”

  Vivy’s eyes widened slightly. “Really! And you took him up on the idea? Why?”

  I shrugged. I tried to play it cool, but some darker thoughts were creeping in. “I mean, because we wanted to! Of course we want to be around.” Some of us, at least. “You know, like… like normal people.” Too many of us aren't normal, and might never be. “We just never even thought to ask.” Because coexistence is an alien concept. Literally, I got it from talking to a human. Never would have thought of it on my own. “Why would you guys ever agree to having us around?” Sorry I tore your children apart with my teeth and forced you to watch. We're cool now, right?

  I sighed, and took another sip of my spiked tea. Still tasted odd to me, but it was nicely fuzzing out thoughts I didn't want to have. “But that’s the goal, isn’t it? We finally have a way out of this stupid, pointless war. Which means my people need to find a place for ourselves on the other side of it.” I lightly traced a pattern on the bartop with a claw as I mused. “Learning to coexist is… an existential challenge to the Arxur right now. There’s not going to be a place for us if we can’t figure out how to live alongside the rest of you guys. So we have to. We ought to, in any event. It’s the right thing to do. But we also have to.”

  Vivy nodded, and seemed introspective, working my words around in her head. Kara… was wide-eyed, hands over her mouth, and looked about to cry. “Oh my goodness! That’s beautiful. Is it alright if I hug you?”

  I knew what hugs were. “Sure,” I said, and Kara… wandered off? Odd. Were hugs something different in Federation space compared to Earth?

  “Huh,” said Vivy. “Just like that. Makes me wonder if we couldn’t have resolved this years ago.”

  I shook my head. “No, it wouldn’t have worked years ago. Our government is the fucking worst. Starved us into obedience. All of this is predicated on us overthrowing those psychopathi--”

  I was abruptly interrupted by all the breath in my lungs getting violently knocked out of me. “Whuh fuck?” I wheezed, as Kara gripped me forcefully in a huge bear hug.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled into my neck. “It’s a long bar. I had to walk all the way around.”

  I patted the big Takkan lady on the back, awkwardly, unused to this kind of spontaneously violent affection. Glancing around at the rest of the bar, behind her, it was becoming increasingly obvious to the rest of the patrons that, whatever my plans were for the evening, they didn’t involve violence towards them, not necessarily. I was sitting in the corner, having a drink, chatting with a few people nearby, and pointedly not killing and eating every herbivore in arm’s reach. In Kara, I had a fat stack of meat literally clutching onto me for dear life--which was a notion I really needed to finish unlearning--and I was treating her like a person instead. Because Kara was a real person. They all were! And it was long past time that my people acknowledged that. So here I was, first full day of treating them like people. We had cultural divides to overcome, not existential ones. We could learn to coexist.

  Buuuuut… now the floodgates were open, and a handful of brave souls started getting the notion that this was a highly unprecedented opportunity to talk to an Arxur in a setting that wouldn’t prove immediately fatal. Kara wandered in and out--she seemed to have taken a liking to me, but she had work to attend to--but Vivy planted herself in place, observing me. Testing me?

  A rather brash-looking Gojid sidled up to me. They were, as a species, shorter than us Arxur, but kind of stocky, so the weight classes overlapped, on occasion, especially comparing a vigorous Gojid day laborer thriving in the Federation against a malnourished Arxur runt trapped in the Dominion. I didn’t think about it much, but I was starting to really put on weight, lately. All the rebels were. We were finally full, after all, so we were reaching our fullest potentials of strength, even if a couple of the lazier hunters were just gathering pudge. I think human bodybuilders called it a dirty bulk?

  “How many people have you eaten?” the Gojid asked, as a challenge.

  I leaned back on my stool, considering the question. “Well, for the first twenty-five years of my life, I’d been taught that that was normal. By the time I started questioning it, I was long past my raiding days. I didn’t really have a say in what I ate. I lived on a ship, and got handed rations in the mess hall, same as any engineer. So I guess I have no idea.”

  Give me a scratchpad, I thought idly, and I could maybe make an estimate? X pounds of meat per meal, times Y meals per week, times the number of weeks I'd been alive, divided by the average weight of… ah, but which species? Hrm…

  The Gojid snorted derisively. “Federation engineers don’t eat people.”

  His argument was puerile, but I tried not to take it personally. “Again, very fortunate, the circumstances you’ve gotten to live in, never needing to choose between death by starvation and ethics. You’d think, in the infinite vastness of the universe, we’d have found at least one species of sapient plant by now who objected to your choice of diet…” My eyes widened, as I considered the fish from earlier today. “Wait, hang on, what exactly is the Federation process for identifying sapience in alien species?”

  “What?” the Gojid said, taken aback. “I dunno, man--”

  “Ma’am,” I corrected, reflexively.

  “--whatever!” he spat. “There’s never been a known example of sapient plant people before!”

  “Again, how would you know?” I pressed. “What’s your actual planetary surveying process? I just found out this morning, you guys nearly missed the Dossurs. That’s a whole species! In good standing with the Federation for centuries, same as the Gojids! And what, just because they were too tiny? And this is a mammal we’re talking about, just like you. Did you even check if the kelp could talk before you ate them?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The Gojid crossed his arms, and furrowed his brow, deep in concerned thought. “Hang on, I don’t actually fuckin’ know. Lemme ask that Aquaculturist lady.”

  “I’m not here, Bori!” shouted Sopa from across the room. She had a bird perched on her back for some reason? I gave her a little wave of recognition, and she tried to flee into the back. I hoped there was an exit that way, because if not, the giant Mazic woman was probably going to try to flee straight through the wall, and probably had the sheer bulk to manage it.

  “She says she’s not here,” confirmed Bori, crossing his arms again, but more definitively, like he was protecting a friend.

  “This is something that’s worrying you?” asked Vivy, leaning in. Her eyes were locked in on me, and her tail swished behind her like a cat’s, stalking prey. At least from the videos I’d managed to dig up. I wanted a cat.

  I briefly held a hand in the air, helplessly, before letting it drop. “I ate a native fish this morning, and it didn’t even occur to me to check if it could talk first. Yes, it bothers me.” I shook my head and tried to keep my thoughts in a straight line, but they kept teetering… “Look, we Arxur aren’t humans. We do have hunting instincts. We do have a bit of bloodthirst. It’s just beneath us to have those urges targeted at people. So yes, I have concerns about how best to differentiate animals from people, because we have been historically terrible at that!” Bori wasn’t currently holding a drink, so I gently tapped my mug against the tip of his snout in lieu of a toast. His face scrunched up in confusion. “You know, I just found out, one of my human friends is actually dating a Gojid?” So many pictures of the happy couple on social media… I wanted to post pictures of Vriss and I like that… “You guys are alright,” I said aloud. “Gave us a good fight, over the years. I respect you guys. In a different timeline, maybe we could have been allies.”

  Bori took a few steps back in baffled confusion. The poor guy was probably still grappling with the reality of his own omnivory, and also, much like the non-omnivorous Garruga, had no idea how to take a reprehensible compliment. He scurried back to his table, at the far edge of my hearing, and I took another sip of my strange tea.

  “She’s a witch, and we need to flee immediately,” Bori explained, matter-of-factly, to his companions.

  I choked on the last bit of my drink.

  “Another?” asked Vivy, still staring at me with a peculiar intensity.

  “Sure,” I said, coughing it off. “Can you vary it up a bit?”

  “Of course,” said Vivy, steeping something different this time.

  A very timid-looking Nevok woman trotted up while I waited. “What’s your favorite food?” she asked. I’ll spare this account of events any repeating consonants and dashes, but she was stammering heavily--it took her a good five seconds to get through the opening phoneme of the Nevok word for ‘what’--and she looked as weak in the knees as a Venlil.

  I blinked slowly. “You know, it’s a bit rude to assume I’m entirely food-motivated,” I said curtly.

  “Sorry!” said the Nevok, flinching. “I’m sorry! I lost a bet, and my friends made me ask! You can eat them instead, please!”

  I groaned. Did the humans have to deal with this, too? Surely not. Right? “I’m not eating anyone, not ever again, not if I have any say in the matter.” I sighed. “As for your question, I tried some good food on the human homeworld. Like this one dish, it…” I trailed off, thinking of the foie gras mousse David had served me, and realizing that there was no way to describe ‘egg-frothed liver paste’ that wouldn’t make the woman immediately vomit on me. “No, hang on, you’d probably find it grotesque. Okay, but then there was…” What, the herb-infused blood sausage? The savory egg custard? The whole incident with the rack of lamb? “No, you'd probably be horrified by those, too. Hrmmm…” I tapped the bartop, deep in thought. What could I say that wouldn’t gross the poor woman out? “Oh! How about condiments? Humans made this interesting sauce called chimichurri. It’s a puree of fresh herbs and pungent roots, blended into an emulsion of fragrant oil and tangy vinegar. You can drizzle a little on all kinds of foods. Humans put it on grilled meat and grilled vegetables alike.” I leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Humans love their fires. Roasting, smoking, grilling… it’s wild. They can get so many flavors just out of wood smoke alone.”

  Vivy hummed to herself as she took a note of this, then served me my tea.

  The Nevok woman’s face scrunched up in confusion. “But… but that sauce is made of vegetables. You’re an Arxur,” she said. “You can’t eat plants.”

  “I can’t derive any important nutrients from plants,” I said, picking up my mug and jiggling it as much as I dared without scalding my hand. “I am visibly drinking tea for the scent and flavor.” I took a sip. “Ooh, this one’s got a bit of spice to it.”

  “Konimma,” said Vivy, still smiling softly. “It’s an aromatic tree bark native to the planet Grenalka.”

  “Oh! I’d been meaning to try Konimma since Garruga mentioned it,” I said. I pulled out my holopad, and started a document transfer. “I’ve been very curious about seasoning my food these days. Here, let me send you what I’ve got on human cookbooks. I’m not gonna impose on you to start cooking meat or anything, but frankly, if you can mimic any of the sauces or source some substitutes for the spices, I’d be very interested.” I turned back to the Nevok lady, and it took my eyes a few seconds to focus on her. “But not, you know, for you. I mean… not for use on you. You can absolutely have some. I’ll share. Sorry, what was your name again?”

  The Nevok woman, her knees still shaking like a Venlil’s, ducked her head. “Maddilly!” she squeaked. “You can’t eat me, I’m important! I’m… I’m Chief of Operations!”

  My eyes went wide, and my face went stony. I rose up to my full height and loomed menacingly over Maddilly. Without the iconic ‘Arxur slouch’--in reality, our resting, coiled stance to pounce--her snow-white Nevok ears alone barely made their way up to my chest. “Ohhh, Maddilly,” I said slowly, menacingly. “Ohoho, Maddilly. Let me tell you what I think about this colony’s poor excuse for Operations…”

  Maddilly backpedaled slowly, trembling, too scared to break eye contact to flee. But Jodi, without even looking up from her drink, rapidly had a paw on my chest and firmly nudged me back towards my stool. “Nope,” said the old Yotul veteran. “Sit back down. You pay me to keep you out of fights, I’m gonna keep you out of fights.”

  “I wasn’t gonna fight her!” I protested.

  “Don’t care,” Jodi muttered into her beer as she downed the last of it. “You loom like that, somebody else is gonna freak out and jump in to ‘rescue’ her from you. Or else Maddilly’s just gonna piss herself, and I’m in the fuckin’ splash zone, so no thank you.”

  “You’re no fun,” I muttered back.

  “I’m working,” Jodi said with a smirk. She nodded to Vivy, who raised an eyebrow. “Something darker this time?”

  “Of course,” said Vivy, pulling her another beer. Smelled like grain gone bad, same as the first one, but this time the glass filled with liquid that was Gojid-fur brown instead of Yotul-fur amber. “But just so you know, some of us get to enjoy ourselves at work.”

  “Wooo!” shouted Kara, about a bar’s length away. I flinched, and almost held my hands over my eardrums again, because she was being loud enough to be heard over the music. I blinked, and she was heading right towards me. She had her holopad out. “Hey, Sifal, lemme get a picture with you!”

  I blinked again and giggled a little. My face felt warm. “Sure, why not. For obvious reasons, please don’t post that to social media. Treason, PD… that kinda thing.” An increasingly fuzzy part of my brain stayed adamant, reminding me that I shouldn’t tell them openly about the media blackout protocols. Slowly, in private. They’d panic, otherwise. Start with the level-headed ones, convert them to collaborators…

  “You’re no fun,” Kara muttered. Jodi nearly choked on her beer laughing.

  We took three pictures in rapid succession: one normal, one with my maw open about to bite Kara’s head off, and one with Kara’s maw open about to bite my head off, to make it an unexpected subversion and therefore funny. I think that was how comedy worked? I was new to the concept. Then the other girls got in on it, too. Vivy took some pictures with me, and Jodi did, too, and Maddilly tried to slip away, but somebody roped her back in for more pictures. Then Kara suggested we all ‘do shots’, and I think there was some really fun dancing involved--I’d never really gotten to dance in public before!--and then

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