Displacement Zero - A Character-Focused SciFi Novel

When Aurelie was eight and deemed to be of a sufficient writing proficiency, she was gifted with a bound wad of cellulose and an analogue stylus filled with ink. The cellulose was blank, and apparently would be her journal.

“What’s a journal,” she’d asked, staring at the objects. Unlike most of the other immature individuals at the Displacement Home, she was used to receiving everything new as she was their first Human. However, she was also used to knowing what she was receiving.

“You write in it about your feelings.” This matron was an old Aredbyne, with grey scales that cracked and sloughed off with every movement. The occupants of the Displacement Home, mature and immature alike, tried to maintain at least a one metre distance from her lest they be rained on. As she spoke, Aurelie watched a fine dust settle on her new possessions. “As though it is a well trusted friend. You can treat it like an excellent confidante, as there is no risk of it telling your secrets to anyone else.”

“Except anyone can read it.”

“Yes, so some Humans devise a code to write theirs in. I believe you own a book of Human codes, correct? Other Humans hide it where they believe it will not be found, such as under a mattress.”

Aurelie considered the fact that other Humans considered under the mattress to be a good hiding place, and her eight-year-old mind despaired of the race that she was born into. Still, a carefully thought out code could work. There was just one more issue.

“Why do Humans do this?”

“Humans are very emotional creatures, and they need ways to channel their emotions. In many Human populations, there are individuals whose sole job is to talk about feelings with other Humans who will pay them for their time. In Human family structures, offspring may talk to their progenitors or other kin within their nuclear or extended family. Have you learnt about Human nuclear and extended families?” Aurelie nodded.

“So if I was at home, I would talk to my mother, but since I don’t have my mother here I should write in this… journal instead. Right?”

“We don’t know anything about your mother, but that aside, exactly. You can even give it a name, if you’d like, to make it feel more personal.” The Aredbyne stuck around long enough to make sure Aurelie understood how to use the analogue stylus, and then left her to get ‘stuck in’.

Aurelie crawled onto her bed with the notebook and the analogue stylus and frowned down at the objects. The matron had left an example of an early Human’s journal, which the Human had seemed to treat not just as a friend, but as a friend she was sending communications to, titling each entry with Dear Kitty. Aurelie’s frown deepened: she didn’t know many Human names, and most of the ones she did know she didn’t much like, all of them belonging to characters on various Human media she’d consumed who all were horrible to each other for the most part.

She did know, however, that Humans also liked naming each other after types of food, types of rock and places, with names like Cherry, Jade and India all appearing in her media with dual meanings. Or perhaps the foods, rocks and places were named after people. Regardless, she cast her mind back to the last bit of media she’d consumed and set analogue stylus to cellulose.

Dear Bhutan,

Over the following years, Aurelie’s coding skills grew steadily better and her journal entries became ever richer and more in-depth. She never admitted to the matrons that she enjoyed journaling, similarly to how she hated admitting to enjoying anything that Humans typically liked; they seemed to know, however, from the way new notebooks and styluses appeared periodically amongst her possessions. After Bhutan came Farook, Burgundy, Christianity and Winter. Each seemed to develop its own personality, and she wrote in each one in a slightly different style: sat on her bed with them spread out around her, she felt as though she had a close group of friends, with whom she could speak about anything.

One day, several months after she’d turned 16 in Human years, she returned to the room she shared with several other near-mature individuals to find a cluster of displacees by her bed.

“The matrons say you treat these like friends,” said one with a nasty leer equivalent, holding up Winter. “Why are Humans so weird? Why waste your time scribbling in useless lumps of cellulose?”

“Because it decreases the amount of time I have to spend with jackasses like you,” she countered, darting forward to try and grab the notebook back. She was shoved roughly from one individual to another, three, four, five times before being thrown to the floor. Clenching her teeth, she grabbed the ankle equivalent of the individual nearest to her and yanked, hard. Xe tumbled down beside her, glared, and then directed a sharp kick to the ribs before climbing back to xir feet. The group, watching the exchange with interest, turned their attention to the various books before them.

“Is this even any Human language?” One asked the others. Aurelie pushed herself back to her feet, fuming.

“It’s in code, idiots. Your translation applications won’t be able to read it for you. Give up, it’s a lost cause.”

“Yeah, right. You really think a Human could come up with a code we couldn’t break? Matron may think you perform above expectations, but those are expectations for a Human- not hard to beat.” Xe smirked. “We’ll be back soon. I can’t wait to see all of Aurelie Jane’s deepest, darkest secrets.”

She made one more move to get them back, but stopped when xe raised a fist. Performing at an above expected level of athleticism for a pubescent Human female really, really wasn’t saying much.

“Get wrecked,” she spat. Xe smirked, and the group left.

Aurelie didn’t hear back from them- despite an initial niggling doubt, it would be nearly impossible to crack the code: it was constantly evolving, in a language that they’d never even been exposed to without translation headsets, and was probably one of the first times they’d interacted with any analogue media. She considered reporting it to matron, but didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of disciplinary action; it would also mean admitting that yes, she had been using, and enjoying the journals.

Notebooks and analogue styli continued to appear on her bed right until the end of her time at the Displacement Home, but they were immediately relegated into a drawer full of other odds and ends. She no longer had any desire to confide in it like she had- training, and improving her sparring skills became her new emotional outlets. The loss of the journals just illustrated that they hadn’t had any tangible benefit: yes, writing and developing the code had been entertaining, but she was no better off after them than she was before. Training for when she entered the Bureau of Space-Time Management was a much better use of her time.

#

She got back to the office and Alvedo and DesUas immediately flanked her. The last thing she wanted was to be around other sentient beings, especially her co-worker who was in trouble because of her. Alvedo was meant to be out of office, and it was clear from his exhausted expression that he’d stayed in and stayed awake to wait for her.

Which, honestly, just made her feel even worse.

“Where have you been? We’ve been so worried.”

“You didn’t come back to the office and then DesUas got the email notification and I was freaking out, I thought you’d been fired-”

“Have you not seen a medic or anything? You’re still filthy and bleeding-”

“Oh my god, Aurelie, is that from the twine? Those wounds are horrific, what were you thinking?”

“Human hands are one of the most sensitive parts of their bodies, you must be in a tremendous amount of pain-“

They were talking too quickly, firing off questions like she was in an interrogation, and all of a sudden the fear from earlier, and her exhaustion, and her tangle of emotions about everything that had transpired that day hit her like a ton of bricks. Without saying another word, she sat down in the middle of the office and dropped her head into her hands.

Probably getting more blood on her face in the process, but hey, at least it got her coworkers to shut up for a moment.

A brief, beautiful moment.

Then Alvedo was crouching in front of her, his strange, lidless eyes staring straight into hers and worry twisting every part of his expression. He put one hand on her shoulder, softly- an action that they both knew was meant to be reassuring to Humans, and Aurelie didn’t have it in her to shrug him off. There was a long pause.

“What do you need?” he asked, voice gentle. She blinked, startled. It had been years- ever?- since she’d been asked that question.

“I… I don’t know.”

“Do you trust me?” She nodded, and he helped her to her feet. “DesUas, hold the fort! Aurelie and I are off for some R and R.” The Aredbyne grinned and saluted, and Alvedo steered her out the office.

“Where are we going?”

“Well, first of all the medic and a shower, because those cuts on your hands are giving me anxiety and also you smell like mud and faecal matter.” Aurelie frowned and sniffed herself, then jerked her head back in horror. That sludge they had been trudging through suddenly took on a whole different meaning.

Alvedo took a power nap as the medic sanitised and bandaged Aurelie’s hands and ribs; they also applied a numbing cream to various other injuries that they assured her would help with the stinging and bruising. In the shower after, however, due to having to keep the wounds dry, she wasn’t able to do anything more than stand one side under the running water, arms pulled back. A crushing helplessness swept back over her, and she clenched her teeth, fighting off tears.

“Aurelie, are you okay?” Alvedo’s voice, accompanied by a knock at the door. “You’ve been in there a while, and I don’t know how long Humans usually take for grooming.”

“Yeah… yeah I’m fine. One second.” She used her hip to bump the faucet back to off, then stepped out and wrapped a towel around herself, wincing as she had to fold her hands to do so. Then she turned back to the fresh uniform that had been provided for her.

The underwear and bra she managed, just about, but the work slacks got stuck halfway up and eyeing the buttons on the shirt, Aurelie knew she was out of options.

Damn everything.

“Actually, Alvedo, I… could… could you he-… could you come in here for a second please?” The door opened, and Alvedo’s eyes widened for a moment when he saw her half-dressed state, before understanding dawned. Without her having to say anything else, he briskly pulled her trousers up and fixed the zip, button and belt, before redoing the incorrectly hooked bra (and if Aurelie pretended her face and neck weren’t crimson, perhaps he wouldn’t notice either) and helping the shirt over outstretched arms. Halfway through buttoning it up, Alvedo caught her eye and quirked his lips into a small smirk.

“You must be hating this.”

“Oh, so very much.”

“Asking for help and being vulnerable. It’s like your worst nightmare.” Aurelie pulled back to stare at him. “What?”

“What?” she echoed, staring him down. “No. I’m fine with that stuff.” He stared back, and damn it, she was never going to beat a being without eyelids.

“Aurelie ‘I train daily so that I can take care of myself’ Jane. Aurelie ‘I can survive off caffeinated beverage alone’ Jane. Aurelie ‘I don’t have or need hobbies’ Jane. Aurelie ‘I don’t have or need feelings’ Jane.”

“Shut up,” she muttered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh no, I think I understand you a lot better than you understand yourself. You don’t come in early and leave late every day because you love work, that’s bullshit. You spend most of your time at work procrastinating and lounging around. When you do produce anything, it’s mediocre at best. You come in because you’re lonely and you want to see us and talk to us- and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with wanting social interaction, Humans-“

“Don’t tell me what Humans are meant to do.”

“Humans are social creatures, as are all the other races in the office. Aurelie, there’s offices of beings that are physiologically similar to us but who will go months or years without social interaction, and then there’s us, the Humans and the Aredbynes and the Chitinous Farers, who all want to gab and gab the work day away. DesUas is part of three different book clubs. [Micky] has about a dozen photos of his brother on his desk. Even your manager calls hir parents every opportunity!”

Aurelie looked at her hands, at her feet, anywhere but at Alvedo. He wasn’t trying to, but god he was making her feel so. Damn. Stupid.

“You hate work. The only reason you stay at this job is because you like your chance of finding home and you like your co-workers. Honestly, I think you would stay even if there was no chance of finding home, because what else are you going to do? You haven’t moved out of the barracks because you want to move home as soon as you find it. You don’t have hobbies or interests outside of work and training because you’ve built your entire life, your entire personality, around getting home. You’ve let the potential for what could happen shape who you are now. And now you actually have the chance of getting home and you’re scared, because what if it’s all been for nothing?”

She looked up at this, and prayed with every fibre of her being that her voice wouldn’t wobble when she replied.

“That’s not true.”

“DesUas told me, when you were in with H13, about how she practically had to goad you into going back via Hominus G.”

“Yeah, well, look where that got us. Both of us formally reprimanded and on desk duty for the foreseeable future… she’s probably furious with me.” Alvedo peered at her, confusion clear. “What?”

“You saved her today. If not her life, then quite likely from being sent to god knows when in the SC. You had, what, eight minutes left in the window when you got back to the Space-Time Machine?” Aurelie shrugged. “You risked everything you’ve been working for, hell, you risked your own life to get her back. They are carnivores whose primary prey is mammals, you risked your own life to save her from the Eyiyiyere.”

“Oh hey, you can actually pronounce that word.”

“Damnit Aurelie, stop deflecting!” He grabbed her shoulders, staring at her as though he could unravel the very fibre of her being. Why she was the way she was. “You. Did. Good. Come on, I want to hear you say it.” She looked away, unable to continue meeting his gaze.

“This is ridiculous.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you say it.” She looked back at him, then away again, the blush starting to spread. Agonising seconds passed, and when she looked back he was still staring.

“Okay, fine! I…” Alvedo gestured for her to continue. “I… I did good.”

Her voice came out much smaller than she intended, and much more fragile. He smiled, and draped an arm around her shoulder, leading her to the door.

“Yeah, yeah you did. Now come on, let’s get our rest and relaxation on!”

“Alvedo,” she said, stopping suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“My shirt is still unbuttoned.”