Dani
Andrek’s study was dimmer than the rest of the house, the lighting panels set to a soft amber glow that reminded me of sunset.
Or maybe that was just my brain trying to make sense of alien lighting.
I sat in the chair across from his desk.
It was too tall and the bottom shifted too far back, in an Adirondack-style, for my human proportions, leaving my knees at an awkward angle, my feet unable to touch the ground.
I felt like a child called to the principal’s office.
Except I wasn’t a child anymore, and this wasn’t school.
This was my life now. Or it could be, if I didn’t screw it up in the next few minutes.
Andrek settled into his own chair with the fluid grace I didn’t expect of a Torzi.
His tail curled around the base of the seat, and his eyes fixed on me.
The intensity in them made my skin prickle.
He wasn’t threatening, but it seemed as if he stared into my soul.
I wanted to squirm, but I managed to maintain composure.
“Yesterday,” he began, his voice measured, “your application told me you had the qualifications. I assumed based on that you understood what this position entailed. Today, holding Pip, you are proving yourself. I hope this is an indication of what is to come.”
Heat flooded my face from his praise. Well then. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought.
“I’m adjusting,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and calm my racing heart. “It’s a lot to take in and learn, but I promise I'll do my best by you and Pip.”
“I believe you truly mean that. Tell me about your life on Earth. I have never been.”
What should I say? I debated as I looked down at my hands, twisted together in my lap. The nail polish I’d put on the day before I left Earth, a deep wine red that my mother had called ‘too dramatic’, had chipped. Everything from my old life, much like the polish, flaked away.
“I said before on the tarmac. Because I needed to be free.”
My voice broke on the last word, splintering as I held back a sob. I hated to sound small and weak.
Andrek didn’t respond. His eyes narrowed, and he waited for me to continue. The silence stretched, but I didn’t sense hostility, more of a curiosity.
“On Earth,” I started, then stopped. How did you explain an entire world, a complete system of control, to someone who’d never lived under it?
“On Earth, they watch everything. Our every movement gets recorded somewhere. Every transaction you make, every place you go, every person you talk to. They track it all. Record it all.” I forced myself to look up at him.
“They call it safety. Security and protection from threats. It started decades ago after the invasion. But when you grow up knowing that everything you do is being observed and catalogued and analyzed... it doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like suffocation.”
His tail swished once, and his face took on a contemplative look. “But surely many humans live contentedly under such conditions?”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Contentedly? Doubtful. I would say more of compliance. When you’ve never known anything different, when everyone around you accepts things as normal, it’s easier to go along with it.
” I rubbed my face, trying to organize my thoughts.
“My parents loved it. They thought it made them good and responsible citizens. I grew up with phrases like ‘if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.’”
“But you had something to hide,” Andrek said, his voice low.
“In a sense.”
“How so?”
“I had to hide myself,” I explained. “What I mean by that is I hid who I am and what I wanted because none of it fit into their plan for me.”
I stood up, too agitated to sit still. The low chair had been making my legs cramp, and I needed to stretch.
I paced to the window with a polarized surface that showed Andrek’s reflection but revealed the alien sky to me.
Two moons hung in the purple-green twilight, one large and silver, one small and rust-red.
“My parents had my whole life mapped out,” I continued, my voice steadier now that I wasn’t looking at him.
“They sent me to the right schools, which meant the ones with the best surveillance integration and the highest compliance scores. They planned what they considered the right career path for me, which meant something in data management or social optimization, something that fed the system. I dealt with all that, but the worst was when they told me they planned the right marriage.”
“Arranged?” I caught the hint of disapproval in Andrek’s question.
“Not officially or legally, because the government frowns upon it, but it’s very common.
But…” I turned to face him. “When your parents have been best friends with another couple since university, when they’ve been planning since you were children that their kids would ‘make such a perfect match,’ when every family gathering includes comments about how good you look together, how compatible your metrics are…
” I shrugged. “It’s not forced. It’s inevitable and expected.
And if you resist, if you try to say no, you become the problem.
They labeled me ‘the difficult one’ and ‘the ungrateful daughter who can’t see what’s best for her.
’” I shrugged again. “But they went too far and had a lawyer draft a formal contract because that’s what his parents wanted.
Proof I wouldn’t destroy their business once I married into it. ”
Andrek’s expression shifted, something in the set of his jaw, the angle of his ears. “They didn’t.”
“Oh, they did. No one wanted me, a veritable nobody from a middle-class family, to mess up the Fitzsimmons family name.” Their surname tasted sour in my mouth. “They’re a good family, with good scores and better prospects.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “He didn’t even propose to me.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. He signed a piece of paper and sent it by courier to us. I had three days to sign it. That would be the whole proposal. A piece of paper!”
“A female should have the proposal of her dreams.”
I wiped a tear streaking down my cheek. “Well, my dream was a proposal where my future spouse got down on one knee in front of everyone: our families and friends, and everyone applauded. I wanted my mother to cry happy tears, and then I…”
“You would say yes,” Andrek finished.
“I wanted the moment with everyone watching, expecting, celebrating?” I sank back into the uncomfortable chair. “But, I would have said yes, smiled and worn his ring with pride. Instead, I got a piece of paper with his signature scrawled at the bottom and a ring in a clear bag, not even a box.”
Andrek looked horrified.
“I wore the ring for a day. Its weight felt like a shackle rather than a promise. For my family, I tried wearing it, but Anthony Louis chose it without asking me. He picked a traditional design approved by the Matrimonial Standards Board. It was tasteful and beautiful, but it wasn’t something I would have picked for myself. ”
“A Matrimonial Standards Board?”
I laughed. “There’s a board for everything.”
“Did you love him?”
“No. He saw me as an asset,” I murmured.
“On paper, we are a good match. I could be someone who would look right at his side during company events and produce children on the approved timeline. When I tried to talk to him about my feelings, about wanting something different, he’d get this confused look.
Like I was speaking a language he didn’t understand.
He’d say things like, ‘but we’re compatible,’ and ‘the metrics don’t lie,’ and ‘our parents see our relationship as beneficial.’ As if love could be reduced to data points and compatibility scores.
” I sighed. “If I loved someone, even the age-gap between us would not have been a problem. But I don’t love him, and in the few meetings I had with him, he acted either aloof or too much like my father than a potential partner. ”
Andrek’s tail stilled. “And your family supported this?”
“Supported it? They orchestrated it.” The anger I suppressed for so long bubbled up.
“My mother kept sending me articles about wedding planning and optimal child-spacing. My father talked about Anthony Louis’s career prospects as if he were discussing a stock investment.
All my friends told me I was lucky to have such a ‘stable match.’ One night, I broke down and told my mother I couldn’t do it, that I didn’t love Anthony Louis and didn’t think I ever could. ”
I stopped. My mother’s disappointment weighed heavy in my chest. “My mother,” I paused, “she promised not to tell my father, but the next day, he looked at me like I was a stranger, someone who was betraying everything they’d raised me to be.
They told me I was being selfish,” I finished, my voice a whisper.
“That love was a luxury, not a requirement. That I needed to think about my responsibilities, my family’s reputation, and the social contract.
I asked for a few more days before I signed it.
That night, I heard my parents talking about intervention programs and counseling to ‘adjust my perspective.’ My father wanted to put me on medication from the Fitzsimmons company to ‘stabilize my mood.’” My hands shook.
“They were going to fix me, Andrek. Make me compliant.”
Andrek sat in silence, and I couldn’t read his expression.
I’d never said all of this out loud before, not even to myself in the privacy of my own thoughts.
“So I ran,” I said. “I found a loophole in the emigration protocols, forged some compliance documents, and applied to every off-world position I could find. Most of them rejected me outright. I had the wrong skills, the wrong background, wrong everything. But your posting…” I met his eyes.
“Your posting sounded desperate enough to take a chance on someone with no experience.”