Luo Xixi stared at the forearm of the broken synth. She was one of the few capable of doing this job, or so she was told. It was the most routine job in the world. Cut circuits. Remove actuator module. Splice connector. Insert actuator module. Connect to central cable for diagnostics. Complete. Connect to hands for diagnostics. Complete. All complete.
Next. Damaged head. Frame damage cosmetic, acceptable, order xeno labor to repair frame later in workflow. Replace computation module. Remove head for further diagnostics. She felt a little dizzy, not sure if it was from boredom or from the lower oxygen on this planet.
>Speed up subjective time, automate workflow, she thought. Her hands began moving by themselves in rapid motion, as if they were that of a machine and sped up like a movie. Thank god they added the automate workflow function to her implants, she thought. I would die of boredom if I had to-
>Error, nonroutine workflow encountered. Realtime restored, neural automation ended.
The sudden return to real-time always left her mind adrift. It was a rock embedded in a broken synth’s hand. Almost as if the synth squeezed it too hard. How could that happen? The pressure sensors would stop it.
She removed the rock. Cosmetic damage, can be repaired by a xeno, she thought. There is some gripper module damage, easy to replace. The stupid implant stopped my daydreaming for this?
>Speed up subjective time, automate workflow, she thought again.
How did she end up here? She was told of her illustrious heritage. But the family line was so long, she could hardly remember them all without her lineage file. She knew her ancestors as a series of portraits and datafiles, little more. This heritage gave her nothing of material value, only disappointment from her mother and the cool distance of her elder sister.
And then there was her father. He was only a distant memory. The last she'd seen of him was a grainy image on a Neuronet notification over a decade ago: his face, stern and unfamiliar, next to the Directorate seal.She scrolled past the Directorate notification about her father’s “honorable service”, the same terse tone as all military announcements. Attached was a file she’d never opened: his service record. Name: Liu Yang. Status-
She closed it and marked it as read without looking at more details.
She was always told by her mother that her genome is worth something, that she can’t just do what she wanted. Of course, Luo Xixi never listened. She gamed her way through her early 20s, hiding in her teenage room playing some state-sponsored MMORPG on her Neuronet. Her dad leaving barely registered; he was gone on deployment for most of her childhood, what did it matter that he left permanently that day?
After getting sick of gaming, she spent weeks staring at the ceiling. Her sister was gone. Her father was gone. Her mother drowned herself in working at home even though they had enough money not to. It was suffocating.
She wanted to join the military, just to get off the planet and do something. Instead she had to live at home while working a menial data labeling job. Neural login. Oh, play the game of labeling some object in various stellar environments. Repeat for 10 hours. Speed up subjective time. Neural log-off.
This was her life and she was already over 30 - young by career standards, but almost expired by reproductive ones. She had the most boring work, the most annoying family, no money and no boyfriend-
>Error, nonroutine workflow encountered. Realtime restored, neural automation ended.
What now? Luo Xixi refocused her attention. Alien graffiti on a heavily mangled synth arm. The chassis was bent and cords were ripped out; it would be impossible to fix with a simple module exchange. It was a total loss. The words were barely visible on the shredded metal.
>Translate, she thought. Immediately, the standard translation appeared. “Fuck the Directorate, Return our Children”.
>Record image, file for transmission to police.
>Speed up subjective time, automate workflow.
Her only escape in those distant days on the homeworld was taking a walk at night after her shift ended. Though the lights of the city were shining bright as day outside her family’s apartment, she could fast forward through this tedious phase of the walk to the part she enjoyed - taking the metro to the fields near the edge of the city. It was quiet here, with the sound of the wind rustling through the dried grasses, descendants of the first plants imported here millennia ago. It was where she could feel her own heartbeat without distraction.
Even with the immense light from the city of 50 million, the sky was surprisingly beautiful. The night was lit by the warm shine of millions of ancient stars, creating their own skyglow to counter the artificial one. A few nearby suns were bright enough to even cast some hazy shadows. Her future was not to be born, live, work and die on the same rock like everyone else. She wanted to travel the stars. Yet she saw the brutal reality every time she passed the Neuronet ad on the last metro stop:
>Immigration lottery open! Up to 0.01% probability of acceptance! Transferable!
Luo Xixi eventually got sick of mentally circling rocks in different lighting environments and decided to not leave immigration to chance. She asked her mother for money. Not to spend on clothes, either physical or in-game, but to find a job: knowledge uploads. Robotics theory. Control theory. Mechanics of materials. Circuits. Radiation hardening. She was realistic - she was too old to join the military directly and little else would let her leave. Her only chance to get off world was with the colonial engineers… or win the immigration lottery.
Her mother was ecstatic. She was finally going to be somebody instead of a nobody. It was the easiest way: pay credits, get skills directly.
Soon, she got a job, one that offered interstellar travel, surprisingly high pay, yet had ominously few applicants. It was one that required some of the highest levels of educational uploads in robotics: colonial synth service engineer, no planetary preference.
It would be a 1 way trip, the cost of bringing her back regarded as suboptimal. Of course, that was perfect for her.
Her mother sighed. Another member of the family will be gone, scattered to the stars. At least there was still her other daughter.
Before embarking on her sleeper craft, her mother warned her: your genome is worth something.
“Don’t just sleep with some random man. I can’t control you from here, but you’re a woman now,” she said condescendingly.
You sure as hell can’t, Luo Xixi thought. “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“I don’t want you to rush-” her mother interjected.
“I’m ‘almost expired’, right?” Luo shot back.
Arriving on this planet felt like eons ago. This was a desolate rock orbiting an M type red dwarf, recently conquered by the Directorate decades ago. Despite the best efforts of the colonial police, alien insubordination simmered beneath the surface. There were always some surveillance blindspots, after all. That was why humans stuck with humans. But not her.
She hardly knew the humans in her unit. They were all locals, multigenerational descendants of the first colonist-soldiers that took this planet, not core worlders like her. They talked in heavy dialect and were adorned with tattoos, piercings and improvised clothes.
There was no point talking to the xenos either. There were a few in-person alien slave coworkers and several more virtual laborers, but all she would say to them are commands. Simple, gentle commands, but commands nonetheless. She never spoke harshly to them. What’s the point? Their lives were hard enough. But there was also nothing to really say to them, other than commands. They were aliens, after all.
>Shift complete, her personal implants stated. Thank god for time control, she thought. >Restore realtime, end automated workflow.
She walked out of the repair depot. The red sun hung overhead in the eternal twilight. An alien crowd flowed around them, barely aware of their presence. Their fur was perfectly adapted for the chilly weather. Their hunched bodies shuffled softly against each other and their soft communicative grunts created a warm, buzzing background. She sniffed the air. The xeno stench is getting better, she thought. I almost might be able to ignore it in a few years.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I wonder what they’re saying. Simultaneous translate on, she commanded her implant.
>Error, xeno audio input exceeds permitted bandwidth for given role. Please allocate additional resources to linguistic processor. Forget it, she sighed to herself.
“Hey,” a young human male said, snapping her back to reality. She had seen this guy before, somewhere. In fact, she was supposed to do something with him… she tried to retrieve her organic memory, but came up with nothing. Ah well, she thought. Probably not important.
His smooth skin was light brown in the cool white light of the depot, but as they stepped out onto the street, he looked almost black in the red light of their faint sun.
“I messaged you a while back. We’ve worked together for a year now. Le Quan, remember?”
“I barely see you,” she replied tersely. “In fact I barely know you.”
“You agreed to walk with me for a bit after work.” She searched her memory. That’s right, I did agree at some point. Probably by accident with this guy, she thought sarcastically.
“I agreed to a date?” She smirked. “Doesn’t sound like me.”
“Hey, I was surprised too,” he said with a big smile.
“I’m old, you know,” she said openly. “I spent some time on a sleeper ship. I look 33, I have the genes of 33, my file says 33, but I’m not really 33.”
“I get it, you’re 33. You’re not a grandma and that’s good enough for me,” he joked.
“What, you like older, more experienced women?” she retorted with a laugh. The alien crowd parted as they walked past, almost as if they had an imaginary force field around them.
“You’re just older, not really experienced.”
“How would- I-” she stuttered. She was stuck in his simple social trap. To agree would show her as a naive spinster, yet to disagree she would be seen as a loose woman. She would be humiliated with any reply and there was no way out but to leave. This stupid boy trapped me, she thought. Am I just entertainment to him?
“This was a mistake.” She began to turn around.
“No, it was just a joke. I’m sorry.” He replied, his earlier grin replaced by concern. He clearly didn’t want to lose her.
“Nobody from the inside comes to this rock because they were happy,” he said, trying to comfort her.
“Oh? How could you tell?” she replied sarcastically.
“It’s not good to be a loner here. We humans have to watch out for each other.”
They barely even thought about where they were going until they arrived in front of an imposing, concrete lump with a few armored windows. It rose into the air so high that it would require tilting your head to see the top, and extended so far that it was impossible to see the other end. Harsh white LED lighting glinted out from the small glass portals. They were in the human part of the city now, hardly noticing the automated genetic checkpoints that seamlessly allowed them through. Any alien that attempted to pass would have been exposed in a flat, featureless concrete walkway watched by armed police. They would get just two warnings, one verbal, one kinetic, before being forcibly removed. It was rarely necessary. They knew their place.
“Looks like we’re back at the residence building,” Luo said bluntly. “Well, goodb-
“Can I go up?” he grinned.
“No!” she said with a faint blush. “I don’t do that on the first date.”
“Oh, so this was a date then?” he said, keeping a grin on his face.
“I accept you calling it that,” Luo replied, a bit flustered. “I can allow you to come to floor 1 to eat with me. That’s traditional for a date, right?”
Her date laughed, “It’s also traditional for the higher up to pay.”
Luo playfully retorted, “No, it’s more traditional for the man to pay.”
“I can’t follow that tradition, I’m broke,” he said with a half-joking, half-serious whimper.
“I’ll let you freeload this once,” she said. What does it matter? A few credits for the one genuine social interaction she’s had since waking up here is nothing.
They walked through the vast hall. Propaganda images were tastefully placed and rotated on electronic screens. Luo Xixi’s eyes lingered on an image of a battlecruiser orbiting a planet.
>Pacification of Delta Orion Cluster Xenos: 98.2% complete. Integration into Directorate governance: 21.5% complete.
Big deal, she thought. I became Galactic Emperor when I was still gaming.
They walked into the cafeteria with Luo Xixi walking slightly ahead. She looked straight ahead as she passed by the door, as if she barely even noticed her date by her side. There was barely enough room for them to walk together, but she navigated the crowd with almost instinctual precision, moving out of the way of workers and people heading home alike with effortless ease. Core worlder habits needed for surviving in a megacity don’t fade easily.
>Permission granted for credit access, autobill, max 50, she thought.
The transaction AI replied in her head with a cold, calculated voice:
>Number of party members?
>Two, she replied in her head.
“Hey, hey, are you ordering?” the man snapped her back to reality. Sometimes it gets hard to juggle digital and real worlds when both are in your head.
“Yeah I’m doing it by Neuronet,” she replied.
“Ah, here most people don’t trust that. We have cards and local implants for that.”
“Neuronet is more convenient,” Luo replied flatly.
“So, you like Neuronet.”
“I just use it,” Luo said, a bit annoyed.
“You want to take this off voice… and go to Neuronet with me?” her date said cautiously.
Luo Xixi froze. After a brief, awkward silence, “I don’t just let anyone in, not to my place and definitely not to my head.”
Her date returned the awkwardness, and then laughed nervously. “Yeah I can see that.”
Trying to salvage the situation, she said with a forced cheer, “I am just used to computer stuff with Neuronet, personal stuff in person.”
They sat down at a table in the corner. All around, the human crowd buzzed with activity. This heavily fortified structure was a combined police station, cafeteria, residential area, power plant and data center.
Luo couldn’t see the sky from here. Her day revolved around her synth repair job in the field depot and going home. Humans were barred from the alien’s domestic transport system, and it was impossible to see all but the nearest stars from the depot due to the immense light of the xeno metropolis.
“Hello??” the man snapped. “Hello?”
She was caught daydreaming again.
“Uh… since I am paying, I can order for both of us,” she said apologetically. “What do you want?”
“You just order your favorites,” he replied charitably. She nodded.
>Transaction - 2 ramens with textured protein and vegetable sprinkling, she thought.
The delivery synth quickly rolled up with their food. Two bowls of delicious looking noodles with a rich, brown soup, interlaced with thin slices of what looked like dry tofu and some ground dry leaves was served in front of them.
“This is your favorite?” the man scoffed.
Luo instantly frowned a bit. “What’s wrong with it? I eat this every day. I can eat nothing but this.”
“I don’t know what you like about this slop,” the man said with a sneer. “It’s just so… artificial.”
“It tastes good, it has sufficient nutrition, what more can you ask for?” she said, getting even more annoyed with her date’s rudeness.
“It’s mass produced slop. Noodles are strands of blended wheat. Protein is a sliced block of mass produced vegetable protein and mushroom mix. Vegetable is dried leaves. Soup is water with some salt, artificial protein flavoring and fat emulsion. Everything was made in a factory, dried and packaged.”
“So you’re a snob now. Didn’t expect that from a colonial.”
The man sighed. “Junk food, but tastes fine, I guess.”
“Next time I’ll get something you like,” she promised. She began eating, slurping the soup into her mouth without any care. She could feel a few droplets of the soup splash onto her hair, but she didn’t mind.
He lowered his voice. “There’s guys running private kitchens on the side. They’re in my part of town.”
Luo Xixi’s lifted her eyes from her bowl.
“You are kidding me.”
“It's where we get real food made by a human. Not junk food,” he said. “Here we have some real food, not like what you had back home.”
Luo instantly redirected the conversation, feeling some unease about unauthorized kitchens.
“Let’s just enjoy some ‘junk food’ then, Mr. food critic, and then we’ll get something more to your liking, if you impress me enough for a next time.”
A private kitchen. She’s heard of those, even on her old core world. She’s just never been to one or seen one. It's definitely not a crime, or at least one worthy of substantial punishment. But the sanitation! The speed of service! How can they compete with a synth kitchen? Never mind going to wherever he lived.
She saw him trying the noodles. He seemed to like them.
“You look like you’re enjoying the junk food,” she said with a smile.
“I’m trying to impress you,” he replied half jokingly.
>Capture image, she commanded the implant. A recorded image instantly appeared in her mind of him slurping on the noodles.
>Post to public account, #finally. Her first social media post. She suddenly felt a creeping unease on the back of her neck.
>Set private. The privacy icon in her imagination lit up, showing that it was hidden again.
