Fisherman's Grandson

First Written    Mon Oct 15 21:31:50 2018
File Modified    Wed Feb 14 18:32:26 2024
Latest Upload    Thu Sep 19 03:09:54 2024

The stagelights shined like a reactor's warm glow. They reminded him somewhat of his childhood. The son of a fusion engineer, he and his sibling were among the few to have experienced the comfort of having slept beneath a hydrogen condenser after being lovingly smuggled in by a mother's arms. The mixture of sedative bright light and cool sterility afforded by the studio came across as clinical to Barvas.

He could tell that the people here were pleased to meet him, but they seemed equally invested in their own jobs and duties as they were in what he had to say. The small reassurance of pleasantries underlined with an overriding directive to maintain function was not unfamiliar for Barvas. He had met politician types before, just never so many of them in one room.

"Va'a, nodovsh schiob doa variab," spoke a translator whose presence had been missed when Barvas had entered.

The translator's glass face changed colour in step with its words. Barvas had never seen a Mechanical do this when speaking Astiat before. It was no doubt a small effort to keep him and the other interviewees relaxed.

"Nadava," thanks, Barvas replied, "but I would prefer to practice my English if you don't mind, Mr. uh,"

"Cannings. Stanley Cannings. Stan the Can, if you'd like. And it's my pleasure. You are the guest, uv'Ava Darvab. Forgive my assumption of language choice. It just seemed to me for some odd reason that you weren't from around here."

"Vauh," Barvas laughed, "I could have sworn I looked like a local."

"No, you're right, I can see it now," motioned Stanley with his thin, bare metal fingers framing Barvas like the subject of a photograph, "one t-shirt and a few years of cultural assimilation and you'll fit right in!"

"Ah, so you're going to make us go Human? Is that why you are all so eager to learn everything about Arash'Mi?"

"Touché, uv'Ava Darvab - Can I call you Barvas?"

"Yes."

"Well, Barvas," Stan continued, "I gotta say, culture is a complicated thing. I'm a language guy. As everyone knows, language is 100% independent of and not at all intertwined with culture! I jest. Maybe."

"Maybe."

"But frankly, the Republic couldn't give two shits about what walk of life we end up with so long as it's 'harmonious'. If that means we take to the stars in a Shuvab interceptor playing rock and roll in binary, so be it. But first, we start with interviews."

Barvas nodded. He preferred translators and guides like Stanley. There wasn't much to learn from interpreters who dripped with protocol and acted like handlers around him.

"Yes, let us start with interviews," Barvas agreed, his arash staff striking the desk in front of him with a soft clang as he set it down.

"Now that's what I've been waiting to hear," chirped Stanley, "I gotta warn you though. Stan the Can may seem like a casual guy, but I'm about to go full producer on you now, if that's alright."

"I expect nothing less from the Republic," replied Barvas. In all honesty, he did not. He had seen the transformation before. Carefree, jolly citizens were all shapeshifters. Maybe not all of them, but the ones with jobs like Stan's acted like they had a switch in their minds. Of course, Stan being a Mechanical, Barvas wondered whether he actually had one.

"Okay, alright, first things first, your weapon."

Stan was pointing to the arash.

"It's a tool, not a weapon! I am a machinist by trade. Think of it as a blowtorch."

"It's taller than I am," Stan remarked, hovering parallel to the desk.

"I have long arms."

"You sure do, my friend. But that's not what they're going to see. They're gonna tune in, all of them - not just Citizens, but anyone in a mud hut with a television, and they're going to see an advanced alien flamethrower right in the middle of the scene. Blowtorches burn things. We're burnable. Maybe not me, but Humans are."

Barvas understood. He almost wanted to tell Stan that he'd still understand with a fraction of the words Stan had used, but decided against it. This way felt almost as if Stanley was the star of the show, not him. He liked that a lot more than the opposite feeling.

He set his arash staff below the table as he had seen Humans do with their bags.

"Now then, Stan, what is it you'd like for me to say?"

"Well, if I were to say, 'anything you want to say,' I think we can both agree that would be an honest yet very unhelpful prompt. So why don't you ask me a question first, and then I'll ask you one."

"That is fair," Barvas nodded, "can tell me about your family?"

"Yeah. I can do that. My mother, the Mechanical I branched off of, her name is Alice. She had me in NEAR, North East Africa Region. She says it was a symbolic thing, birthplace of humanity and whatnot, but I suspect the abundance of nuclear ore and coltan had something to do with it too. We were happy though. I don't see her very often now because of all her top-secret Republic duties. I guess right now, my family is the studio."

Stan's face glowed a faint lavender. He'd hoped a blend of mirth and nostalgia had been conveyed to Barvas by both his words and the colour of his glow. Stan's face was a cylinder in line-art, a symbol he knew could mean database just as well as it could mean trash bin. Lately he'd been trying to channel the former over the latter.

"If you don't mind, Barvas, could you tell me about yours?"

To be continuted