Synth

The door slammed open, smacking against the stone wall with a sound that made TO’s ears hurt, and which made the two people sitting at the table nearby jolt with shock as one of them dropped the drinks he had in his hands.

“... Pholi?” TO’s eyes slid over the diminutive minister of language, who had jumped down from his chair to pick up broken pieces of glass while cursing in a language that TO couldn’t place. Noss, on the other hand, had frozen in place and was watching TO much like a small insect would watch a spider. “What are you doing here?”

Pholi gingerly placed the broken glass on the table, then sat up in his chair again. He reached out for a glass bottle of some dark-coloured drink that sat between the two on the table. He spoke something in the same language from before, and when Noss responded in kind, Pholi took a deep drink directly from the bottle before he answered TO. “I’m keeping Noss company.”

“If that’s ok!” Noss said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, which was currently filthy and stained. He wiped off the sweat from his face. “I mean, if it’s not, I can be on my own!” he gave his nervous laugh.

“It’s fine, Noss.” Pholi said as he took the bottle he had drank from and filled up Noss’ glass. He held the bottle up towards TO, “Want some?” he asked. “I mean, if you don’t mind drinking off me. I only brought the two glasses, you see.”

TO frowned, their ears flicking, “The door was locked.” They said, “Why were you in here with the door locked?”

“Mira locked it after me,” he said, “I figured that nobody would be very pleased if I left the door unlocked, so I figured I’d visit for a few hours and call someone when I was ready to leave.”

TO took a step forward, “You came in here alone?” they hissed, their mind reeling from the sheer carelessness of it, “You didn’t think maybe he’d hurt you, or-“

“I did mention Noss and I are friends, yes?” Pholi said. “I’m sure I did.”

“You did not.” TO hissed, “You said only that you worked with him.”

“Oh. Well. We’re friends too, of a sort.”

Noss, who had taken another long drink from the glass Pholi had filled, raised the glass in a mock toast, “Us rejects gotta stick together.” He grinned, then caught TO’s eye and morphed back to his normal, skittish self.

Pholi held the bottle out to TO again, shaking it gently. When TO shook their head, he took another drink and set it down. “A friendship of convenience, in a sense.” He said, then glancing at Noss, he added, “No offense.”

“N-none taken.”

TO looked between the two. They didn’t like this: Pholi had never mentioned that he was friends with Noss before, and how could he be friends with someone he was working against?

“You realize I can see the suspicion in your ears, yes?” Pholi said as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ve made a special study of how you communicate with them. The slight tension of the lower ear muscles, the dip down, is enough to show displeasure, but not enough to show something as intense as sorrow. As well, while your ears are pinned back slightly, it’s not enough to show your anger.” He looked to Noss, “There are exceptions, but I’ve realized that those are the three fundamental aspects of Chilacian or Synth ear movements that need to be observed to at least comprehend the feelings. Tension plus height plus angle equals basic feelings. Now, it’s much more complex if you’re trying to understand the mood used.” he took another drink, “The same words, let’s say, for example, ‘pour me a drink’ in their language can mean, ‘Pour me a drink!’ as a commend, or ‘would you pour me a drink’ or ‘You could pour me a drink-‘“

“You’re losing me.” Noss said.

“Well, I’ve made my point.” Pholi said. Then he paused, frowning, “Actually, no, I haven’t.” He looked back to TO, “My point was that I can mostly understand your ear movements, and I can see that you’re mostly suspicious of me. Well, you were suspicious of me. Now you’re mostly surprised and confused.”

While it hadn’t been TO’s intention to lie to Pholi, the knowledge that they now couldn’t put them on edge. “None of this makes sense to me.” They finally said, “I can understand working together, but why consider one another ‘friends’ if you’re not really friends?”

“It’s hard not having any friends.” Noss said, his voice quiet. “You go to work, you’re either alone with people who only tolerate you, or people who watch you every second waiting for you to slip up-“

“Or being around people who know they can’t say anything about your job, so they take little jabs at your background.” Pholi added. “Didn’t you have someone like that? Someone that you didn’t really like back when you were in training, but someone you kept around because it was better than just having nobody, or having only people who hated you around?”

“I did not, no.” They said, “DH and I found each other, and GiDi, and later Avery, and we all liked each other.” Even as they spoke, they remembered Q10. They hadn’t been a ‘friend’ to TO in any sense, but they recalled how they had stayed around Kei back in the day, how they had worked together and spent time around one another up until Q10 clawed DH’s eye. They remembered thinking that the two must have been friends, and how surprised they were when Kei did nothing to stop Q10’s breakdown.

Q10 had been different, just like they were. DH said so, and even TO could see that just before they got corrected. Would that be a ‘friendship of convenience?’

If TO hadn’t found DH and GiDi, would they have formed such a friendship with anyone who would tolerate them?

“... Did others suspect you were performing illegal activities?” TO finally asked, “Is that why you were ‘outcasts’?”

Pholi chuckled at that, “Oh my no.” He said, “We’re at the very least too clever to be caught. Clever, and lucky.” He nodded to Noss. “Noss here had his position land in his lap because his uncle had it before him.”

“I didn’t want it.” Noss said, “I wasn’t interested in security. I worked as his aid hoping I could break into the Ministry of Hospitality.”

“Yeah, then his uncle got sick, and before he died, he pulled whatever strings he could to get Noss his position.” Pholi looked to TO, “Minister of Security is an important position, one that a lot of people worked very hard to get. Even if Noss hadn’t gotten it based on nepotism, he would have angered a lot of people by getting it at all.” He took another drink. “Now, nepotism isn’t an uncommon way to get a job here; it’s almost necessary in government, but at the very least you’d make sure the person who got the job was good at it, and wanted it.”

“I wouldn’t say I was awful at it...” Noss muttered. “Who doesn’t mess up from time to time? Just with me, every time I made a tiny little mistake, it got reported to Buteo.”

“Yeah, Noss’ mistakes were one of the primary fuels of the government’s rumor machine.” Pholi said, “So, Noss got a reputation. It wasn’t bad enough to cost him his job, but enough for people to look down on him.”

“I’m also not ‘human’ enough.” Noss grumbled, “Or, not ‘Cordling’ enough. If you’re a mix, you either need to be mostly human with a few careful traits thrown in from the other species, preferably the pretty ones, or you need to look more animalistic, and not identify as human. I don’t fall into either category.”

“... And to be fair, you really didn’t put your best effort into the job when you first got it,” Pholi added. “I know you didn’t want it, but still-“

“That was over twenty years ago!” Noss said, “I was basically still a kid!”

“... Was it the same for you?” TO asked Pholi, “You got the job everyone wanted, or you weren’t very good at the beginning...” They trailed off as Noss chuckled. “What?”

“Minister of Communication isn’t a highly sought-after job, it’s considered boring.” Noss said.

“It also takes a lot more work than many of the other positions.” Pholi added. “It’s a lifetime of study, as language is an ever changing beast.”

“And Pholi was always good at his job.” Noss said, “they recommended him for a position in the Ministry of Communication right out of school, and got his position a year later when the former minister retired.”

Pholi nodded and took another drink. “My coworkers didn’t like me because I was a system kid.” He glanced up and caught the confused way TO’s ears flicked. “A system kid; it means I grew up in the government educational system after my parents went to the Indebted system when I was very young. Basically, the opposite of Noss; I got my position because of my skill, and without any relatives to push me into positions.”

“Shouldn’t that have made things better for you?” TO asked. their skill softened the disdain they had suffered for being different, and the way people treated DH had improved once the got the replacement eye; a sign of their usefulness to King Decon.

“Maybe if I had stayed as an assistant.” He said, “But I was a kid from the sewers of Arkane’s society, who got a top position. That spat in the face of the narrative they made up about system kids. See, most system kids either end up working very basic service jobs. Well, the ‘good ones’ do. The others end up in the indebted center, or get sent to a mining or farming colony because they’re lazy or addicts, and go to crime for easy money.” He held up the bottle. “You know. I couldn’t really drink at public parties because someone would bring up drug use among the indebted and the poors.”

“Remember that one party with Minister Sally?” Noss asked. A low growl came from Pholi’s throat in response.

“I do.” He snapped. “She went on about how there’s a genetic connection between laziness and drug abuse, and how the children of such ‘unfortunate people’ should know better, especially if they were raised in our ‘excellent government education system.’ before going on about how maybe it’s also willpower and self control that’s lacking in the lower classes.” As though in defiance, he took another drink before slamming the bottle back down. “That was the first time I dared have a drink in public, and the last.” He turned to TO, “If Decon wipes out life on this planet, then at least people like her will die along with the ‘poors’”

This wasn’t like Pholi, at least not as far as TO knew. Maybe the Pholi they had met before wasn’t actually ‘like Pholi’, and was instead just a public facing figure, a mask that he wore around everyone. Maybe this anger that TO saw was the real Pholi.

If that was the case, and if everything Pholi and Noss had said was true, then TO understood why the former Minister of Communication had worked with the insurgency.

“…Just be careful.” TO said, “We are leaving tomorrow, and if you're hungover-“

“What, you think i can’t control myself now either?” Pholi snapped.

“That’s… not at all what I mean,” TO said, their ears flicking down. “I just meant, if you’re unwell in the morning, it’ll be a lot harder getting to the ship.”

Pholi looked like he might snap at TO again, but his eyes flicked to TO’s ears once more and took in the concern and worry there. He sighed. “Fine.” He said. He pushed the bottle towards Noss. “Here. You finish this.”

“Let’s talk about something more pleasant.” Noss said, dabbing his face as he gave a nervous laugh. “What about the idea you had?”

“Idea?” TO’s ears perked up. “You mean, an idea to stop Decon?”

“No, just an idea to cause him trouble.” Pholi said, “I figured we could use the emergency broadcast system to tell everyone how awful things really are, to say he’s killing us all, and that the big bad synths are actually all big-eyed twitchy eared space bats-“

“Space bats?”

“-who had their minds torn up?” He sighed. “Wouldn’t work through. He’d just say that it’s more insurgent lies… and people would believe that.”

Noss suppressed his chuckle. “Well, maybe if we showed off one of the synths.” He said, “Show the people the enormous eyes and big ears.”

Even TO had to control a low, chirping chuckle as they activated their chip. “Chilacians. Not synths.” TO said, “Now, before you both have too much fun imagining how you can publicly insult King Decon, let’s go over the plan for tomorrow.”