‘Sophie, am I a DILF?’ Mickey asked suddenly, peering at her over his sniffcomm.

‘Mmm?’ Sophie said. It was one of their clerical-work days, which meant filling out reports, sending in forms, correcting sheets. It meant a lot of dull-faced procrastination. She was somewhere between asleep and awake. She drooled, a little, on the table. She kept scrolling mirthlessly through the Fish-Bank.

The Golon Fish-Bank was the greatest poison ever inflicted on their segment of the galaxy. It was a social network, a huge one, the hugest one. It survived the language and concept barriers across the galaxy in a way few communications technologies ever could because of its incredible autopsionic translation technology and because its design ensured that nothing of any value was ever communicated across it.

‘Steve said I was one.’

‘A what?’

‘A DILF. D-I-L-F. He said it like he was joking, but also like it was a compliment. He got called off to oversee ship maintenance before I could ask him.’

‘DILF, DILF,’ Sophie muttered, rolling the word curiously around her mouth. She swore she recognised it, vaguely, distantly. She could find no associations for it, however. ‘Dilphite? Dilphus-3? We worked with them.’

Mickey shook his head. ‘That doesn’t make sense at all. And Steve was sick for that one, too.’

Sophie curled her lip and fiddled with a stray pen on her desk. She shut her comms. ‘Hey, Beth,’ she said. It whistled over Beth’s head. They were deep in their work. They hunched over their monitor, fingers working at the keyboard in a blur. In a single automatic movement they reached down, swept up one of the other stray pens invading their desks, and ate it.

‘Beeeeth,’ Sophie said. ‘Beth,’ she said again, whapping them lightly on the head.

Beth’s train of thought imploded. They shook themself like an animal emerging from a stream.

‘Yeah?’

‘D’you think Mickey’s a DILF?’

Beth clamped their mouth shut. Their whole face bulged, slightly. They tried very hard to not release any noise. They breathed, slowly, in through their noise, out through their mouth.

‘DILF? Did you say DILF?’ Beth asked.

Mickey nodded. ‘Steve said I was one. Is that true?’

Beth’s whole face began to bulge, again. They covered their mouth with one hand, and then another. They crumpled under the desk for a few moments, exhaling air. They sounded like a cold breeze coming through a dark cave.

After a few moments they emerged, completely fine.

‘Beth, are you OK?’ Mickey asked.

‘Maybe you should ask Robyn,’ Beth said hastily. ‘Maybe Robyn knows. I think she’s… y’know, her expertise, right? She knows everything, right? You should see if she. Thinks. You’re a DILF.’

‘We’ll go right now,’ Sophie exclaimed, slamming her hands on her desk and standing up.

Mickey glanced down at the work on his sniffcomm. He considered the responsibilities of his employment.

He stood up, too. ‘We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible,’ he determined. He looked sincerely at Beth. ‘Thanks, Beth.’

‘Yeah, no, problem, Mickey, ah, that’s no problem. Always, ahhh, got you, dude.’ They raised a thumbs up and kept their face completely still. The sides of their mouth twitched.

So they left for Robyn’s office.

---

Robyn was only a team supervisor and was technically not high enough rank to warrant an office of her own. There were reasons, however, that her name sent chills down the spines of the Alliance bureaucrats. She wielded legal loopholes like daggers, fished up technicalities from lines of text so big the holoscreens touched the ceilings and scraped the floors. She was a deeply boring person with no real hobbies and an eye for poor wording like a hawk. So, she had scored herself an office.

She had scored herself a lovely, comfy room with a soft red carpet and humble orange lighting and walls so polished that light skated over them, slid and refracted around. Her desk was crafted of some carbonous material (wood, or some such–she’d never had the stuff back home), crafted, as in, with hands, and tools, and sweat. It was a grainy, irregular material, dark and wavy. But in a pretty way. She liked to touch it. It felt softer than anything else in the entirety of Alliance Base 17, and, yet, felt fundamentally sturdy. She had shelves, also made from that ‘wood’, which would have looked lovely with assorted books and tomes and which she filled instead with folders, self-help manuals, and a nearly endless collection of 2nd place trophies.

She had scored herself, more than anything, privacy. Peace. Even moreso than her bunkroom, she felt like she could relax in her office. Work relaxed her–she liked being around her forms, her folders. She laid back in her chair and let it all seep in.

The door burst open.

‘Sophie!’

‘What? Oh. You’re right.’

The door slammed shut. After a few moments, there came a few cautious knocks.

Robyn vented air out of her ducts and leant her chin on an actuator. The door was knocked again, even louder and faster this time, brutishly.

‘Come in,’ she said.

The door slipped open. Mickey gingerly stepped in, smiling warmly. Sophie pressed against him, wiggled an arm into the room, finally squeezed past him and scampered in. Her boots were encrusted with an unnameable variety of liquids and messes. Every time she took a step Robyn couldn’t help but wince, like her carpet was a part of her nervous system.

‘Oh. It’s you two. I could have never guessed.’

‘Really?’ asked Sophie.

Robyn seethed. She vented more hot air. ‘Yes. You are always a pleasant surprise.’

‘Thanks!’ Sophie yelled, immediately examining the contents of Robyn’s shelves with a focus and fascination that disturbed her.

Robyn rubbed and adjusted her optical sensors. ‘I hope this is for something important.’

‘I need to know if I’m a DILF or not,’ Mickey said.

‘Steve called him one,’ Sophie added. ‘And Beth thought you’d know.’

Robyn removed the lenses from her optical sensors, one by one, and quietly polished them. ‘Beth told you to come here?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sophie, looking dead on at one of Robyn’s 2nd place speed-knitting trophies. ‘Thought you’d know that kind of thing. Y’know? Hey, you speed-knit? Competitively?’

‘Speed-knat. I couldn’t stand the… favouritism of the judges,’ Robyn said, taking time in the middle of her seething to appreciate her own wordplay. She thought, again, of what Mickey had just asked her, and her heart sank once more. She looked, pleadingly, at him. ‘I’m sorry. Could you just… ask me that again? I think I misheard you.’

‘Am I a DILF?’ Mickey asked.

‘Dilphite? Dilphus-3?’ Robyn was begging for clarification. She was desperate.

‘That’s what I thought!’ Sophie said. ‘No, it’s DILF, we’re sure.’

‘Are you a DILF,’ Robyn repeated. She nodded. ‘That is the question.’

Mickey nodded: ‘Yes.’

‘The question being, are you, Mickey, a DILF. This is what I am being asked.’

Sophie nodded: ‘Yeah.’

‘And Beth sent you to do this, rather than answering it themself?’

Mickey and Sophie both nodded: ‘Yes,’ they said, together.

Robyn sat in silent contemplation. She considered the facts objectively. She looked at them all with distant and unbiased eyes. She considered the facts, even, subjectively. To her horror, it was clear as day.

‘Yes. Mickey, you are almost certainly a DILF. You might be the… most suiting owner of that title I have ever met.’ She took her lenses out once more, polished them unnecessarily. ‘Please get out of my office.’

‘You’re a DILF!’ Sophie cheered, slapping Mickey on the back.

‘I’m a DILF!’ Mickey exclaimed, flicking Sophie in the face and sending her staggering across the room.

Sophie looked hastily to Robyn. ‘Hey–am I a DILF?’

‘Not only are you not a DILF and not only could I never personally ever consider you a DILF, but you cannot be a DILF. No matter how much you tried.’

‘Aw.’

‘And–Mickey,’ Robyn said, as they were leaving her room. ‘Please don’t… look me in the eyes for the next day or two.’

‘Okay!’ Mickey said, parading cheerfully out of the room.

---

‘Beth what the hell is happening?!’ Steve asked, the second he returned to their shared workspace. He squeaked slowly off his extra-small sized hovercarrier, onto Beth’s desk. ‘Where the hell is Mick?! What’s he done?! Beth?! Are you dying?!’

Beth was lying on the floor, trying their hardest to steady their breathing. They had their comms in their hands. Their cheeks were stained with tears. Every now and then they seemed to stabilise themself, before suddenly crumpling into the floor once again in a fit of manic giggling.

They silently held up the screen of their comms to Steve.

Mickey’s Fish-Bank account had updated. A line had been added to his personal description, which said: ‘proud confirmed dilf!!’

Steve looked on in horror as Beth scrolled down.

‘my boss @robyn-alliance-work-account and my friend @steevefastman both said i was a dilf so it must be true!! i want to thank all of my followers for making this possible. i would not be a dilf without all of your support.’

Steve watched, in horror, at the rate that it gathered likes.

He overheard a conversation passing by:

‘Very bold of him…’

‘But it’s true, isn’t it? He is a DILF.’

‘Oh. Gods. Yes.’

He looked right at Beth’s face. They’d gone pale from a sheer inability to breathe. They giggled so hard they snorted. Beth almost never snorted.

‘Oh my gawd. What have I done?’