Glaring bright white LED lamps illuminated her workstation, casting stark shadows on the table in front of her. She was alone in the lab with the occasional Hyoron laborer coming to cart away the cosmetically damaged synth parts for repainting or dent removal. The only sound besides her flurry of work and the scurrying Hyoron was the dull electrical hum of the lights.
In the past few weeks, Luo Xixi drowned herself in her work routine without talking to Le Quan much, giving him brief replies to nudge him away. Remove actuator module. Splice connector. Insert actuator module. It was comforting in an odd way. She didn’t even need to fast forward through the day. Her anxieties did that for her.
CLANK. An arm fell off the cart of parts designated for cosmetic repair. The sound echoed through the empty lab. Luo Xixi turned her head and rose up. The Hyoron laborer, despite being a knot of muscle and fur reaching Luo Xixi’s height and spanning twice as wide, winced and turned its head, as if expecting a brutal punishment.
Luo Xixi walked over silently, picked up the arm and tossed it back on the pile. The Hyoron laborer grunted rhythmically for a few seconds. The sound echoed in her mind, and for a fleeting moment, it was just noise. Then, a learned pattern surfaced from the depths of the linguistic database she’d paid a week's credits for.
>Thank you, master.
The database. That’s right! She had almost forgotten she downloaded it. Perhaps she could try something?
>Can you understand me? She asked in Neuronet, casting her gaze at the laborer. No response. That’s right. Her vocal cords physically couldn’t make the sounds required for Hyoron language and the laborer wasn’t fitted with a Neuronet implant. She thought for a moment, then picked up a display tablet. The laborer’s eyes instinctively moved towards the screen.
>Display, link to personal Neuronet. Text display, overlay with Hyoron written translation.
A faint chime of acknowledgement sounded in her brain’s auditory processing center.
>Can you understand me?
The display tablet instantly wrote her words in Directorate standard with the strange, angular symbols of the Hyoron language being filled below. The laborer gasped in surprise. Its massive body went still, its large, dark eyes fixed on the tablet, all pretense of work forgotten.
>You can understand us?
Despite having worked with the Hyoron for over a standard year, this was like a moment of first contact for Luo Xixi. Up to this point, they were always present in the background, wheeling carts between the lab and the workshop or hauling heavy parts, more like biological machines than sentient beings. This was the first time she had really talked to them in anything but a command that she doubted they even understood. Her mind raced with the possibilities and the impulse to type back with something, anything.
>Yes, now at least.
Curiosity got the better of her immediately. She tapped the Hyoron laborer to make sure its eyes were on the tablet. This was the first time she had actually touched a Hyoron. Its brown fur was bristly on the outside, but fading to a strange softness beneath, the down layer required for exposed survival on the ice caps in their evolutionary prehistory. It was undoubtedly a familiar, mammalian sensation. They were mammals, like humans. Well, at least whatever the alien, convergent analog of mammal was.
>Did you actually understand my commands before? She typed with her mind.
The Hyoron laborer fell silent and raised itself on its hind legs for a second, turning its head back and forth as if looking for danger before crouching back down in their body’s neutral hunched position with arms almost dragging on the floor. There was no sound but a heaving, deep breathing. The Hyoron laborer silently looked at her with sad eyes, almost as if afraid to answer.
>You can answer me, she thought, with the words immediately materializing on the screen. The Hyoron laborer reluctantly replied with a nervous barrage of grunts.
>Yes, with difficulty. Human language is within our range of hearing, but we struggle with its patterns and sounds.
Luo Xixi smiled.
>Is this better?
An intelligent glint was shown in the Hyoron laborer’s eyes, narrowing in what could almost be mistaken for a smile.
>Yes. Our orders are much less ambiguous this way.
Luo Xixi shook her head.
>I am not going to only be giving you orders from now on.
The Hyoron laborer nudged the air in front of it in a sign of affirmation, before instinctively looking around, as if afraid to be overheard.
>I must return to work for now. Thank you master.
Soft clinking echoed through the depot as the cart was wheeled away. She stared at the synth lying on her operating table, completely unable to focus on her work at all. Her breathing was deep and contemplative, as if her brain needed extra oxygen to process what had just happened. The display tablet cleared its screen and deactivated by itself before she recovered her mental state.
A sharp chime sounded in her mind, the one she assigned to his messages. Her stomach clenched.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
>Private message received.
After the disastrous date with Le Quan, Luo Xixi didn’t want to even think about him, yet here he was, invading her very thoughts. The echoes of those dangerous words replayed in her head. Freedom. Power. Risk. Risk. Risk. Her mother had warned her about men who were too ambitious, too power hungry, too impulsive. They were dangerous and unstable.
Ruthlessness is never reserved solely for the workplace, she had said. Luo Xixi had always thought that was simply an old woman’s paranoia. Now she knew them to be facts drawn from maturity and family experience. She hesitated before opening the message. The excitement she felt before was replaced by a sense of dread.
>Hey, when are we getting more of that real food? ;)
Her reply was formulated with a calculated casualness.
>I’m falling behind on the new work quota. It’ll take me a while to get used to this heavier load. Maybe later.
No new reply. Luo Xixi breathed a sigh of relief. The synth depot was silent except for echoes of carts being pushed in the halls and the gentle hiss of paint being applied by Hyoron laborers in intricate details. She tried to focus on her work, but felt an uneasy dizziness and revulsion. Everything was overwhelming. The strange, stringy taste of the food. The Hyoron laborer’s sad eyes and wariness. The unbearable chill that she felt every time she spoke to Le.
The day passed unbearably slowly, even with occasional sped up subjective time. Thoughts raced through her head. She had forgotten to ask the Hyoron laborer its name. Did they even have names? Was it even important? Before she knew it, another notification appeared in her mind.
>Shift complete.
As Luo Xixi walked out, the frigid air and dim red haze of the outdoor environment felt even more alien. A synth and police line had formed around the transport stop behind the barbed wire fence, turning her work place into what felt like a war zone. The walk to the transport stop felt longer than usual. The Hyoron in the streets moved with a new, purposeful agitation, their grunts sharper.
The anger of the mob in the past few weeks had been escalating. She heard the familiar refrains over and over. Massive viewscreens were being wheeled in, pointed straight towards the police, who stared with a sullen, incomprehensible silence beneath their breather masks. In her view, the incomprehensible electronic signs and grunts had now been replaced by familiar Directorate standard audio-visual overlays.
>AUDIT COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION NOW
>PRIMARY ENTROPY SOURCE: FRONTIER PEASANTS
>DIRECTORATE PLANET OR SETTLER PLANET?
>WHERE ARE OUR CHILDREN?
>EQUAL PROTECTION ALL SUBJECTS
An automated transporter, already packed with terrified-looking passengers, was slowly trying to approach the synth depot stop, but this time, the Hyoron crowd did not part for it like usual. Its guidance software guided it to a halt. Rocks and trash pelted its armored windows as Hyoron rioters slammed its frame. The existing human passengers inside looked terrified as the transport vehicle was shaken back and forth. On a police loudspeaker, a series of grunts and squeals rang out. She immediately understood it.
>Hyoron rioters, you are commanded to cease interference with Directorate infrastructure immediately.
>Noncompliance will result in escalating force. You have 60 seconds.
The crowd was not cowed by the ultimatum. Groaning chants grew louder and louder, with trash being set on fire and thrown onto the armored transport. A whining creak of bending metal was heard as parts of the panel gave way under massive blows.
>Hyoron rioters, you are commanded to cease interference with Directorate infrastructure immediately. 30 seconds remaining before use of force.
The crowd control synths in front of the police began moving forward in a phalanx, creating a buffer zone for their human masters. Suddenly, a shattering sound was heard. Smash. A massive elder Hyoron slammed into a synth, knocking it onto the ground. As the synth’s motor algorithms were attempting to upright itself, the elder Hyoron stepped on its legs, snapping them clean off in a metallic crack. The fuse was lit. A rain of rocks, debris and flaming garbage flew towards the police line.
With an invisible signal, the crowd control synths began pushing into the crowd and activating their electric shock weapons as the colonial police raised their weapons. Hyoron fell in convulsions as the electrodes made contact with their skin. Luo Xixi had never seen this level of violence before. Flash grenades exploded in brilliant sparks of blinding white light. The Hyoron immediately on the frontlines attempted to run, but they were blocked by the mob behind them. The police had their backs to a concrete barrier and the barbed wire fence of the synth repair depot. Everyone was trapped, sandwiched between roiling chaos and unflinching order.
The other synth depot workers, both human and Hyoron, immediately reconsidered the need to return home. They turned and ran back into the concrete compound.
>Hyoron rioters, you are commanded to disperse immediately. Noncompliance will be met with further escalation of force.
A shot rang out. Chaos. The police began firing into the crowd. The first row of Hyoron fell, but their massive dying frames shielded the rest of the angry mob. Sentiment in the crowd reached a boil. Formerly sporadic gunfire erupted into a near continuous sound. But it wasn’t only the Hyoron that fell in the crossfire. Several police fell, doubling over in agony or simply dropped to the floor like limp, bleeding noodles.
A massive explosion rose in a transient orange fireball and puff of black smoke from the human line, followed almost instantly by a deafening roar. A bomb. Rows of colonial police and synths fell instantly from the shockwave. Others grabbed their sides and cried out in agony from being hit by shrapnel. Burnt plastic from their uniform and armor was melted onto the backs of some less fortunate souls lying still on the icy concrete.
A shattering sound tore through the chaos as the transport vehicle was overturned, its windows fracturing with a piercing crack. Terrified cries of trapped humans inside rang out, with only the heavy metal bars on the windows between them and the enraged mob. The Hyoron rioters began pounding on the roof of the crippled vehicle, now turned on its side. The sheet metal of the roof was far weaker than the side panels, each blow bending a piece of the roof into a permanent depression. A Neuronet announcement was sent directly into Luo Xixi’s brain.
>Warning: high levels of unrest expected in Hyoron sector outside Checkpoint 5A at Compound 3. Residents recommended to exercise caution.
Luo Xixi bolted for the depot, the translated screams of the mob a nightmarish chorus in her mind. To her side, she saw the Hyoron laborer, the one she'd shared a moment of understanding with, doing the same. Its intelligent eyes were wide with terror. They reached the heavy doors not as master and slave, but as two beings fleeing the same inferno.
>Lock gates. LOCK GATES, Luo Xixi commanded urgently over Neuronet.
The heavy metal doors slammed shut, but the din of violence was not silenced, only muffled. A distant rumbling was heard, possibly armored vehicles or aircraft. A dull ringing broke out in her ears, drowning out the cacophony of death and hate outside. Occasionally, the ringing was interrupted by the dull thud of a bullet slamming into the concrete walls. She crawled under her metal desk, arms around her knees and shaking, tears streaming down her eyes. The synth depot, with its simple, broken machines, now felt like the only sane place left on this planet.
