C12 Director Nathers

Gerald found that he had quite a bit of difficulty telling the passage of time without being able to see his sun. The small waiting room they had placed him in had no clock, and while he could see out into the quad through the window, he still had no idea how many hours long a day was on this particular planet.

He just knew it had been quite some time, and he was getting very bored.

Outside on the grass, he watched Cha’Rolette sit beneath an orange-hued tree and eat lunch with her underlings, Tulda Bora and Kamanie Dissilva, the beta and gamma females that always seemed to be part of those kind of groups. Like human females, Gerald noticed that they limited themselves to three members, despite the fact that there were several other girls hanging around at the fringes, obviously hoping to become permanent members if the opportunity arose. This is because any female group of four or more is destined to fracture and split into smaller groups—what Gerald called his ‘female critical-mass theory.’

Tomar walked up to the trio, trying unsuccessfully to hide his nervousness as he made polite conversation and prepared to offer Cha’Rolette a gift which he held behind his back. This would be the third such attempt made by a male student since lunch had begun. Gerald couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the distance and because he was looking through what he guessed was not actually glass but some kind of transparent stone. So, unable to hear their conversation, he supplied the voices and dialogue himself.

“Hello Duchess, I am approaching you in a public and direct way to show you that I am bold and decisive; traits that make for a good and effective leader,” Gerald said, intentionally giving Tomar a gruff and deep voice.

Cha’Rolette smiled and flicked her ringlets behind her ear. “My position and wealth make such traits unnecessary in a consort, but I am impressed nonetheless because I am programmed to respond to such displays,” Gerald said, giving her a high and whiney voice for no other reason than because it pleased him.

Tomar held out the gift. “See what a good provider I will be. This box contains wealth, which will ensure a secure and stable environment for our children to be raised in. If you accept me as your mate, many more such gifts will be provided to you.”

Cha’Rolette opened the box and showed its contents to her friends, who tittered and squeed at whatever it was. She then turned back towards Tomar.

“Do you see how flawless my skin is? Do you see how symmetrical my face is? These are signals of health and fertility.”

“I did notice those things.”

“And do you notice how large my chest is? That means that I will provide plenty of sustenance for our offspring. Furthermore, my wide hips and narrow waist indicate that I will be far more likely to survive childbirth. A definite advantage when passing on your genes to viable offspring.”

“Yes, in fact those are the very reasons I am here. Modern medicine has made those traits unnecessary for successful breeding for thousands of years, but my genes don’t know that, so I have come to you all the same.”

Cha’Rolette placed her hand on Tomar’s shoulder. “Given the wealth and connections of the people here, I could easily choose you or any other male at random, and get everything I could ever want or need, but because my instincts tell me to hold out for a bigger, better deal, that is exactly what I am going to do. Most likely until my advantages of youth and health begin to decay, and then I’ll grow desperate and snatch up the first male I can.”

Tomar turned away, dejected, and Gerald laughed at his own little private puppet show.

***********

Beyond the waiting room, Director Nathers displayed no humor whatsoever as he spoke with a half dozen windows hovering in the air before him.

“I’ve checked it a dozen times already,” Chief Engineer Valans explained, his voice growing hoarse. “The scholarship originated from within Central Core itself. No outside input created it.”

“But that is impossible. Central Core doesn’t create anything, it only facilitates data storage and transfers,” another engineer argued.

“Believe me I know that. Don’t you think I know that? But we’ve eliminated everything else. The only logical possibility left is that Central Core made a mistake.”

“Central Core doesn’t make mistakes,” Director Nathers insisted. “And even if it did, it better sloggin’ be in someone else’s district. Central Core has operated flawlessly for hundreds of thousands of cycles. Every monetary transaction, every record, every document, they all go through Central Core.”

“What if people found out?” Professor Weindurh realized fearfully.

“They can’t find out, the entire economy would collapse.”

“They’re not going to find out,” Nathers said coldly. “I’m placing all of you under a gag order. Any one of you so much breathes a word of this and I’ll have you operating the radar station of a deep space probe so quickly it’ll make your bladders freeze up.”

“Yessir,” they said in unison.

He tapped a few glowing runes, issuing the order in writing. “In the meantime, I’ve got the student in question outside my office. I’ll have him on a ship home within the hour.”

“That’s a bad idea,” Professor Inters’ia pointed out as she smoothed her feathers.

“Why is that, Kalt?”

“If you expel him there will have to be an official tribunal for the records, and the question will have to be brought up as to why he was here in the first place.”

“So we’ll skip the tribunal.”

“Even if you do that, expulsions are extremely rare. The reporters will start digging almost immediately to find out why he was thrown out and why he was here.”

“The media would have a field day,” Weindurh trembled.

Director Nathers leaned back in his chair and rubbed his panther-like eyes. “So, what you’re saying is that I’ve got some human out there with a scholarship he doesn’t deserve, attending lectures he can’t even see or hear, and I can’t get rid of him?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Ms. Stubbs window pushed her way to the front, her slicked-back black hair rising up angrily. “But keeping him creates the same problem. He can’t even connect with Central. How am I supposed to teach my classes?”

“That’s a good point,” Nathers granted. “The second one of these kids mentions to their parents that we’ve got an unqualified student coasting through and underperforming without a punitive response, we’re right back to being asked questions we can’t afford to answer and we can’t afford to leave unanswered. Dr. Klatta, is there any chance we could bring him up to speed somehow?”

Klatta’s window moved up alongside Stubbs. “Well, when Earth joined the Alliance there was some talk about modifying existing crystronic implants for use in humans. The problem is that humans are carbon-based, so their synapses are completely incompatible with our systems. They’d need a really sophisticated buffer to prevent overload, and a conversion system that was built from the ground up. The closest anyone ever came was the psychic interface that Harec Toylines uses, and we all know how that turned out.”

Everyone nodded solemnly. It was an embarrassment to the entire Alliance.

“...Eventually it was deemed too costly to spend so much research just to bring humans up to galactic minimums when all of them were just ending up in ghettos and on welfare anyway, so it was all abandoned. I mean, they have such a short lifespan it is actually cheaper to just give them free food and housing until they die off.”

“Why, how long do they live?”

Klatta tapped a couple of buttons. “Average human lifespan is 85 terran years, or 16.2 standard cycles.”

“That’s not even old enough to vote, “Ms. Stubbs noted.

“Now you see why it lost funding.”

Nathers clicked his mandibles together thoughtfully. “Do you think you might be able to do it yourself? Perhaps as a once-off prototype or something?”

Klatta thought for a moment and drew in deeply from his cigar. “Well, sure, just give me about 60 million credits, a couple dozen human heads, and about five cycles and I might be able to give you something. Or I might just give you another mound of fried brains.”

“What it is with you and mounds of dead brains?” Stubbs complained.

“You can’t have progress without mounds of dead brains!”

“Enough, you two,” Nathers said, silencing them. “I’ve got a dozen world leaders about to start sniffing into this and I need solutions, not bickering.”

He leaned back and rubbed his temples. “We’re just going to have to mask this somehow. Make it look like something else until we find a permanent solution.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime?” Stubbs asked. “He’s already nearly a month behind on top of everything else. How am I supposed to teach my classes with him in them?”

Director Nathers lifted his mug to his lips and sipped on the creamy liquid. “Just do it the old-fashioned way, with paper and a white board.”

Ms. Stubbs’ face grew three times as large as she leaned forward into her camera. “I’ve got over twenty-five thousand case studies to cover before mid-terms, AND YOU EXPECT ME TO TEACH THEM ALL BY HAND?!”

Director Nathers waved his hand and the windows all closed. He took a moment to calmly drink in the warm liquid, the steam rising up out from the holes in the back of his head.

“Send him in.”