Several rows back, a single fox-like creature sat restrained in a row all to itself. Its intelligent eyes darted this way and that, and it flexed its fingers beneath its restraints. Even bound securely, it still moved with a surprising agility and it was clear to Ian that it was quite a dangerous creature, indeed.
And sitting silently next to Ian and the Twiller was what appeared to be a potted Ficus tree wearing a lei. It turned out to be the best traveling companion Ian had ever had.
The flight was long, but uneventful, and Ian actually managed to relax and catch some sleep. Which was just as well, since he had already seen the movie, Happy, Texas, several years ago on a flight to Chicago, and it was so bad he had seriously considered walking out.
When Ian awoke, the shuttle was landing, and he was herded out the door once it had arrived at the terminal. He flowed outside, following the mass of deported aliens, and tried to keep the Twiller close to him. He emerged into a throng of people and a traffic scene that reminded him of El Leigh, with the principle difference being that all the aircars here were yellow.
There was also a good bit more honking.
Ian stood in line at the taxi stand by the curb and, after an hour of waiting, finally was able to get into a cab. It was filthy. “Where to?” asked the cab driver, its accent thick and difficult to understand.
“Take me to the nearest hotel,” Ian said. “The nearest nice hotel,” he amended.
The cab driver nodded and sped off, which was quite an accomplishment considering the level of traffic. But the driver weaved in and out and up and around in a display that was either masterful, or insane. Ian sat back and figured it was better to assume it was the former. He tried to avoid looking out the windshield, but he did catch a glimpse of a rather large sign that stretched above the stack of cars leaving the airport. Ian got a good view of it as the cab driver came within inches of hitting it. It read:
WELCOME TO YORK
The Best City In The Universe
You Got A Problem With That, Jerk?
Ian shrugged, sat back in his seat, tried to ignore how often the driver hit or nearly missed pedestrians and other aircabs, and settled in for the ride.
. . . . .
Ian arrived at the hotel, asked the aircab driver to wait a moment, rushed into the towering building and up to a few rooms where he could deposit some Bibles, then came back to pay the cab fare. The driver pointed to a sign on the dashboard that read, “Tips are voluntary. My refraining from spitting on you is also voluntary.”
Thinking fast, Ian added 20% to the fare and swiped his credit chit. The cabbie sped off.
Back inside the hotel, Ian got himself a room and rode up on the longest elevator ride of his life. Not that the elevator moved slowly; on the contrary, it surged upward at incredible speed. Ian got some sense of just how high he was when he entered his room and realized that the windows wouldn’t open because the hotel extended past the atmosphere of the planet. He tried to look down, and he saw a continent beneath him and a vast ocean covering most of the visible half of the planet. Very nice—an ocean view, he thought contentedly, not realizing that, from this height, guests on the other side of the towering hotel could see the even larger ocean on the opposite side of the continent.
Ian was surprised to see that he wasn’t even in the tallest building in York, as several other buildings climbed even higher than the one he was in. Ian tried to imagine how densely packed the city must be to require buildings of such inconceivable height. He failed utterly.
Ian sat back down on the small bed and noticed that his room, while impressively furnished, was actually quite small. There was a tiny dresser by the side of the bed with only a single drawer barely large enough to hold a Bible (Ian had to remove the phone book, which was electronic but still fairly massive, to fit the Bible inside). Ian activated the phone book, and the display informed him that there were over 10 trillion people living in the city, and that the phone book used several billion terabytes of memory, which accounted for its size. Ian pressed the command to go to the first page of the restaurant listings, and saw several screens full of listings of places named “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” before he quickly shut it off and tossed it aside.
Ian was feeling a bit claustrophobic in the small room, so he decided to head down the elevator and go for a walk. He exited out the lobby into a thick crowd of people walking past on the sidewalk. Pretty soon, he was swept up by the crowd, which was fine since Ian didn’t really know where he was going anyway. The Twiller managed to follow him by hovering more or less over Ian’s head.
After a pretty short time of being jostled and pushed by the crowd of people, Ian longed for the relative space and serenity of his tiny hotel room. He moved his way to the edge of the crowd and latched on to the door of a tall building. He heaved it open and stepped inside, managing to hold the door open against the onrushing tide of people just long enough for the Twiller to follow him in.
Inside the building was a very small foyer with a reception desk staffed by a clearly overworked alien with several sets of ears and mouths. She was holding several phones up to her face and talking into most of them at the same time. Above her head was a nice plaque that read “Aaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaaaaa, & Aaaaaab.” Ian wanted to ask the receptionist about it, but she seemed quite busy enough without him bothering her. There was a frosted glass door to the side of the reception desk, so Ian opened it and stepped inside.
Ian entered the crowded room to find rows upon rows of aliens strapped into elaborate chairs. Each had some sort of apparatus covering the tops of their heads, and a snaking mass of cables led from their heads to data sockets in the floors and walls. As Ian walked down the aisles, he saw that each alien’s eyes were shut, but still seemed to be moving rapidly behind various types of eyelids. One alien caught his attention—her eyes were open and she was not fidgeting quite as much as the others.
“Um, excuse me,” Ian asked tentatively, “can I ask you what is going on here?”
“What do you mean?” the alien replied. “We’re just working.”
“Working? What are you working on?”
“Didn’t you see the sign when you came in? At least, I assume it’s still there,” she said, mostly to herself. “This is a law firm.”
“Ah, I see,” Ian said, and frowned. He looked up and down the rows at the dozens of aliens strapped into their chairs and their computer interfaces. He noted a small nameplate nearby that read “Fungible Billing Unit 47398-D.”
“In fact,” she continued, “you’re lucky you caught me on my five-minute break.”
“That is lucky,” Ian confirmed. “I’m glad I came at this time of day then.”
“Time of day?” the alien asked. “Oh, no, don’t be silly. I don’t get a break every day. It’s five minutes a year. Standard firm policy.”
Ian just goggled at her.
“I mean,” she continued, “any more than that, and how would we possibly make our billable hour requirements?” She chuckled. “It would be mathematically impossible.”
“But–but you just sit here, strapped in, connected to computers, working all day and night, except for five minutes a year?” The alien nodded, her headpiece and its assorted wires bobbing up and down, but clearly attached firmly to her head with thick metal screws. Ian suppressed a shiver. “What sort of work do you actually do?”
“Well, mostly really high-end stuff, now that I’ve been here for over 15 years,” she said proudly. “I work on contracts, leases, big mergers and acquisitions deals. All very big, very important stuff, for huge intergalactic corporations.”
“I see,” said Ian, suitably impressed. “So, you write these contracts and leases and such?”
“Oh, no, no,” the alien lawyer laughed. “Those are all standard boilerplate, forms that have been assimilated from hundreds of cultures over thousands of years and subjected to millions of lawsuits. By this point, they’re pretty much iron-clad.” She paused thoughtfully. “There are still plenty of
lawsuits over them, of course.” She seemed vaguely troubled, but quickly dismissed the thought.
“Well, if you don’t actually write these documents, then what are you doing with them?”
“I review digital images of documents that have been scanned into the system. Then I compare them letter-for-letter with the original electronic versions to ensure they match up.”
Ian goggled again. Even the Twiller seemed suitably horrified. “You mean they take computer documents, print them out, scan them back in, feed them to you through those …”—Ian waved a hand at her head—“wires, and then you manually go through and make sure they’re the same as the original computer files they came from?”
“Yup!” she said, “that’s it. Sure, it’s not quite as exciting as they make it out to be on all the holovid shows, but I get to work on some of the biggest deals in the galaxy.”
“But, is there any reason to do that? I mean, can’t that all be done better by computer?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Maybe those sneaky lawyers on the other side snuck an extra comma into the printouts somewhere. Who knows? But I need all the billable hours I can get, so I don’t ask those sorts of questions.”
“But is any of what you’re doing necessary?”
“Of course! Our clients need to prove they spent enough money and effort on due diligence so they’re protected when they get sued for negligence later.”
Ian shook his head to clear it. “Um, and let me try to ask this as delicately as possible, but doesn’t it drive you barking mad?”
The alien appeared ready to retort with a well-practiced denial, but then something about her countenance changed. Her shoulders drooped a bit, which was difficult, considering how she was strapped into the chair. “Well, yeah,” she admitted. “It can get a bit dull.”
“A bit dull?” Ian repeated incredulously. “That’s the worst, most awful and inhumane thing I’ve ever heard. There should be some sort of lawsuit to prevent this kind of treatment!”
“Oh certainly,” she said, brightening, “that’s exactly what I’m working on now! Of course, I’m defending my employer against the charges, but,” she whispered, looking around nervously, “I wouldn’t mind if we lost this case. Anyway, it’s on its thirty-ninth appeal, so it should be resolved any century now.”
Ian began to reply, to say something, anything to comfort the miserable, wretched creature, but she cut him off.
“Sorry,” she said, “my five minutes are up.” With that, her eyes snapped shut and her body jerked rigid.
Ian had nightmares about that vision nearly every night for the rest of his life.
. . . . .
Ian walked around York for a while, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. More specifically, the sights and sounds of millions of other beings clustered tightly around him, which blocked most of his view of the city itself. He could also see huge neon signs advertising various goods and services, and he occasionally bumped into one of an inordinate number of hot dog carts. The Twiller hurled itself into the pocket of Ian’s robe and stayed there for protection.
Eventually, he found his way to a large park that was marginally less crowded than the surrounding city. Through an incredible stroke of luck, an alien wearing a jogging suit got up from its seat on a bench just as Ian passed by, and Ian gratefully sat down on it to catch his breath.
“Pretty hectic, huh?” asked a petite female alien seated on the bench next to Ian. “You should see this place on a weekday.”
Ian smiled at her, resolutely trying not to imagine things any more crowded than they already were. “It’s quite impressive,” he said.
“You’re new around here, aren’t you?” she asked, twirling her hair casually around a blue finger. Responding to Ian’s questioning look, she added, “It’s pretty easy to tell. Lots of people are overwhelmed by York on their first trip here. But it’s really an amazing city once you get to know the place. There are just so many things to do! Restaurants and shows and exhibits. Oh, and, it’s the most prosperous job market on this side of the galaxy.”
“Yeah,” Ian grimaced. “I’ve already seen some of the thriving job market in action.” He shuddered, glad to be a Gideon instead of a lawyer. “Actually,” he added, “we have a similar city back home where I come from. But it’s called New York. Isn’t that funny?”
“That is strange,” Quirol agreed. “Especially since this city used to be called New York as well.” Seeing Ian’s surprised look, she continued, “Of course, it hasn’t been called that for a very long time. It didn’t make sense, you see, once the city was more than a few years old and had lost that ‘new city smell.’ And, now, can you imagine calling a city ‘new’ once it’s been around for hundreds of years?” She chuckled. “I mean, you should see how filthy the subways here are. I imagine they’ll have to start calling it ‘Old York’ pretty soon.”
Ian muttered an embarrassed sound of agreement.
“So,” she asked, “what are you doing in York? Just visiting? Seeing the sights?”
“Well … not really. I kinda ended up here by accident.”
“Oh,” she laughed, “where were you trying to go instead?”
“That is a complicated question,” Ian sighed. “I’m just trying to get home.”
Something in Ian’s expression must have alerted his new friend to Ian’s sense that he would never see his home again, and that his home was a very long way away, indeed. Instantly, the alien’s features softened even further, and she seemed to look almost protectively at Ian. She scooted a little closer on the bench.
“My name is Quirol,” she said, setting down a bag she had been holding and offering her hand for Ian to shake. “Have you eaten?”
“No,” Ian said, surprised. He actually had not eaten in quite some time. There had been no meal on Ian’s latest shuttle flight, and his stomach rumbled as he thought about it. “I guess I am a bit hungry,” he sheepishly admitted.
“Is that why your body just growled at me?” Quirol asked, sliding back to her previous position a little further away on the bench. “Is your species carnivorous or … ?”
“No, no,” Ian assured her. “I mean, yes, in fact. I do eat meat. But not people. Or aliens. Other sentient beings. No, I mean …” Ian fumbled to explain such a simple concept as I eat hamburgers, but not friends I just met on a park bench.
Quirol laughed a quite intoxicating little laugh. “You mean you just eat meat from animals not smart enough or cute enough for eating them to bother you, and you’ve never so much as seen where what you eat actually comes from, let alone hunted or killed a meal yourself.”
“Yes,” Ian said with a chuckle, “that’s it exactly.” Somehow, he felt that he and Quirol would be good friends.
“Well,” said Quirol, reaching into her bag and throwing a last handful of crumbs at a flock of pigeons milling about her feet, “we can’t have you starving to death here on the streets of York.” She seemed to size Ian up and make a decision. “Why don’t you come up to my place and I’ll make us dinner?”
“That’s very kind of you,” Ian replied.
“Great!” she said, jumping to her feet enthusiastically. “I hope you like cucumber sandwiches.”
It was at that point that Ian simply decided to fall in love.
. . . . .
Luckily, Quirol’s apartment building was nearby, and Ian followed her there in a happy daze. It was the first time on his travels that he stopped thinking about getting back home to Earth.
The building was quite old and a bit run-down, which served as a reminder why calling the city “New York” would have sounded foolish. The elevator made frightening noises and it was one of the shorter buildings in the city, as it only had a few thousand floors. Quirol’s apartment was only about a hundred floors up (“There’s not much of a view,” she had admitted), and Ian followed her down a short hallway before stopping in front of her door.
“I have to warn you,” she said as she fum
bled for her key and prepared to open the door, “my apartment is a bit on the smallish side.”
Ian assured her that he didn’t mind, and she pulled open the door and stepped inside, Ian just behind her.
Ian took one step into the apartment and bumped into Quirol, who had reached the other side of the room. To call it tiny would have been a gross insult to the word; perhaps if it had been triple the size it might have qualified. The entire apartment was miniscule, just barely large enough for both Ian and Quirol to fit inside at the same time. Behind Ian, the door swung closed, which only added to his claustrophobia. The room would have been small for a closet, and it was made smaller by drawers and storage cubbies packed around the perimeter of the room, leaving only a small space in the middle for them both to stand. In addition, there were various cages containing small creatures that looked like hamsters and reptiles and pigeons with broken wings. A pair of cats poked out of cubbies near the floor and rubbed up against Ian’s legs.
The entire apartment consisted of just the single rectangular room, which was about five feet long and three feet wide. A bar ran lengthwise across the room above Ian’s head, where several sets of clothes were hung and pushed up against the far wall. On that wall, in among various cabinets and cages, was a small window that offered a view of the side of a nearby building. Not much of a view, indeed.
“See?” Quirol chuckled self-consciously. “I told you it was a tad cozy.” She picked up one of the cats. “And I do have a few friends here that I take care of.” The cat mewed in affirmation.
Ian smiled lamely. Quirol took off her shoes and slid them into a small cubby near her feet. There was a tiny sink that folded up against the wall in one corner, and the other corner had what appeared to be a chair, although Ian was pretty certain that the lid lifted up and it also served as the toilet.
“It’s very … homey,” Ian offered, aware that the long silence had betrayed his shock, and he cursed himself for his rudeness. He offered up the brightest expression he could muster.
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