Complications of Interstellar Dating - 2

Chapter 2 - Healthy Skepticism 

Amaryllis, that was what she called herself apparently. Though, according to Chiriatt she pronounced her name with a hard ‘Ah’ sound, Ahmaryllis or maybe Awmaryllis. Still, it seemed a bit unnecessary to correct her pronunciation of an English name when she wasn’t even human. Anyway, based on the holos Chiriatt had given me the other day she was absolutely gorgeous, not only that, but if Chiriatt were to be believed, she was even more gorgeous in person. And, since my belief Chiriatt was what this whole thing hinged on, I figured why not keep the trend going? It wasn’t every day you were offered romantic advice from a Braith seer, but if it did happen you may as well listen, even if you didn’t believe in any of that spirituality stuff. At least that’s what I did anyway. If nothing else Cherriatt was a fun enough person to hang around with, they had some great drugs. Not that I’d get to take any this time. 

Regardless, time spent with them was always enjoyable, perhaps especially so if it meant hooking up with a bombshell alien from a race I’d never even seen before. I tried hard to keep those thoughts at the forefront of my mind as I scurried down the corridors of Rebis-II’s lower-central spire, it wasn’t working. Mostly, all I could think about was whether or not I could have gotten away with a better deal from Cairo had I stayed, also how much worse it could have gone. Then there was me trying desperately not to think about Cairo’s offer of a nanoclave. It wasn’t exactly an unappealing offer. I could, after all, use it to finally kick the need for hormones. Get rid of my testes, get my endocrine system to make its own estrogen and, hell, if I were gonna stay in the black market game maybe make myself a bit more intimidating. There was only so much a slightly above average height - for a woman,- an asymmetrical undercut, and a lot of dark makeup could do to make one fit in around the rougher crowds. I let myself fantasize for a moment about how I’d look at a towering 6 foot, with toned ass arms, a tight fitting muscle tank and hips for days. With a perpetual look of mystery painted across my gorgeous face, men would hate me, women would date me. Well, that last part may not be necessary if this date actually worked out. 

Yet still, there was something about that image that seemed off. I couldn’t place it, but it wasn’t that perfect me I wished for. And that was the eternal problem with Nanoclaves. A person gets asked to design their ideal body and they have no idea what that looks like, so they go off what everyone else expects them to be. A woman gets prettier, more demure, small and curvaceous, but not too curvaceous. Her skin tone is set to that slightly sunkissed color that is so indicative of a life where sun exposure is a normal, expected thing. Or, on the off chance she wasn’t white and could somehow afford the treatment, she might pick any arrangement of caramels, hazelnuts, milk chocolates, or other words for brown that refer to sweets. But never anything too dark, that would most certainly not be in. She would already be on thin ice for not being white. And besides, too much sun exposure was also indicative of low class. Fucking rich pricks. Regardless of her ethnicity or status she would come out a walking wet dream, so long as you like what everyone else likes. And men? Men got exactly what anyone with half a brain would expect them to get. Big muscle, big tall, big dick. The trifecta. Anyone outside the binary? Ironically, even with them there were more acceptable ways to present “non-conformity” than others, most involved looking fem enough that people wouldn’t ask too many questions. 

Of course, the nanoclave was a special dream for your typical binary trans person, a one way ticket to being ‘cis’ so to speak. Still, pressure was high not to break the mold too much, lest we wind up even more deviant than we were before. Fuck that though, I was a deviant, through and through, trans or no. I could all too easily picture myself as one of those more typical post-clave women, all small and sweet. Happy, perhaps bubbly even, with a body to turn heads, to be gazed at, to be possessed, to behave. Revulsion rose within me, no, they would not have me like that, not again. Those old money Earth pricks could suck my dick. Station life, ship life, fringe world life would always suit me better than that, no matter who I had to be. I snapped myself out of my little thought prison and, with renewed focus, struck out for the Es’s Ex and its soothingly ear splitting music. 

Es’s Ex was the self styled top underground venue on Rebus-II, and while both Rebus stations were well known shitheaps, one thing shitheap stations did get right was unregulated partying. It certainly didn’t hurt that just about every human on station thought it was hilarious and iconic that the Braith term for “spiritual elevation” - essentialy doing drugs and fucking in their culture - sounded a lot like the human word for something pretty similar. And make no mistake, pretty much the only reason anyone went to Es’s Ex was to get laid, even me, in a roundabout way. I strolled right passed the line and straight up to Sull, the Khea’t bouncer who just happened to be one of my regulars, and with an affirmative flap of their - well, their flaps - I was let in. I pressed open the heavy manual door and was immediately taken ‘round back and beaten upside the head by the sheer force of the club’s music. It was one of those post-electro fringepunk mashups. Full of scraping guitars and the undulating squeal of synths with a cacophony of percussion and bass that seemed to simultaneously clash and harmonize. To put it simply, this was the kind of music you could reach up and take a bite out of. I just hoped my teeth would stop buzzing in time for my date.

Impossible to ignore as it was, I took no interest in the club itself. I was single-minded in my destination, concerningly so, but single-mindedness was to be expected when one was desperately trying to avoid thinking about the fact that they had just nearly died. Properly processing and unpacking my encounter with Cairo could happen later, now was time to pretend it didn’t happen at all. I strode toward the back of the neon lit venue, flowing through crowds and dodging drunken idiots until I arrived at another sturdy manual door. This one was guarded by a Braith, leaning casually against the door, his four arms folded across his chest. When his eyes fell on me his slit pupils dilated in recognition.

“Ves,” his tone was cool and casual, if a little bored. He gave the impression he’d been waiting on me. 

“You know me? That’s awkward. I don’t think we’ve met before.” To be honest, we probably had. I’d met a lot of Braith during drunken benders. 

“We haven’t, no, but Chiriat told me to expect you. That’s why I’m manning the door, they don’t want anyone else interrupting your meeting.” He winked with both his vertical and horizontal eyelids then, with a somewhat annoyed grunt, stretched upward to reach the door mechanism,  revealing the room beyond. 

“Damn station builders, never do shit to accommodate smaller species.” He shook his head, then chuckled. Or rather, he made the reptilian hissing noises that passed for Braith laughter. To be honest, the sound always kind of creeped me out, the exact sort of thing you’d expect to hear coming from an old pre-stellar era cartoon villain. That was definitely just a personal prejudice I needed to work on, though, I’d never known a Braith to practice any kind of malice. They were far too busy doing what they did best: getting high and engineering the best shit in the quadrant. Often both at the same time. I gave the doorman a polite nod and stepped into Chiriat’s little sanctuary. The doors shut behind me and suddenly I could hear myself think again as their sound proofed lounge shut out all noise from the Es’Sex. Braith may have had vice hardcoded into their DNA, and Chiriat was no exception, but their kind also took spiritual matters quite seriously, and music that most closely resembled putting a synthesizer and a bag of marbles into a blender wasn’t great for ritual concentration. That wasn’t to say Chiriat’s lounge was a shining example of serenity, at least, not what humans would call serenity. The whole room stank of just about every drug known to Braith kind, and several probably known just to Cheriat. It was arid, and stiflingly hot, conditions apparently essential for long-term concentration, at least if you were cold blooded anyway. The room was dark, with light coming from flickering and pulsing lights that swam and burst at random along the walls, and throughout the entire space were speakers that played a fast paced, thumping electronic beat, accompanied by an almost distant, choral synth track. The music played here was no quieter or less intense than the music outside, but far smoother and more conventional, most importantly it in no way felt like taking a cheese grater to the brain.

Unlike most days, where the lounge would be its own private party within the Es’s Ex, the room today was empty save Chiriat themself, lounging comfortably on a set of ceremonial pillows. Their eyes fell upon me and they twittered three of their clawed hands in a friendly wave of greeting, motioning me toward them with the fourth. I nodded, and crossed the room toward them. Chiriat sat up on their pillows to clear a space for me, and as I sat the walls around us lit our corner of the room in a cool, but comfortably bright blue light, bringing Chiriat into focus. The first time I ever laid eyes on Chiriat, the thought which most immediately came to mind was this guy fucks. Or, something of the sort anyway, the mechanics of Braith reproduction were tough to wrap one’s head around. Chiriat had this intangible, unplaceable air about them, a fine mix of confidence and attractiveness to back it up. Attractiveness by Braith standards anyway, feathered reptile folk weren’t particularly my cup of tea. That’s not to say Chiriat wasn’t a sight to behold, I didn’t fully grasp Braith beauty standards, but I was well aware how impressive Chiriat was to look at. Each and every one of their scales had been dyed a slightly different color, creating a breathtaking gradient across their entire body. They were adorned head to claw in jewelry, and their teeth had been plated with an opal-like mineral native to the Braith homeworld. They weren’t all color and flash either, the real appeal to Chiriat was what a fucking wild time you were bound to have if you spent enough time with them. It was a well known fact that Braith spiritualists had access to the purest, safest drugs there were, and being friends with one meant spending many a night sailing on the solar breeze as it were, only without the tough comedown. 

Chiriat and I spent several moments together in silence, their gaze regarding me with a detached intensity. This sort of greeting was something I’d come to expect, Chiriat liked to pass it off as reading my aura, but I’m pretty sure they usually just needed to take a moment to process a new presence, what with them nearly constantly being the highest motherfucker on the station. Soon enough, their pupils narrowed in on my face, granting whatever focus and clarity they were trying to conjure before giving me a proper greeting. 

“Didn’t I ring you like an hour ago? You’ve had all this time to get here and you show up looking like that?” Their voice was smooth, but textured with clicking ripples and the undercurrent of a throaty hiss. 

“I, was on a job at the time. There were some, err, well let’s just say the buyer took a little too much interest in what I was selling.” I grimly pointed a finger gun toward my head. “Besides it’s not like you gave me any warning, maybe next time you can give me say, I dunno, more than no notice at all?” 

“Hmm, I heard from Dee that one of the small-time dealers had gotten in way over her head with a valuable item. I figured it must have been someone else, usually people don’t repay my kindness and hard work by nearly getting themselves killed in a careless sale. You at least got some good pay right?” They gave me a wry smile, showing rows and rows of razor sharp teeth.

“I told you before Chiriat, I appreciate the attempts at adopting human social cues, but those teeth are scary as hell.” They let a wheezing hiss of laughter and took my hands in theirs, giving me a stern look.

“Fine fine, just promise me next time you get a dangerous job like this you’ll let me know ahead of time? I want to be there to back you up, and more importantly get a share for myself, looking this good doesn’t come free you know.” I rolled my eyes.

“Yeah, I’m sure your moonstruck ass would do great in a tense standoff.” I gave them the same long, blank stare I’d been greeted with, and they nearly fell over with laughter. 

“Alright, alright, point made. Just don’t go making me worry after you, makes for bad trips.” They steadied themself and stretched, before taking a small datapad from the floor beside them and sending out a message I couldn’t read, quite literally, the language wasn’t English, and the translation software in my holo-overlay couldn’t piece it out either. 

“Speaking in code now are we?” They held up a claw in the universal sign for wait just a damn minute, okay? 

“What I’m doing, my impatient friend, is letting your date know you’re here and ready to meet, you are ready to meet, aren’t you?” They never took their eyes off the monitor while they spoke, but it still somehow felt as though their gaze was burrowing into me. I glanced down at myself, frowning.

“I guess it’s too late to put something nicer on.” I mused, cursing the poor timing of Chiriat’s call. 

“What, you gonna put on your most formal of muscle tanks and synth leather?” They set the pad down and glanced up at me, “since when were you all nervous around women?”

“I dunno, I mean I’ve never gone in this blind before, plus I’ve never even heard of her species. All I know is what you told me, they like nature and have some kind of spiritual connection in common with the Braith. I’m a spacer, Chiriat, it’s been years since I’ve even seen a tree.” I shook my head a little, sighing, Chiriat was right though, this really wasn't like me. 

“Well, a spiritual connection like we have isn’t really accurate, this girl’s different, her species can do some absolutely wild shit, you’ll see soon enough. And, yeah I kind of see where you’re coming from, but you do know none of that’s going to matter, right?” There were hints of apprehension and annoyance in their voice, as though they suspected something of me.

“Why wouldn’t any of that matter? I mean don’t get me wrong, you know I have no issue hanging out with aliens, but I don’t even know what I’ll talk to her about, I can’t help but feel this won’t really work out,” I muttered. Their head was cocked to the side now, a gesture in Braith culture which was akin to rolling one’s eyes.

“You really don’t listen, do you?” That annoyance was quickly turning into smugness.

“Apparently not.” I kept my reply brief, I could sense they were trying to get a rise out of me.

“Of course you don’t, you really did never actually buy into the metaphysical anyay. But fine, I’ll explain it again one more time. Last week it occurred to me that I might bring in some serious cash if I could use my spiritual connection for matchmaking purposes.” They paused, eyeing me with an amused gleam that seemed to dare me to not follow along.

“Right, I got that part, though for whatever reason won’t even take my money for the trouble.” It was hardly the first time I’d offered to pay them for something, though historically that had been drugs they’d dished out to me for free.

“And like I said, your money’s no good here, at least not until you have enough of it to make charging you worth my time.” They winked and continued, “So anyway, as I told you last time we talked about this, my connection by no means makes me all knowing, it just gives me vague ideas of what is likely to come true. Still, love is a big market, and very on brand for me all things considered. So in order to test things out I tried to find someone for you, figured I’d help my dear, down on her luck friend. And wouldn’t you know it? I get the strongest psychic reaction I’ve ever gotten, it’s fuckin clear as it gets. I’m guessing that’s because of that weird shit she can do that I was telling you about.” 

They were eying me up and down now, waiting for me to say something or object. I’d made it known in the past I didn’t really buy all that spiritual psychic stuff, but I wasn’t about to disrespect my friend. “I’m gonna say this next part as slowly and clearly so your tiny human mind can comprehend it properly: no bullshit, she’s the best match you’re probably gonna get in, well, ever. As close to perfect there is. You got damn lucky, I doubt I’ll ever make another match as authentic as this one.” They were silent for a moment, eyes searching for a reaction in me.