Displacement Zero - A Character-Focused SciFi Novel

“You’re wound tighter than the watch spring of a micromanager.”

Aurelie sheepishly dropped the analogue stylus she had been drumming a frantic rhythm with. The fingers on her other hand also stilled. Her body had, for the most part, adjusted to her exorbitant caffeine intake; days that she felt anxious, however, seemed to dip her tolerance.

“I suppose so,” she conceded, rearranging herself to look up at her Aredbyne coworker. Alvedo was home or in one of the nap pods, halfway through his two-hour sleep cycle, so it was just her and DesUas in the room. A mischievous grin broke across her face. “I know one way we could burn some energy.”

“Aurelie, we have discussed this, you are not allowed to seduce me in the office.” DesUas managed to keep her face neutral for just a split second, before both of them laughed. “But yes, I was going to suggest we do some sparring while it’s quiet- hey!” The Aredbyne jumped back as Aurelie kicked out at her ankles. “In the gym… Alvedo will kill us if we break another desk.”

“But it would be so funny,” Aurelie shot back, climbing to her feet. “Fine, we’ll do it your way- speaking of your ‘way’, how much do you weigh at the moment?”

DesUas smirked.

“Think fast, twinkle toes.”

***

DesUas weighed enough, was the answer. The Aredbyne was an excellent sparring partner, in part because sparring with her was like having multiple partners to spar with. Right after a feeding period she was heavy and slow, and could hit hard enough to stop a transport vehicle. As the weight dropped, so did her defences and the force behind her swings; instead, her movements would speed up until she was barely more than a blur in Aurelie’s peripheral vision.

“Nice try, but-“ Whomp. Aurelie reeled as a tail slapped her flat against the back, forcing the air out her lungs at high speed. She staggered forward, but caught her footing at the last minute, dodging just in time to avoid a blow which would have sent her flying.

Sparring with DesUas hurt, often a lot, but that was part of the fun of it. Another part was the clearly defined rules of engagement: Aurelie knew she had a competitive side, but most of the time she tamped it down. Somehow friendly competition always seemed to end with someone upset or furious, and with her in the wrong. Here, though, DesUas knew what she was about; there would be no accusations, and there was no chance of Aurelie accidentally hurting her coworker.

“Come. Back. Here,” DesUas huffed out each word as she chased Aurelie to the other end of the gym, her elasticated sparring clothes stretched to their limits. Aurelie scrabbled up a rope, pushing off the wall to swing a kick right into her coworker’s chest.

That was the intention at least. She bounced off DesUas like a rubber ball off a court, releasing the rope at the last minute as the Aredbyne’s claws grasped after her. She began to run again as soon as she hit the ground, laughing as she gasped for breath-

-and then suddenly the world toppled sideways and she found herself staring at the plastiglomerate tile of the gymnasium roof. A moment later, DesUas appeared in her field of view, any humour replaced with concern.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Aurelie protested, sitting up. Immediately the world began to tip again, and she fought to regain her balance. DesUas dropping beside her with enough force to shake the ground didn’t help that.

“Aurelie, you’re not fine.” The concern was still there, but now it was overshadowed by- annoyance? Frustration? Aurelie blinked the stars out of her eyes, trying to focus. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“I’m fine,” Aurelie repeated. “What am I doing?”

“You barely ate yesterday. You drank maybe a third of the nutrition shake I brought you this morning- Alvedo and I have been dancing around it, but we can see you’ve lost weight again. You can’t keep pretending you don’t need to eat.”

Oh. That.

Aurelie drew her knees to her chin, the last of the dizziness giving way to shame. She hadn’t realised that they were worried. From her standpoint, she had simply returned to baseline. After the last time she got written up for her weight, she really had tried- she’d managed to gain close to 10kg. The problem was-

“It’s too much effort.” She was surprised at how small her voice sounded. DesUas gulped, as though swallowing down a retort, then sighed.

“I don’t... please, help me understand. How is eating too much effort?”

“I- Food doesn’t taste right. It never tastes right.” Aurelie’s fingers were back to their earlier drumbeat, tapping out a furious rhythm as she searched for the words. “Even if you find something that tastes bearable the first time around, the next time it tastes different. And if it’s not the taste, it’s the texture. The texture is never what I expect it to be. It’s like- all I had in the displacement home was spaghetti and nutrition shakes. And then people keep putting plates of gravel or woodchips in front of me and telling me they’re edible. Maybe they’re right- but would you want to eat a plate of gravel?”

“There’s a good chance I have already,” DesUas joked, and Aurelie smiled in spite of herself. “But I understand what you’re saying. However, none of that changes the fact that you need to eat. Even if it’s just nutrition shakes- you need calories, Aurelie. I’m not going through your fall again.”

Aurelie’s previous push to gain weight came after she’d fainted in the office, cracking her head on the corner of her desk. There was still a smudge of rust embedded in the particle board. The stitches, and being confined to desk duty until she got her fat up, had been pretty good motivators.

And once the shock was passed, it had almost been worth it to learn that DesUas puked at the sight mammalian blood.

“Fine,” Aurelie rolled her eyes, then smiled at her coworker. “I will do my best to have at least one nutrition shake a day.”

“Two,” her coworker shot back. The Human grimaced. “We all have to do things we don’t want for our health- I would eat every day if I could, but I’d be dead of a heart attack within a month if I did.”

“One and a snack. And!” Aurelie held up a finger as DesUas opened her mouth to interrupt. “And I will aim to make it one and two snacks by the end of next month.”

“By the start of next month and you’ve got a deal.”

They shook on it and made their way back to the office. When Aurelie listed slightly, DesUas offered her arm for stability. When DesUas offered to buy her a sweet protein log from the snack dispenser in the corridor, Aurelie only pulled a small face before accepting. She wasn’t happy about this; but she was even less happy that she was worrying her coworkers, so she resisted the urge to gag at the sticky, chewy texture and forced down the whole thing...

Over the course of twenty minutes.

***

Cora was in their office.

Cora was in their office and the good news was that Aurelie wasn’t having any trouble avoiding her coworkers’ gazes, which is what she had decided to do as soon as she saw the navy heels cross the threshold.

The bad news was that Aurelie was easily achieving this because her gaze was rooted to the back of Cora’s legs, and she didn’t think she could look away if she was paid to.

Cora was Aurelie’s opposite in almost every way: she was short and plump and pale, with straight chin length hair and dark, nearly black eyes, as well as an unusual Human feature that a quick database search described as a ‘monolid’.

Cora was cheerful and friendly and wore make up.

Cora had once told Aurelie ‘It’s like you don’t even know how to be Human,’ voice tipping ice water down Aurelie’s spine.

Cora was leaning over DesUas’ desk, talking to the Aredbyne, and Aurelie was transfixed.

The legs started where the blue suede high heels ended and rose like sine waves, widening at the calves then perfectly curving back to narrow knees, before widening once again as her thighs disappeared up into a skirt.

Aurelie had received warning notices for being too thin, while Cora had received warning notices about weighing too much. She knew this because Cora had laughingly pinned the notices above the snack food jar that lived on the shorter woman’s desk.

Aurelie wondered if the whole of Cora’s legs were hairless, or if it was just the back of them. She wished Cora would turn around. She prayed she wouldn’t.

“Thanks for clearing that up,” Cora told DesUas, and headed back out their tiny office. As soon as the door closed, both DesUas and Alvedo erupted into laughter.

Aurelie felt as though she was on fire, her face flushed so hot.

“Whatever you’re thinking of saying, I don’t want to hear it.”

“I was just going to ask if you were hungry,” said Alvedo, failing to force his features into an innocent expression. “Because you were staring at that girl as though you wanted to eat her.”

“Seriously, Aurelie, if you’re going to gawk, at least gawk with your mouth shut,” added DesUas.

“I wasn’t gawking!” At their expressions, her face somehow, impossibly, burnt even hotter. “I wasn’t! I don’t know where you’ve gotten these ideas from, but they’ve been wrong since the start.”

“They’re written on your face as plain as day,” sniggered DesUas, “If I turned on the body language aspect of the communication headset it would be able to read it out to me.”

Alvedo grinned, and clicked his on.

The Human is feeling humiliation and anger came the mechanised voice. Aurelie wondered if there was a blushing threshold, after which your blood vessels burst and you died. If so, she hoped she would reach it soon. She flipped up two middle fingers, one in each direction. The Human is gesturing for you to leave explained Alvedo’s headset, and even through her embarrassment she had to snort at that. The Aredbyne is happy and amused.

“Oh yes, I really am,” DesUas grinned. Aurelie buried her face behind the screen, hoping that if she looked busy enough with work her coworkers would back off.

No such luck.

“Aurelie, correct me if I’m wrong, but since both you and Cora are Human females, you’re unable to successfully mate to produce offspring, correct?”

Sentient being, just kill her now.

“Alvedo, where are you going with this?”

“Well, since Humans evolved rather than coming about through design like many other races” (once a race mastered genetic engineering and recreating natural intelligence, the individuals tended to create a large number of sibling races for themselves) “you should be attracted to mating with other Humans with whom you can successfully reproduce.”

“Humans are pleasure maters, remember,” said DesUas, as though her contribution to the conversation were helpful, rather than merely prolonging Aurelie’s agony.

“Yes, of course, but they also tend towards monogamy, do they not?”

“Socially, yes," conced the Aredbyne, "but evolutionarily I don’t think so. Also it’s often only a temporary monogamy, perhaps a few decades long.”

“A few decades can be a Human female’s entire fertile window.” Alvedo pointed out, swivelling back to face Aurelie.

“Aurelie, what would be the evolutionary advantage to you coupling with Cora?”

“I’ve told you, we’re not-“

“Humour me. Pretend you’ve grown a pair of gonads and confessed your feelings for her and now the two of you are dating. What’s the advantage of seeing each other over a male that could impregnate you?” Aurelie gestured helplessly, then took a deep breath and tried to detach herself (and her embarrassment) from the situation. Treat it like a study module.

“Human offspring mature slowly. It is an… advantage to parent with someone with whom you get along, to reduce the risk of splitting up and leaving one parent to raise the offspring alone, reducing its chance of success.”

“But how will there be offspring to raise if the two individuals cannot reproduce themselves?”

“It’s also advantageous to the community, because they can adopt orphaned offspring. Or temporarily mate with the other sex in order to produce offspring. Science plays a big part too, you get gamete donors and artificial wombs and all that.”

“So if you were to date Cora and the two of you wanted offspring, you would temporarily mate with male Humans in order to achieve the desired progeny? Or accept a stranger’s gametes?” Aurelie groaned and buried her face in her hands.

“Remind me why I don’t report you to HR?” She asked.

HR stood for ‘Human Resources’, and was the Human-focussed subunit of the broader Staff-Resources department. Sub-unit could be argued to be a generous term, as it consisted of a single gap-toothed Aredbyne who rebutted any disagreement with an exclaimed “That! Is not what my Encyclopaedia Humanica says!” Aurelie had received three petitions over the past two years calling for an actual Human to fill the role; as she would have preferred the entire department to simply disappear, she did not sign them.

“Because I don’t report you to HR when you threaten me with violence over caffeinated beverage,” Alvedo shot back.

Fair point.

“Okay, well are we done discussing anthropology or is there any part of my social life you haven’t forced me to lay bare?” She forced herself to meet his eye and he smiled.

“Anthropolgy. Interesting play on allodaponology. And yes, I have one more question, if that’s okay.”

“None of this is okay, but fine, what is it?”

“Since you are not in a relationship, how often, if at all, do you mate?”

DesUas shot caffeinated beverage out her nose while Aurelie collapsed back into her chair.

“I hate working with both of you.”