Memory Transcription Subject: Chiri Garnet, Gojid Bartender

Date [standardized human time]: November 20, 2136

My hackles raised immediately as I spotted Charmaine across the room. Second table of the day, and that angry intelligence agent lady was back again. Was she back for me this time? She'd had no idea who I was when last we spoke, but surely she'd been briefed since. If she was still trying to hassle David, then threatening to deport me was a solid angle.

Jump the bar, like in the movies, and fight her! suggested Luna.

I literally do not have the mobility for that. I could walk around the chest-high wall and then fight her?

Don't start a fight, said Shadow. Exercise caution, at least initially. Find out why she's here.

Luna seemed to come around to this. Yes. Gather information first. You can always fight her later.

Why are we fighting her at all? Shadow groaned. We didn't even like it when David argued with her!

Luna nodded in agreement. Excellent plan. Fight her before she can start an argument with David.

I'm going to bring her her drink and act slightly passive-aggressive.

Woo! said Luna. That's what I'm talking about! Beat her ass down cosmopolitan-style!

Rosi came up to me looking confused. "Some lady came in here acting like she knows the chef? She wants a Tequila Sunrise and a, uhhh… pancit palabok, if I'm pronouncing that correctly?"

"She's a VIP," I explained in a low voice. I barely needed to look as my paws made the simple drink on their own. Tequila, orange juice, grenadine. The drink didn't even really need the grenadine, in my opinion. It was just for color, to paint a picture. "Count to a hundred, and then tell David."

Rosi nodded slowly, and wandered off.

Me, I put on my most obsequious smile and brought the drink out. "Charmaine, hi! So good to see you again! You must be doing well for yourself. I mean, drinking at 11am on a Tuesday? Normally it's just the big shots doing the three-martini lunches. You must really be moving up in the world!"

The other woman's face went pale with baffled terror for a brief moment before she composed herself. "Hello," she said through gritted teeth. "Nice to see you again, Miss Garnet."

We never gave her our name, said Luna.

We didn't even have a surname the last time we spoke, Shadow pointed out. She's been briefed on us, and recently.

I gently rested a paw on her shoulder in a perfectly normal display of feminine camaraderie that, apropos of nothing but biology, left one of my claws casually nestled up against her jugular vein. "Likewise!" I said with false cheer. "The restaurant is doing great. The city is rebounding. It'd be a tragedy if anything got in the way of that, don't you think?"

Charmaine only briefly glanced at the claws on her shoulder, then stared at me blankly. "Nothing will," she said.

Then why the fuck is she here? asked Shadow.

"Glad to hear it!" I said, awkwardly fidgeting my claw away, not sure where to go from there, but fortunately, my time was up. David stormed out of the kitchen in a state of dire focus, and Rosi followed, the most confused of us all.

"What's going on?" David asked. He rested his hands on the back of the chair across from Charmaine, but didn't sit.

"The agency no longer considers you a priority," said Charmaine, staring at David blankly. "You stalled them out. You won. Congratulations."

There was a long pause as David stared back, waiting for another sentence that never came. "Why does this not feel like a victory?" he asked at last.

Charmaine shrugged. "Do you not watch the news? We're in the countdown to war. Maybe a week away before the missiles start flying. Humanity and a bare handful of allies, against every star in the sky. Rest of it's all kinda meaningless by comparison."

"A mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam," David muttered.

"Dust in the wind," Charmaine said in agreement. I understood neither reference.

"Sorry, David, but um," Rosi began. "Who is this?"

David glanced at Charmaine for a moment, looking for approval. She shrugged. "Like I said, go nuts. It hardly matters anymore."

David kept his eyes on Charmaine as he spoke, watching for a reaction. "Rosi, this is Charmaine. We met the day after the Battle of Earth. She and another Peacekeeper showed up here with an Arxur, looking for survivors. I fed the three of them, we got to talking… and by the end of it, the Arxur begged to defect to Earth."

Rosi's face scrunched up in confusion. "Swapping one predator homeworld for another? Why? I can't even wrap my head around that. More… prey here, or…?"

David sighed. "In a sense, yeah. I mean, the food situation was part of it. Mostly, it just sucks in the Arxur Dominion. Even for the Arxur. They're starving, and they live under the heel of a brutal dictatorship. The cycle of abuse at home gets paid forward to the galaxy at large. It's sad." He shook his head. "Anyway, yeah. The Arxur I got talking to, Sifal, she hated it there and wanted to leave. We couldn't accommodate her, though, and the whole incident got covered up. Charmaine here got transferred from U.N. Peacekeeping to U.S. intelligence work, mostly to keep her from talking about the Sifal incident. Central Intelligence was trying to recruit me for a bit, too. Because I'm good at talking to people, and they wanted me to stop doing that without their say-so."

Charmaine nodded. "Yeah. That was also me. The recruiter. Then you said some hateful bullshit about Hawaii, the Philippines, Colonialism, Catholicism…"

"Oh for--" David groaned. "I was just pushing your buttons! I had a half-dozen cameras pointed at you, and an eyewitness. I was trying to get you to punch me! I figured that would've ended the matter, having you openly assaulting a civilian."

Charmaine snorted. "And I fuckin' would've punched you, if the eyewitness in question wasn't a goddamn grizzly bear covered in spikes."

So our newfound propensity towards violence actively got in the way of one of David's schemes, said Shadow. Do you see now how violence isn't always the answer?

I mean, violence kinda still was the answer. I just did the wrong kind. Or I was too good at it? Luna, back me up here.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Grizzly bears are much larger than Gojids, and aren't endemic to the state of New York, Luna said, nodding to herself. New York bears are much less aggressive, by comparison, and they're actually around our size!

I blinked. I had no idea how this information was supposed to be helpful.

It isn't, said Luna. I just think it's neat!

"This is Chiri Garnet," said David, tousling my shoulder. "She's great, actually. Really putting in the effort to go native on Earth."

Charmaine sighed. "I'm aware. And aside from bickering with you and drowning my sorrows in tequila and noodles, that's the other thing I'm supposed to talk to you about."

"Please direct all queries regarding my visa status to my attorney," I said stiffly.

Charmaine laughed. "No, I mean the part where David's developing this weird track record of convincing aliens to try and build a life here on Earth."

Rosi's jaw dropped in horror. "How many times have you--?!"

"You're number three, Rosi," David said, tiredly.

"Sonnova…" Rosi muttered incredulously.

Charmaine put her face in her hands and groaned. "Jesus Christ, dude, it's been like a month since the bombs fell. Three aliens in a month, are you fucking serious?"

"Rosi's still coming around, if I'm being fair," said David, glancing back towards the kitchen. "You going somewhere with this? Because Eddie doesn't know how to make palabok. Wrong end of the Spanish Empire."

"You said you'd be open to positions that didn't involve directly taking orders from the agency," said Charmaine. That was a very generous interpretation of David's words. It was slightly more accurate to say he'd been open to running the CIA, and perhaps more accurate still to say that he'd told her to fuck off. "There's been talk about setting up some kinda… cultural ambassadorship type thing, to help encourage closer ties with our allies."

David blinked slowly. "Does it pay better than running my own restaurant?"

"It's something you can do while running your restaurant," said Charmaine. "In a sense, you've already been doing it. The first part is just showcasing Terran culinary culture on social media. Which you've already been doing to promote your restaurant. One of the non-secret diplomacy guys over at the State Department can send you the media package details, but basically just keep showing off how Earth has herbivore-friendly food, that it's delicious with a rich history behind it, you get the idea. We'll promote you, put a nice big 'official' stamp on it, that kind of thing."

"Fine," said David. "Never met a camera I wasn't happy to be in front of. What's the second part?"

Charmaine tapped the table with her fingertips. "Did you ever figure out what you were going to do with the two middle floors of this building?"

David tilted his head in confusion. "The one-bedroom apartments? Figured I'd just rent them out. Why?"

Charmaine took a deep breath. "We'd like to discuss the possibility of something like a… halfway house for certain alien VIPs. Discharged veterans who lost their human exchange partners in combat, or just newly-curious people who've never joined the exchange program in the first place. Just someplace where we can point aliens towards if they don't really need a guide to Earth, but someplace we know is still going to be a safe and healthy environment for them."

David rubbed his eyes behind his hololenses. "You want me to turn floors three and four into an alien hostel."

Charmaine snorted. "I mean, yeah, that'd be great, sure."

"Fine!" said David. "It's gonna cost ya, but… sure, why not. It's New York City. We used to get nearly as many tourists as Disneyland and Vegas. Happy to put a few up for the sake of doing my part on the home front."

Charmaine smiled bleakly. "Technically, Disneyland's still under renovations after the bombing. Greater LA area?"

"Right, right," said David, shaking his head. "Alright, send my attorney the details, and we'll work something out."

That could be good for you, too, said Shadow. You've been lacking a bit of community lately.

So has David, said Luna. It was just him and a dog when you showed up.

"So David, do you…" I trailed off as I realized he'd already physically left the conversation. Stupid non-clicky shoes of his!

"So, uh," said Charmaine, awkwardly, now that she was alone with two aliens she didn't know all that well. "A waitress and a bartender, eh?"

"I'd rather be in the kitchen," said Rosi, "but I'm learning."

I shrugged. "And I'm a cocktail prodigy, apparently."

Charmaine took a long swig, and swirled her tequila sunrise in the glass. She was trying to look classy, but it mostly just made the grenadine bleed into the orange juice more. "Got any suggestions?"

I rolled my eyes. "I mean, you were drinking tequila straight the last time we spoke."

Charmaine shrugged. "Too early in the morning for straight tequila."

"Orange juice with sugar syrup is too sweet for any time of day," I grumbled. "You want it lighter, do a paloma. Or like… the original version of a tequila sunrise."

The human woman perked up. "There's an original version?"

"Sure," I rattled off. "It's bubbly, more soda-ish. Want one?"

"Why not," she said.

It gave me something to do for the minute or so before David came back. Sparkling water, tequila, and a split mixer of lime juice for sourness and creme de cassis--the jammy blackberry liqueur--for sweetness. Beyond the recipe, I gave it an extra teensy spritz of lavender extract for character, though I wondered idly if basil might have worked better…

Charmaine was already digging into her noodles when I returned. David was back, Rosi was off helping Sylvie with a table. "How the fuck are these so good?" Charmaine asked, incredulously.

David shrugged. "It's noodles in a light sauce made from seafood broth. There aren't that many angles for improvement." He smiled. "I'm just good at making my own broth," he said, as he wandered back to the kitchen.

That smells incredible, said Luna. It's gonna be a great day when we get to try real meat.

We should probably see an allergy doctor, said Shadow. Not to encourage this behavior! Just to get a professional assessment of how much danger we're in. Gods forfend an errant drop of boiled sea creature juice lands on our lips.

Luna's grin was hungry. Ooh, or how cool would it be if there are a few more exceptions to the Cure than just dairy? What a happy day if we discover that little sea creatures are fair game for us…

The council seemed in agreement about seeing a doctor, at least.

I set the drink I'd made down on the table next to Charmaine's plate of noodles. It had a similar color to my improvised family wine, but less gemstone red, more berry purple. She tried a sip and blinked, startled. "Oh, this is refreshing," she said. "Kinda fruity and floral."

I shrugged, but I was staring at her noodles. Essence of sea creatures, all the flavor of the ocean, simmered right into the sauce. "Lucky you, human. Only species in the galaxy who gets to eat like this. Arxur can't do fruit, and I…" I shook my head, sadly, trailing off.

Charmaine raised an eyebrow. "How… native did you wanna go, exactly?"

I scowled. "What's it to you?"

Charmaine snorted. "Lady, with diplomacy in this galaxy being the clusterfuck that it is, the Powers That Be are very interested and very encouraging of anyone who accepts humanity for who we are. So. How native did you wanna go?"

I answered before the Council could waste time bickering about how much to tell her. "I'm dating a human, I eat real cheese and fake meat on most days, and David offered to take me hunting for sea creatures in the spring."

Charmaine paused abruptly with a hand in her pocket, reaching for something. "Wait, real cheese?" She blanched. "I thought David was making that shit up!"

"Mammals drink milk as part of their life cycle," I said, incredulously. "The Kolshians whitelisted it, I think, when they started tampering with our genetics. I mean, I'm still lactose intolerant or whatever, but I don't break out in hives or swell my throat shut when I eat cheese, no."

Charmaine finished pulling out--

A gun! Shadow guessed.

--her holopad, and pulled up a contact. "Here," she said. "This is still a little bit on the down-low, but the moment we heard about what got done to the other omnivores in the galaxy, we started trying to figure out how the Kolshian 'Cure' worked. Try to prevent it from happening to us, maybe even reverse it. It's been uphill, though, just finding test subjects."

"What kind of test subjects?" I asked, my eyes narrowing.

"Oh God. Come on. The normal kind." Charmaine rolled her eyes. "I don't know medicine myself, but this shit is all above-board, and we've got stronger informed consent laws for patients than the fucking Zurulians. It's probably just blood samples, standard allergen testing, that kinda thing." She forwarded me the contact information to an office in North Jersey, just across the bay to the west. "You can bring your lover or your lawyer or whatever if you're worried. Comes with a small cash reward, and, more importantly, puts you on the shortlist for reversing the Cure." The agent glanced up and smiled. "If that's something you're interested in?"

I didn't really need to answer. I just stared at her plate of seafood noodles and licked my lips hungrily.

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