I'm woken up by warm air ticking my ear, by shivers travelling down my arms; little sparks of desire dancing their way across my skin. "Ni, wake up," says a voice, low and familiar and pleasing. I want to sink into it, into the warm bed. I want to get closer to my girlfriend, more intimate, to crawl inside her arms and skin and press so deeply into her that we fuse into one being. "No thanks," I mutter in response to her request. She chuckles, the deep morning tenor of her voice running down my spine to the tips of my toes.
I feel her adjust in my arms, and I loosen my grip slightly; not enough for her to leave the bed, but enough for her to change her position. I feel her lips brush mine, and I taste sweet joy before she breaks away. "You told me to wake you up," she tells me, and I can't for the life of me remember why I'd do that. "S'not important," I mumble, pressing my face into her chest. "How are you supposed to buy me a birthday present?" she asks, a humorous lilt to her voice. I feel dominoes in my mind tumbling, slowly spelling out realization. "Oh yeah. Yayyy, work," I say, rubbing my eyes open.
Like a 2 stroke engine cold starting, I feel my body kick into gear. My eyes half open, I lift my form into a seated position to prevent myself from drifting back off into dreamland. I fumble around for the headset on the shelf above my head, and eventually have to crack an eyelid to find the damn thing. I peek inside it to check the time, and feel confusion. "Love, I don't work for a couple hours," I tell her, placing the headset back on the shelf. "Oh, I'm aware," she says with a smirk. "I just wanted to make sure we had enough time to take a shower before you ran off."
She's stood in the room, wearing nothing but confidence, and I feel a touch of heat as I look at her; at her physique (no longer quite as underfed as when we first met), her unblemished skin, her brown hair only tipped with purple, her freckles that stretch from face to neck to chest. She stands next to the door of the bathroom poised, graceful even in stillness, and my eyes wander everywhere they aren't supposed to in public. "Are we actually taking a shower?" I ask, letting the blankets roll off me. I feel a flush of pride and excitement when I see her gaze trace me in the same way. "Eventually," she tells me. I feign casualness, but I know my eyes betray my desire. "Good enough for me."
One very lengthy shower later, I'm standing in what could be considered the kitchen, making a quick breakfast before I run off to work. A few weeks after I had started advanced training, I had applied to get a job at the place Caz-V had mentioned. The turn around was incredibly quick, and I ended up starting basically the next day. "Although, to be fair it wasn't like, 'fast turn around because shit job' sort of a deal. It's because it's the relay, and anyone who actually lives here is competent. Also also 'cause it's mostly just us tenno, and they can't afford to be choosy. I can't imagine it's cost effective for Inlustris to fly people up to relays just to do basically minimum wage work," I think, operating the recombinator. "Anyways, a couple weeks of this and I don't want to blow my fuckin' brains out so at least I've got that going for me. I think it helps that I don't need need to be working here. But 30 hours is a lot of day to fill."
The job was exactly what Caz-V had originally described; scanning goods for contraband. I ended up picking the 2 hour shift before class, despite my frustrations at getting up in the morning, mainly for two reasons: I had no time after my regular classes due to advanced training, and because the shifts after classes tended to be the ones that had the least availability (as other Tenno would also try to fill those time slots). If I were willing to wake up earlier every day, then I would been able to work a longer shift, but not a single thing about that appealed to me. "I was lookin' for a job, and then I found a joooob. And heaven knows... I'm miserable now," I quietly sing in English, waiting for the future kitchen equipment to finish. "Origin," says Ko-lee from the kitchen table, operating her headset via small, jerky hand motions. I repeat the lyrics for her, and she gives me a confused look.
"What does that mean?" she asks, after I finish translating. "Which part?" I ask, unsure of her question. "The whole thing," she replies. "Uhm. Like, working sucks. But it's also required, ya know? Gotta make rent to pay bills, it's a necessary evil for society to function, et cetera et cetera," I explain. "And not having a job means homelessness, starvation, that sort of thing." I can tell that she only sort of gets it. "You know," I say, in an attempt to divert from The Capitalism Rant? I can feel scratching at the corners of my mind, "I could always just teach you English." Her hands come to a stop, and I can see a mix of emotions cross her face; excitement, intent focus, and maybe something like apprehension. "I wouldn't say no," she tells me cautiously. I smile, popping a nutrient cube into my mouth the moment it's available. "This will be great," I tell her with a bubble of glee. "We'll do a little each morning. It'll be nice to hold a conversation in Eng..." I trail off, as an uncomfortable awareness comes to mind.
"What's wrong?" asks Ko-lee, immediately cognizant of the downturn in my mood. "Nothing, I guess. I just... my thoughts have been a bit of a mishmash of Origin and English, recently. It's... I don't know. I've always known, like on a conceptual level, that it's gonna take a while for me to make my way back home. And that's... It's like I'm losing a piece of home... sort of. Like, I don't have my security jacket, or my phone, and now I'm losing bits of my language as well. Not a lot, not in big chunks, but just... bit by bit," I explain. I take a deep breath, and force myself to smile. "It's not a big deal though. I'll teach you, and then we can have conversations. I mean, shit, I could teach the whole squad. We'd have like, our own squad language that no one else could understand, for secret ops and stuff."
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The smile feels fragile, but the pieces hold together, and I'm endlessly grateful for how gentle Ko-lee is with me. "Sure, Ni," she tells me. "That sounds like a great idea." I reach for another nutrient cube but find the recombinator empty. "Well. We'll have to start either later today, or tomorrow," I tell her, as I step away from the kitchen counter. I shoot her a two finger heart, and she responds with what looks like the sign language for the letter N, which she had had to explain to me was "hugs and kisses". I step past her, letting my hand trail along her shoulder, then through the door and out into the hallway, before heading off to work.
15 minutes later, I arrive at a small, stuffy room, with way too many boxes, and a huge machine meant to scan them. I see Maks sitting in a chair, his back to the door, and a hardwire connection trailing from his wrist into the huge machine. His head is panning ever so slightly back and forth, likely viewing the readout from the machine on whatever current package he's checking. "Hey Maks," I say, reaching for a box close to the rollers. I lift it off the ground, and it's only then that he seems to notice my presence. "Don't! No no no! Don't! I had... aw shit, I had them laid out in an order, a specific order!" he snaps at me. I freeze, the box in my hands midway between the floor and the machine. "Okay," I say carefully, making sure to prevent the retort on the tip of my tongue from slipping out.
"You know you're off, right?" He frowns at me. "Just don't... don't mess up the order," he grumbles, disconnecting himself from the scanner and standing up from the chair. "Sure, man. I'll do my best," I tell the guy. "''til tomorrow," I say as he leaves the room, muttering to himself. The second the door slides shut, I roll my eyes, before pulling out a thin but high tensile cord to connect myself to the futuristic X-ray machine. "Jackin' in," I say in an 80s hacker voice. Something about the quality of the sound, or maybe the texture of the words tickles me, and I continue to play with the phrase, muttering nonsense as I check each package's contents against a registry and verify that there's no contraband. "Jackin' off. Jack and Jill. Railjack. Keanu Reaves in... Jac-"
"What are you doing," I hear from behind me. The voice startles me enough that the box in my hands starts to slip, and it takes a second of fumbling before I reassert my grip on it. "Oh, uhm..." I fail to respond, as I feel my face turn red. "I didn't hear you come in. I was just saying dumb stuff," I explain sheepishly to Nessa, the only other employee who worked my shift. She's taking packages off a cart she's pushed in, and replacing them with the ones that have already been processed. "Clearly," she responds with an unbothered tone. I watch her move packages out of the corner of my eye, and as she reaches for one of the "ordered" packages Maks was talking about, I say in a deadpan voice, "oh, Maks doesn't want you to move his boxes."
She looks at me, and I look at her, and there's a moment of silence before she snickers. I grin, and we both turn back to our tasks in relative silence. I read the screen, I compare and contrast, compare and contrast, and it takes me a hot moment to realize that Nessa is trying to get my attention. "Sorry, what's up?" I tell her, turning away from the virtual screen and back around to face her. She gives a small huff, but repeats herself. "J'ad wants to know if you have a timeline for when you're going on your first op. He wants you to give him a heads up a few weeks in advance," she tells me. "Yeah," I tell her with a nod. "Sure, no problem. We've still got like... four weeks, I think? You think I can just shoot him a message?"
She gives an assenting shrug. "That's what I usually do," she says. It's a few more minutes before she finishes with the last package, and this time I notice her turn to me. "I'll get out of your hair, Antimony," she says with small wave. "See you tomorrow." I give her a lazy salute, and she begins pushing the cart back into the adjacent room. I wait until she's gone before I fully turn back to my work. "God, I miss Spotify," I think, scanning packages in the quiet hum of what I assume are gravity engines, or some other mechanical operation keeping the relay functioning. "What I wouldn't give for just like... 50 songs from my liked. And I still haven't found a way to tune into Nora Night. Literally actually pirate radio. She's probably got some tunes. Ugh. One of these days I'll sit down and poke at the headset, see if I can't get in it's code guts." I scan a package, then stand up to move it from the right side of the machine into the "already scanned section", before sitting, and letting the next one roll into view.
"Also also... I've heard people humming and stuff, and some light ambiance music in like, Vista, but I really wanna sit down at some point and get a feel for literally all the music. It's the future, what kinda future stuff do we got? Mambo Garage Ice? Neohyper Pop? Terran Martian Fusion? Uh... Jazz?" I stand and grab a package, move it, and sit back down. "Also... only a few more weeks until our first op. Which... confession time but I'm a lil' scared about it. 'cause, it's one thing to talk about being a soldier, or to know conceptually how war can fuck up a person for life, et cetera, but... this is the path I'm on now. Just wiggy to think about."
Stand, move, sit.
"I wonder what they'll have us do. Probably something simple. I hope something simple."
Stand, move, sit.
"The surgery is coming up soon too. That's like... five weeks out. Barely a month. A space month. And training has been... well. Fine, I guess. I just hate this 'calm before the storm' type shit. The waiting is driving me crazy."
Stand, move, sit.
"Maybe I should make flash cards for Ko-lee. Or do I know enough of Green, Eggs and Ham to recreate it by heart? Song lyrics could be fun as well. God knows I have a morbillion of those seared into my mind."
My focus is broken by a gentle beeping sound. An alarm from my headset telling me to head to class is gently flashing in the corner of my eye. My shift replacement hasn't shown up yet, but Inlustris is very aware of Tenno scheduling, and so I'm not required to wait. I stretch as I stand, then leave the quiet room and all my work behind, headed to my first class of the day, thinking about everything and nothing at all.
