Beth was driven, fundamentally, by impulse. Things happened for them practically automatically–when they least expected it, they had taken a bite out of the leg of a table Robyn just so happened to be leaning on, or they had blasted their savings on a coat nearly the colour they were looking for, or they had completely ingested literally every single droplet of alcohol in a nearby bar and been subsequently banned from the entire suburb by the local council. That kind of thing.
They were proud of themself, as such, to see their plans falling perfectly into place. They couldn’t help but hold back a chuckle, rubbing their hands together like a criminal.
‘Mmmph?’ Sophie asked, stirring in her chair next to them. She looked tiredly at Beth and asked, slurring slightly: ‘You’re acting suspicious. Why is that?’
‘I’m not suspicious,’ Beth answered.
‘Oh. OK,’ Sophie agreed, and then fell back asleep, leaning on Beth’s shoulder.
Beth arched their fingers together. Their grin widened.
The background to their plan went as follows: an unofficial Alliance outpost had been established by locals in the vuskite mining town, 11-Thoob-22, on the Hollothoob Asteroid Peninsula. They had been assisted by a nearby Alliance relief team from Alliance Base 22–the crew of the ARS Slime Gents–who were now completely indisposed due to a brittworm infection. Nobody else from Base 22 was able to (or wanted to) replace them.
This was because the Peninsula was located in the Extedges, more colloquially known as ‘the arse end of nowhere.’ It was nearly a month’s travel, hopping through jumpstations, feeding off salty hotdogs and bitter coffee and using outhouses with the uncanny ambiance of being millions of feet underground in a damp cavern, despite only a thin sheet of metal and a debris shield sitting between the occupant and empty airless space. Base 22 was the closest base, technically, with Base 17 right after it. By a fraction of a lightyear or two.
The Peninsula was completely without Alliance oversight, which, normally, wouldn’t be a problem (local leadership was emphasised for outposts), but for the fact that outpost establishment form 445 had not been signed yet. It was a requirement–a requirement, so Robyn emphasised–for a trained relief team to witness the form’s signing. Without a witness, the form was void, and was due for shredding, incinerating, and recycling, which was an even bigger problem, because the nearest shredding, incinerating, and recycling centre was two month’s travel.
‘That’s a one hundred percent decrease in efficiency, everybody. One. Hundred. Percent,’ Robyn had explained to them, jabbing at the hovering diagrams that thrummed out of her comms. ‘The implication being, of course, that, should we intervene, we can ensure a one hundred percent increase in efficiency. Are we all clear?’
Everyone was clear. Sophie batted at the diagrams like a bored cat, watching the floating pixels break apart at her touch. Mickey nodded a whole lot, so as to make it completely clear that he had definitely listened to the entire thing. Steve was openly scrolling through his comms messages. Beth gave a thumbs up.
Beth, who had the most administrative experience of all of them, shouldered the responsibilities of planning the trip with Robyn. They would, likely, need to stay there overnight.
Like many places in the arse end of nowhere, there was a motel.
Thinking of the motel filled Beth with mirth, once more. They watched Steve completely absorbed in piloting on the cockpit dashboard, watched the sheen of his skin, the way he wiggled as he turned the ship, and they rubbed their hands and chortled.
‘You’re acting so suspiciously,’ Sophie said, suddenly awake once more and staring Beth right in the eyes.
‘I’m. No. I’m not. I’m super not.’
From afar 11-Thoob-22 looked like a town had blown up and been sent flying listlessly through space. It was a spacer township, which was somewhat of a contradiction, being that spacers were defined as being homeless and townless. Spaceships had been parked on the asteroids long ago, had been built into them, into eachother.
Ramshackle sheds and lean-tos containing old furniture and grills erupted from the sides of ancient commuter ships. A pair of freighters were connected at the doors, forming a makeshift manor, with a pair of umbrellas and hammocks installed on its roof. An old warship squatted by a sheer edge that fell away into a long dark emptiness. It had a porch with a rocking chair. Its central cannon had been turned directly upwards and been remade into a chimney. It smoked gently.
There were groves of tall, thin, atmospheric services fungus, of that same variety that provided air conditioning in Alliance spaceships. They grew grasslike in small mats along metal-tiled pavements, extruded large rubbly white fruiting bodies over benches and in backyards.
The entire town existed on the bare edge of endless space. It smelled like smoke and oil and home cooking. A backyard, fenced in behind the chassis of a space bus, was lit up gently, and singing voices emanated from it. A day-night cycle had been set up and simulated with a series of colossal electric lamps, bursting from the asteroids on huge black posts. It was dusk. A soft darkness was falling over the peninsula.
The atmosphere was contained with a series of rigged-up debris shields. You could tell where the atmosphere ended and where space began by the clouds, dainty swirling things, drifting over the curves and edges of the debris shields, making gaseous spirals. Their sides gleamed faintly with the light from faraway stars, faint grey, blue. The Impressing lowered itself slowly, pressed carefully against the debris shields, and was let in. The shields fizzled blue as they briefly disintegrated; nearby clouds bloomed outwards and were slowly obliterated by the Impressing’s vapour thrusters.
The motel used to be a barge. It had, in fact, been donated by Alliance Base 22 a while ago. Their initial offer of a more standard building, composed of such things as a foundation, bricks, a floor, so on, had been turned down. The aesthetic, so they had been told, had become very important. A tall billboard erupted from the barge’s top, showing gleaming, flickering neon letters: ‘XFRXAS BUDGET REST’. Its sides had been painted over with a cheesy beige–on one of the walls, even through the paint, you could see, barely, the words: VOMSbank Superbarge.
A few speeders and small commuter ships dotted the parking space. The Impressing towered over all of them. It could have eaten them all one by one. Steve sunk the ship into a parking space, carefully, carefully, carefully–they landed.
They slightly tapped a bright red speeder on their left and it began blaring an alarm.
‘Oh gawd I nearly had it dammit, dammit, dammit,’ Steve hissed.
After determining that nobody was near enough to have noticed their crime, they began the task of collecting their things. Robyn was a master of packing who managed to fit every single one of her necessities into one, tight, black, boxy pack. Everything in there was arranged in sectors. Her clothes had been cleaned, pressed, and ironed to such an extent that they were practically two dimensional. All Mickey truly needed for comfort were too-big hawaiian shirts and those little umbrellas people put in cocktails sometimes. A majority of his pack was taken up, otherwise, by snacks. Even Beth, with their stuffed closets and terrible spending, had packed reasonably, bringing only a pair of moderately stuffed bags.
Sophie had four bags. They all were on the verge of eruption. There was a deadly tension to them, like a collection of improvised time bombs. She was so accustomed to travelling with basically nothing that, when she was given the opportunity to actually pack for an excursion, she was never sure what she would and wouldn’t need. She brought things to fiddle with, things that drew her attention, things she had put in her bags ages ago and forgot to remove. She had planned to use some of her spare time to tinker; one of her bags was filled with bits of scrap metal and torn wiring.
Steve’s collection of bags outshined everybody else’s. He had more than any of them, combined. They were smaller than everyone else’s, and could be contained within a pair of cheap backpacks that Mickey cheerfully offered to wear. The backpacks bulged.
It was almost all skincare stuff. He had enough moisturiser to keep himself slick for weeks.
The motel’s lobby was dingy and too bright. The colour scheme was white, yellow, and beige. The ceiling lights shone so hard they thrummed with power. They refracted off every surface, off the cheap fashion magazines piled up on an old, gleaming leather couch; off the rubbery green fake plants in the corners; off the metal face of the receptionist, who glared dimly at them with bright red LEDs.
‘What was. Up. With that. Alarm noise. Out there?’
Steve knew exactly what to say. He had taken the time to practice: ‘Listen, pal, if you wanna trade comms numbers or something for insurance, I gotta tell you first–my comms are broken. The number is broken. I can’t take calls or make calls. I have no money. It wasn’t me driving. That isn’t even my ship. I don’t know these people. I’m not here of my own free will.’
The receptionist’s face was a blank metal plate. It was not capable of emoting. Nevertheless, the way in which it looked at Steve conveyed a sense of complete disinterest.
‘Okay. I don’t. Really care. I guess.’ They scanned over the rest of the visitors, equally disinterested. They were leaning over the counter, resting their head on an actuator. They seemed frozen in this pose. ‘If you. Are the. Alliance team. Your rooms. Will be. The third. Through to. The fifth. On the. Fourth floor.’ Still unmoving, they extended a second actuator, a thin, spindly thing with three keys on its end.
‘What if we aren’t?’ Sophie questioned.
‘I don’t. Care. You can. Have it. I guess.’
Robyn pretended to clear her throat. ‘Well. I can assure you, we are that team,’ she said, taking the keys. ‘Thank you.’
‘That’s really. Good for. You, then,’ the receptionist said, as they turned for the elevator at the other end of the lobby. They piled in together, elbows in sides and bags on toes and limbs generally entangled. Beth grinned evilly once more. The grin remained on their face even as they reached the fourth floor and they all spilled out of the elevator.
The fourth floor corridor’s aesthetic wasn’t any fancier than the lobby. The same overbright lights, a long cheap yellow carpet with frayed edges that depicted assorted Xvussian thornrippers snarling, twirling, and crawling over eachother. The walls were clearly the walls of a freighter, painted over with the sleepiest shade of beige. It smelled of dust and wet fabric.
They came to their doors and unlocked them all, one by one, to take stock.
The first thing that they noticed for the three rooms was that, in decor, they were all completely identical. A bed in one corner, a table in another, a sniffcom on that table plugged into an optional electromagnetic display. A faint musty smell, like an animal made purely of dust had wandered in and died. The floor was grey carpeted. The rooms all had a poster on one wall. They all had the same poster. It depicted more Xvussian thornrippers. They were devouring eachother, growling at the viewer, as if daring them to judge. In room six, which had been saved for Mickey, there was a cell refluxination pod instead of a bed.
A bed.
One bed.
‘Oh nooooo!’ Beth exclaimed. ‘We’ve got one bed only in our rooms? Nooo! No! How did that happen? No! No.’
‘Don’t worry everyone, I brought my sleeping bag!’ Sophie exclaimed proudly. ‘I never even needed a bed!’
‘Where’s everyone going to sleep now?!’ Beth continued.
‘I suppose I also don’t require a bed to sleep in,’ Robyn said, sighing. Her suit had a joint lock system that allowed her to sleep standing up, like a horse. It was humiliating, but she was growing more and more used to humiliation.
‘How could this have happened?’ Beth bemoaned. ‘Now some of us might need to share a bed?!’ They looked very carefully at Steve, who had been assigned to their room.
‘Say, Steve, do you want to share my cell refluxination pod? It’s a few sizes too big. It’s very relaxing. It’s like a massage, for your molecules.’
‘Uh,’ Beth said.
‘Ahhh I dunno, Mick. I hear it ain’t good for your pores. I gotta watch out for that kinda thing, yakknow?’
Mickey placed a grasper on Steve’s back. ‘Your pores, Steve, look incredible.’
‘I dunno, I dunno,’ Steve continued. He looked to Beth.
Beth froze over completely. If something touched them they would have shattered.
‘Whatddaya reckon, Beth? How are my pores right now?’
Beth sweated silently. Steve’s pores looked amazing. Steve had the best pores in the entire galaxy. His skin was silky smooth. He looked like he would heal wounds if you rubbed him on them.
‘Great,’ Beth choked.
‘You know what Mick, you’re right. I deserve cell refluxination.’
‘Of course you do!’ Mickey said, cheerfully. ‘I’m glad we could all work this out so easily in the face of this strangely arbitrary clerical error.’
‘Wait–’ said Beth, and the next they knew it they were squatting on the floor of a motel room with Robyn, who was naked.
‘I am not naked,’ She explained, folding her clothes and stacking them in an angular pile. ‘Might I remind you that this metal form is, in itself, already a suit?’
She turned around and faced Beth, upper arms folded, lower arms against her hips. Beth hissed and covered their eyes at the sight of their nude supervisor. It was all smooth metal glinting, black exposed rubber joints.
‘It just doesn’t look right,’ Beth wailed. They weren’t a prude. They’d seen nudity from all across the Arm. They thought that the naked form was completely natural, and that much of the discomfort about it came from conservative societal forces that were attempting to impose control over people’s bodily autonomy. But the idea of Robyn naked seemed like a warcrime to them.
‘If I was naked, you wouldn’t even be able to perceive me,’ Robyn continued. ‘My body has no electromagnetic presence. At most, you would detect a low vibration in the air and a lemony scent.’
‘Your species smells like lemons?’ Beth asked, eyes still closed.
‘No. My internal suit deodorant does.’
Robyn would not have chosen to share a room with Beth. But when Steve and Mickey moved into their shared room, it was clearly a choice between Beth and Sophie, the latter of whom she gave up on instantly when she walked into room five to see it covered in scrap metal and unfurled wires, a thin sheet of smoke coiling around the ceiling, Sophie in one corner welding something-or-other.
‘Hi Robyn! I hope you don’t mind if I do a little work tonight. I’ll be quiet, I swear.’
Robyn fled immediately. She could still slightly smell the smoke.
‘You did this deliberately to attempt to share a bed with Steppanus, didn’t you,’ Robyn said, now doing a series of complex stretches that made Beth recoil in horror.
‘Uhhhhh,’ Beth said.
‘That’s terrible. You know that? That’s morally repugnant.’
‘I didn’t plan it out very–uh. I wasn’t gonna do anything weir–uh.’ Beth scratched their head. ‘It is morally repugnant. Awww. Damn. I didn’t even think of that.’
‘That’s OK,’ Robyn said, now upside down. ‘Well, no. It isn’t. But, well. It never would have worked.’
Beth picked up a coin off the ground of some currency they hadn’t ever heard of, and ate it. They chewed it quietly. ‘I dunno. I didn’t think of it. I just sorta wanted to. Uh. Talk. On our own.’
Robyn folded her body into a pretzel-like form. ‘This is unusual for you. You don’t fiddle around like this with people. Like a teenager. I have always taken your straightforward communication skills to be one of your finer traits.’
Beth was briefly stunned. Being complimented by Robyn was shocking. It felt like a shoulder tackle.
‘He’s just… different. From anyone. Ever. I can’t just go at him like that or he’ll, like, melt away. He’s subtle! He’s just so cool. He’s so cool. He’s…’ They had an electrifying sensation like they were talking bullcrap that gave them pause.
Robyn was right. They were good with this stuff. Beth ran into people and then dated them. They had dated humanoids, octopoids, sentient gases. They had dated a living starship. They had had a week-long relationship with a potted plant which went smoothly until they mutually realised they couldn’t figure out how making out was supposed to work. They couldn’t, for the life of them, imagine doing any of that with Steve. He felt too precious for that.
‘Uh. You’ve known him for a while. Do you have any advice?’
‘Advice?’
‘You know–how do I get him. Get him.’ Beth mimed reeling in on a fishing rod.
Robyn was silent, as she reached the peak of her next stretch. Her head poked through a jumble of limbs. ‘Have you considered the possibility that maybe he isn’t quite as cool as he attempts to let on?’ she said casually.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Have you considered the possibility that maybe he isn’t quite as cool as he attempts to let on?’ Robyn repeated.
‘That’s impossible.’ Beth blinked. ‘I’m usually good at seeing that kind of thing.’
‘Well. You should take it into consideration. Don’t get me wrong–he’s wonderful. There is a reason I have worked with him for so long. He’s well-meaning and reliable. Usually. Well. He’s well-meaning.’
‘He is so well-meaning,’ Beth purred.
Robyn paused halfway through a delicate stretch to groan to herself, before continuing.
‘What I mean to say is that, if you fall in love with an image of him you have invented, you have not fallen in love with… him. You have fallen in love with your own imagination.’
Beth had once gone on a date with a woman from a species of sentient brainwaves who took physical form out of the consciousness of whoever they were being perceived by. They had, in fact, already literally fallen in love with their own imagination. They elected to not mention this to Robyn. ‘What’s your point?’
‘Quit dancing around him and talk to him. Ask him on a date if you so desire. Anything other than whatever mindset encouraged you to attempt to create a fake situation where you are forced to share a bed with him.’ All of Robyn’s limbs made a soft crack, and she sighed, and began to slowly uncurl from herself.
Beth closed their eyes and nodded. ‘That’s so much easier said than done, dude.’
‘Of course. But he does like you, you know. You two get along well, when you both forget about the tension you have invented between eachother.’
Beth, who was trying to be mature and quiet, couldn’t help but feel quietly elated at hearing that. ‘Hey. So. Can I have the bed, since you don’t need it?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Robyn said. She walked over the bed and, as if to establish her claim on it, splayed out on it. ‘Just because I don’t need it doesn’t mean I don’t want it.’
‘I guess I deserve that,’ Beth grumbled.
They witnessed the signing of the forms the next morning. The local outpost head manager, Frothoob-17th, made an entire affair of it. There were streamers in his office and a bunch of balloons in the shape of letters that spelled out: ‘ALLANCE’. He read the forms out loud and, between every paragraph, looked to the audience (composed of the three other official staff of the outpost, who were mostly bored miners on their breaks) for their cheers.
Sophie had forgotten to sleep, had spent almost the entire night tinkering. She was working on three hours of rest and had bags in her eyes and a constant, incredibly loud and distracting yawn.
Beth’s back hurt, partially from sleeping on the floor, and partially from when, at about two at night, they attempted to sneak into the bed next to Robyn, who, in an incredible instinctual response, suplexed them to the floor, straightened out the sheets, and slipped comfortably back under them, all while asleep.
Robyn’s joints ached for that exact same reason. She had no idea why–she had made sure to do her stretches and all.
There was a mirror at the end of the office the form was signed in, which Steve kept glancing at, while posing. He mumbled under his breath about his pores.
‘I feel amazing,’ Mickey said cheerfully. ‘One of the best refluxination pods I’ve ever been in. My cells feel brand new! We should do this more often!’
They all glared at him. In the background, the outpost staff cheered disinterestedly. Frothoob struggled with a party popper.
Meat Girls Dot Org 