New York Carnival

Memory Transcription Subject: Rosi, Yotul Housewife

Date [standardized human time]: November 20, 2136

The idea that Arxur hated their lives was certainly an interesting one. It was probably undignified and uncivilized of me to feel quite so gleefully smug about that, but it couldn't be helped. I had work to do in any event.

Sylvie and I were seating a third table when I noticed the humans at the first table staring at us, just like Sylvie had taught me. She seemed busy, so I went on ahead without her. Two humans and two Yotuls. I could take their orders easily.

"So, what can I get you?" I asked.

One of the Yotuls leaned forward conspiratorially. "Okay, she's out of earshot," he said. Sylvie was halfway across the room, and he was shying away from her anyway. Was I this terrified before? …wait, where did my fear go? Humans just seemed brutish and baffling, when I thought about them now. "How much blood do they really sneak into the sauces?"

The two humans at the table with him snickered. Me, I just blinked slowly. I'd voiced the same sentiments before, but it sounded insane from the outside looking in. "Humans generally prefer cooked meat to raw," I said. "I asked the chef about where we kept the blood in case someone ordered a glass of it to drink, and he said he hadn't even defrosted any yet. Besides, I think he just likes the challenge of making good food without resorting to the use of any animal products. Cheating at a puzzle makes it less fun."

The humans looked at me like I was crazy, but the Yotuls nodded along like this made perfect sense. "So if I order the sweet potato, I get…?"

"A roasted root vegetable dressed with a syrup made from tree sap and fragrant bark," I said, trying to summarize maple and cinnamon as best I could. "If you want blood or flesh, I'm pretty sure the chef will serve it to you, but you have to ask specifically. No tricks for guests." Bits and pieces of the night before flickered in my memory… "No tricks in the food, at least."

The other Yotuls nodded back, satisfied. That made sense to them. Why did it make sense to them? Just the slightest shift in context, and suddenly I felt like my own words from earlier were crazy talk. I shook the thoughts away for now. I was at work. I let the little voice in my head that espoused the virtues of the Federation fade away in favor of the voice that spoke highly of any business I worked for.

"I'll have the ribeye," said one of the humans. That was one of the ungulate slice platters.

"Buffalo chicken wrap," said the other, looking at the first like he'd committed a faux pas. I guess the batter-fried bird flesh bits in the spicy vinegar sauce was a bit more tasteful to eat in mixed company than a big obvious slab of meat. With the chicken, it was just a wrap with an ambiguous-looking filling, after all.

"Sweet potato," said the hesitant Yotul, ducking his head anxiously. Made sense, we'd just talked about that one. Cheapest thing on the menu if you were afraid you'd hate the food and didn't want to waste more money than you had to.

"Tropical curry wrap," said the other Yotul cheerfully. Nikolo's favorite. Good choice.

"Great!" I said, jotting that all down. "Anything else? Just water, or some drinks?"

"Can I get a beer?" said a human. Classic, borderline universal.

"Just a coke," said another. That was the common shorthand for that 'Kola' drink I'd had this morning.

"Can you do a King's Cup?" said the timid Yotul. Perfect choice for a cold day. It'd probably go great with his big warm sweet potato.

"Is it true you've got some wine from Garnet Orchards?" said the other Yotul.

I glanced over at Chiri, who was still mostly fussing with her fruits. "More or less?" I said, my ears perking up proudly. "We've got the last heir to the Garnet Orchards fortune tending bar. She's got an officially-approved facsimile of her family's wine ready, and she's also been working on a King's Cup recipe all morning." 'All morning' meant 'the past twenty minutes or so', but there was no reason to let the guests know that.

"Oh, then can I switch my order to the Gojid wine?" asked the human who'd ordered a beer. "I mean, ya gotta try the novel stuff."

"Of course!" I said. "Will that be all?"

Everyone nodded, and I scurried to the back to put it all into the system. I turned back around and… there was nothing to do for a few minutes while Chiri and The Kitchen took care of that. Sylvie stood next to me and stared out at the dining room, watching for guests who needed her help. "So what was that whole to-do with Chiri and David about?" she asked quietly. "I've never seen either of them get that heated with a guest before."

I took a deep breath and tried to summarize what sense I could make of it. "They met about a month ago, right after the bombing. There was an Arxur involved." I flicked an ear over at the woman eating her predatory noodles and her fruity cocktails with cactus juice spirits. "Her career got derailed, and then she was ordered to derail David's career, too? He tried to shoo her away or provoke her by saying some rude things about her culture and religion. And, umm…" I mulled over a word they'd used. "Colonialism? That one didn't completely translate, but…" I was in work mode, so I was focused on the tasks before me, but there were thoughts and memories at the edge of my mind, trying to make their way back in. My fur was bristling, and I felt a bit sick to my stomach. "I dunno. My people get called 'primitive' or 'uplifts' a lot. This sounded similar. What… happened to Charmaine's homeland?"

Sylvie went stone-faced. Without a word, she turned around and strode meaningfully into the kitchen. David was making something with vegetables, maybe those bread toppings he'd mentioned earlier, and he glanced up at us only briefly to register that we were there. "Everything alright?" he asked.

"David, what did you say to our guest?" Sylvie asked, quietly.

"Which guest?" David said, not even looking back up.

"You know which guest," said Sylvie.

David shrugged. "We were talking business, mostly. Why?"

"The first time you spoke to her," Sylvie pressed.

David was crushing some spices together into a paste. "Oh, we barely spoke, then. I was more focused on the Arxur, frankly."

"Will you quit playing dumb, David, or do I need to pack my things?" said Sylvie, threateningly.

David flinched at that. He split a large purple-skinned squash of some sort down the middle, placed it in the oven, and then gave Sylvie his full attention. "Fine. I drew some political similarities between the lack of civilian oversight during our current military conflict and the fall of the Kingdom of Hawaii. I also asked if she was still following the same religion that the Spanish missionaries had assigned her."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

There was a long pause while Sylvie processed this. "Would you have said those things to Joseph?" I didn't know who Joseph was. A mutual acquaintance of the two humans. Maybe somebody in the chain of mentors?

David was taken aback in confusion. "Of course not. Have you met Joe? Guy's a hardcore neopagan anticolonialist type. Most of those were his ideas to begin with."

Sylvie paused to consider this. "Would you have said those things to Charmaine if Joseph had been in the room?"

"Oh fuck no!" said David, recoiling. "Are you kidding me? Joe woulda beat my ass for that. Not my culture, not my place." He shook his head. "Wouldn't have said it to Charmaine in the first place under any other conceivable circumstances…"

Sylvie took a deep breath, like she was talking to a slow, difficult child. "Do you suppose, then, that maybe an apology is in order?"

David's expression darkened. "No. She wanted me to throw my life's work away, and she wouldn't take no for an answer. She harassed me for like a week straight, broke into my house, and terrified my dog. Nothing was off the table for her to coerce me into compliance. Literally the only reason she didn't threaten to have Chiri deported was because she never figured out that it would have fucking worked!" David grimaced. "So yeah, out of desperation, I said some extremely mean-spirited shit to her, hoping that maybe if I had video evidence and a witness of her taking a swing at me, I might be able to get my lawyer to make her leave me alone. Or maybe just annoy her so badly she never wanted to come back."

"Why didn't you just call the police?" Sylvie said, confused.

"I fucking did!" David whisper-shouted. "She's CIA! She just told them to piss off. Do you know how terrifying it is, having an intruder in your home, and realizing the cops won't do shit to protect you?"

"Yes," said Sylvie, bluntly.

David stumbled at that. "Right," he said, awkwardly rubbing his eyes with his wrists. He took a deep breath. "Right. Look, I'm… genuinely sorry about what happened to Charmaine's career. It sucks having her whole life's work come crashing down like that. But then she came after me. Okay? Like, I don't think you're fully grasping what the power dynamic was. She had my ass dead to rights if she wanted. I was lashing out and grasping at straws."

Sylvie shook her head. "That's still… there are lines you don't cross when talking to people."

"I wouldn't, in general!" David protested.

"Okay," said Sylvie. "But if I waved a knife at you, suddenly slurs are back on the table?"

"There were no slurs involved!" David whisper-shouted.

"Hey boss," said Eddie, dryly, from off to the side. He was still cooking and half-paying attention to the conversation. "Can I get Saturday off? I'm under my monthly quota smuggling cocaine for the Sinaloa cartel, which, like all Mexicans, I am of course a proud member of."

David screamed into his hands in frustration.

I didn't think I was adding much to the conversation. I knew fully nothing about human cultural history. I left the two humans to their work making the third one squirm, largely oblivious to context. Chiri was done making a fresh batch of drinks, so I slipped back out into the dining room to handle that. And maybe check in on…

My eyes narrowed as I saw the drink platter. There were five? The four I'd put in for the mixed table by the window… and a paloma for Charmaine.

I looked at Chiri, confused. She shrugged. "It's another fruity-fizzy tequila cocktail," she said. "Grapefruit-flavored, so sweet, tart, and citrussy."

"Third already, though?" I asked, incredulously.

Chiri shrugged again. "I don't really have a good reason to cut her off."

I shook my head. Something just felt off, and I couldn't quite pinpoint why. I brought the four drinks out first--everyone at the window table seemed particularly excited about the interplanetary-styled drinks--and then set the intelligence operative's fizzy drink next to her. Wide range of vision like mine, I could see Sylvie and David still whisper-shouting at each other in the kitchen while Eddie occasionally egged them on for his own amusement. At the table, though, Charmaine downed nearly half the drink all at once. My eyes widened. "Hey," I said softly. "I don't mean to pry, but like… are you doing alright?"

Charmaine slumped over on the table. "I don't know what I'm fucking doing!" she groaned. She had one hand on her drink in a death grip, and the other idly trying to mop up the last drops of noodle sauce with a fingertip. "This isn't what I signed up for! You know what I mean?"

I tilted my head in confusion. "Tell me more?"

The human woman sighed. "I joined the Marine Corps because it was good work. Got to feel like I was protecting people, too, you know? And then first contact happens! And everyone I know, we're all signing up for the Peacekeepers to go fight the Arxur, and save the Federation! But then the Federation attacks us, and the Arxur save us?! And now we're gearing up to fight the Federation! And I'm not even helping with that! I'm just… I'm just stuck here, hassling people." She grabbed her glass and held it up to her lips. "I just wanted to fight some fucking bad guys," she muttered into her drink. "Now it's like I don't even know who the bad guys are. And I don't know what I'm fucking doing here."

I was pretty sure the Arxur were still the bad guys--surely whatever miseries they'd inflicted on themselves barely scratched the surface of those they'd inflicted on the rest of us!--but I didn't think that was what Charmaine wanted to hear right now. But I had no idea what she needed to hear. I'd just barely begun to wrap my head around how humans thought! I glanced back at the kitchen, pleadingly, hoping one of the humans would catch my eye and notice I was out of my depth on this.

"Look, it's not even that controversial of a take!" David shouted as quietly as he could. But my hearing was better than his. "Malcom X famously wrote about how black liberation would never be complete until they'd rejected the faith of the plantation owners!"

"And Reverend King," Sylvie said slowly, with the patience only a grandmother could muster, "was a Reverend. Setting aside for a moment that you are, for some inconceivable reason, attempting to explain black liberation to a black woman, church is and has always been an important centerpoint of community for us. And I'm taken to understand that that's true for other marginalized groups in this country as well."

Eddie nodded. "Hrm. Now that you mention it, I do tend to see a lot more pictures of the Virgin Mary than of Quetzalcoatl when I visit my folks," he said. He was feigning serious contemplation, but he could barely hold in his laughter. "I wonder what's up with that?"

David wasn't laughing. He froze up, still focused on Sylvie, overcome by a rare moment of self-reflection. A shift in context, and your own words started sounding crazy… "What am I fucking doing," he muttered half to himself.

I had no idea what David was doing, but what he wasn't doing was helping!

I turned back to Charmaine, who was still drowning her sorrows. I still had no idea what the human process was for comforting people when they were upset, so the best I had to work with was the Federation way. With some fear and trepidation--I tried not to think of how, as a military veteran, Charmaine was the human in the room most likely to have actually killed someone before--I patted her on the back consolingly.

Charmaine escalated my consolation pats into a full-blown hug, which made sense to me. She probably needed it. Nevertheless.

Human.

Predator.

Possible blood on her hands.

I tried not to panic, but with my arms pinned by Charmaine's, I started signalling distress to Chiri in tail language.