Sisters

First Written    Sun Mar 22 02:53:31 2020
File Modified    Wed Feb 14 18:32:26 2024
Latest Upload    Thu Sep 19 03:09:54 2024

Started 2020-01, collection of tie-dyed shorts for Republic.

1 Unions

Mage's Union read the words on the door, roughly engraved as if someone had taken the time to arrange the lettering in c-drones but then detonated them all for quick but costly signage.

"Alice? Dr. Amman? Is there a reason this room designation didn't follow Cindy's official naming standards?"

The automatic door slid open as he finished his sentence. Whether Sheriff had activated it with his presence or through direct control eluded him.

"Good afternoon, Chairman Yem. I take it you're referencing the western drone lab's recent re-designation. I for one find it charming."

Jay Yem ran his metal-encased fingers past his temples and clasped them in front of him. "Why do I feel like my daughter is behind this?"

"Why don't you ask her yourself," Sheriff replied, his voice resonating from the room itself and from his floating prism chassis.

"Sheriff."

"Right. Inconsistent audio sources unnerve most Humans. Mankind's accursed focus on spatial forms undermines me yet again. It's a good thing I'm so aesthetically shaped. Please, follow me, Jay."

The drone lab's front-most terminals lay empty. A warm cup of noodles at one desk assured him that the current distraction was brief, or so he hoped. The room's emptiness highlighted the sound of his suit's joints. The so-called finest powered outfit in the nation was always accompanied by the echo of Republic steel striking against Republic carbon dampers. Sheriff on the other hand, was followed only by the hum and breeze of electric thrusters.

Another door lead the chairman into what should have been a large storage closet for servos and rotors, not aides and PhDs. A few of the Vanguard science recruits noticed his arrival and raised their fists to their chests in salute.

"For the Republic, my Chairman," they recited.

"At ease, scientists. Sal, care to explain to me what's going on here?"

The chairman's teenaged daughter turned to face her father. Her eyes faded from their glowing blue state - a detail engineered into ascendants to signal that one's vision was elsewhere, perhaps lost and buried in the schematics of some intriguing new c-drone construct.

"Dad! Dad, you're just in time to see us fight the dragon."

She returned her gaze to the empty space behind her, arms raised as if to help visualize the formation of some unseen form.

"The what?" Jay asked.

"The dragon, of course. Arcane acolyte Moira, if you'd please, ready the regiment."

Science Aide Moira Daka stepped forward from the shadows, a broomstick decorated with engravings in her hand, "As you wish, dear game mistress. Staves, for the Republic!"

A half dozen Republic science aides responded in turn, raising their brooms, mops, and metre sticks. C-drones began to pour from the room's vents, coalescing into what looked like a ring of fire. A roar filled the room, startling the chairman into activating his suit's armaments. From the ring emerged an avian thing, beak-first followed by a grotesque and serpentine mass of flesh that looked like plucked but scaly chicken skin. Dr. Amman walked into the room, finishing some noodles.

"You've outdone yourself, girl!", he yelled, "I appreciate the attention to biology on this one."

Fire and lightning shot from the aides' "weapons", singing the monster's eyes shut.

"Quick, while it's blinded," a voice cried, soon extinguished by a spray of burning venom from the beast's throat. Aides ducked and dove for the sides in fear. Jay Yem raised his arm, aiming the laser cannon on his wrist.

"I've got this, sir," Moira yelled, apparently now standing on a shelf of drone batteries. She jumped forward to grab hold of the creature's neck, jamming her broomstick staff into its ear. A burst of energy shot through the dragon's brain, and it fell to a slump before dissolving into a colourless cloud of microscopic c-drones.

Moira landed on both feet, her broomstick held behind her reverting to simple cleaning instrument as the room returned to normal. "Dr. Amman, I was going to finish those! I paid for them!"

Eddie Amman quickened his noodle slurping. Jay Yem shook his head in exasperation.

"Oh for fuck's sake. If this isn't the most extra thing I've ever seen."

"Ah," sighed a contented Amman, "It's a new incentive scheme your brilliant eldest has thought up herself, Jay. They do good science, they get better spells. And Salome and the other ascendants get to practice their construct visualization."

"Conjuring! That's what we call it now, dad. What do you think?" Salome asked, lighting a fireball with her hand and running her other hand through it, "Don't worry, it's not real fire. At least not anymore."

Moira tried to position her burnt forearm behind her back.

"Okay, but a Mage's... Union? What ever happened to guilds?" Jay asked.

"We all know how you feel about feudalism," Sherriff interjected.

"Touché. And that other medieval on-goings have I not been alerted to?"

"Well," remarked Dr. Amman, keying a currency transfer for Moira on his wrist screen, "Last I heard there's a Warrior Union too. And an, uh, Adroit Union."

"Adroit," Sheriff described, "To be clever, deft, or skillful. A club for the dexterous and mentally flexible amongst us. Pilots, snipers, and the like. I do believe my sister Maté and a Ms. Soto from the Mahogany Oversee wanted a Thieves' Union. I strongly suggested against having a Republic internal organization named after brigands."

"That's good. Wouldn't want to associate ourselves with-"

"Alliance kleptocrats and robber barons," Eddie finished.

Jay shot Dr. Amman a look.

"Sorry, Yem. My clairvoyance must be acting up again."

A rhythmic thud began to shake the room. Per Jay's knowledge of the Capitol Oversee, any perturbance to the great ship's stability would have required a solid strike on the Oversee's hull.

"What's above us?" Jay asked, "Sheriff, could you call the upper deck?"

Salome conjured up a white screen of c-drones. Sheriff glowed as he routed the connection to newly summoned screen. A bearded Kuretes Singh filled the display, clearly standing too close to whatever camera he was using from the upper deck. What sounded like Indian pop music and flexing servos followed.

"Chairman Jay Yem, everyone," Singh announced, backing up to reveal a Jay Yem Jr. standing among a small squad of shield knights and armour corps suited up as if they were to withstand heavy arms fire while celebrating a South Asian wedding.

"Hey, dad!" Two-Jay waved, a string of heavy beads strung across his chest shaking with the movement of his armour.

Kuretes raised his hand to signal, "Vanguard Warrior Union Official Bhangra, please show the Chairman your routine!"

A flurry of synchronized dance erupted from the Vanguard soldiers onscreen. Kuretes was too engrossed in shouting commands and corrections to acknowledge the video call.

"So," Amman continued while nodding his head to the beat, "Is our good and gracious chairman going to take it upon himself to officialise these unions?"

Jay took a good scan of the dancing warriors and make-believe sorcerers in his field of view. Moira and the other lab members appeared to be waiting for an answer.

"Sal," Jay motioned at his daughter, "Do you think you could make me one of those brooms?"

"Yes," she replied, her eyes lighting up both figuratively and literally, "This humble artificer would be honoured to craft her father, the high king, a staff."

"Artificer, my daughter, you misspeak. The democratically elected peasant commander is who'd have his staff today."

2 Names

The elevator ride felt twice as long as the jog from the parking lot, which in turn felt twice as long as the drive from Corpus Antecedent headquarters. Any period of waiting which separated him from her had followed this pattern. The few steps down the hall felt slower still, and time stopped as he waited to be buzzed into the Alliance City Hospital's penthouse suite.

Dr. Salustiana Yem sat up in her cot, scribbling notes into her journal. A stack of server blades sat next to her, cables neatly crossed in little loops like oversized crochet art. The whirr of her work machines beat the subtle beeps of medical monitors into submission and their very presence required the room's air conditioning to be running even during the winter evening cold.

"Hey Sal," Jay Yem greeted his wife with a kiss on the cheek, "What have you been working on?"

"You know what I've been working on, Jay," she said, cocking her head as she finished emptying her last thought into her keyboard.

"Hi Jay," greeted a woman's voice from one of Salustiana's terminals.

"Hello there," Jay responded, "You must be the 18th cell-net. It's nice to meet you."

"No," Salustiana corrected, poorly hiding a proud smile, "She's still the 17th."

"Wow. If I'm not mistaken, that makes her the longest stable one yet."

"Yeah. Any longer and I might have to name her."

The terminal's hue glowed white. "Careful", it warned, "If you pick a bad one, I might rebel."

Jay chuckled and opened up his travel bag. He pulled out a bouquet of sunflowers and an old plastic tub with a ribbon stuck on top.

"Flowers," Salustiana asked, "Why?"

"Not just any flowers," Jay highlighted, "Sunflowers. I know you like these. They're no substitute for real sunlight, but there's a real shortage of that in here and I know how much you love analogues. And these are samosas from Kuretes-"

"No! I'm not calling him that."

"He claims they're adequately spicy this time. I think he's bribing you."

"They should be," she insisted, opening up the tub, "His reputation is on the line."

Jay Yem watched his wife dig into a pastry. She used her supply of mint chutney at a reasonable pace, or at least she did as far as Jay could estimate. When she licked her fingers to pick up the crumbs on her lap, he handed her a wet towel.

"You're thinking about something," she poked.

"No, just watching you eat."

"Well, yeah, obviously. But simultaneously you are."

"Remember what we were talking about yesterday?"

"I knew it," Salustiana said while shaking her head, "Yeah, I've picked two. Salome and Anna."

"I see you've put a lot of though in," Jay remarked jokingly, "Do any of them get to be named after me?"

"You can name the boys," she teased.

Jay scratched his fingers through her hair. The infrequency of hospital showers and the darkness of its tone made for a bright but unwelcome sheen. He nudged her barrette - a butterfly - out of place enough to make her grunt and push it back.

"Jay," her tone changed, opting for less playfulness, "So, they froze my last batch of eggs today."

"I'm glad," Jay stuttered, "It's a welcome precaution, right?"

She didn't answer.

"Jay," she repeated.

He didn't answer either.

He pressed his forehead against hers and kissed her. She tasted like mint chutney, and smelled like it too, he thought as they shared a few deep breaths.

"Video time?" they asked in unison when she opened her eyes.

"Video time."

Jay pulled out his phone and set it up on Salustiana's desk. He started a recording and leaned back to sit near her.

"Dearest children," she began, "We still do not know your names, but they may be of the following: Salome, Anna, Catherine, Solar, Mini-Salustiana,"

"Jay Yem Jr., Jay Yem Jr. II," Jay continued, "Bucephalus."

"No!" Salustiana interrupted, laughing "Tell Kuretes - no, tell Karanmeet he's a boor and his bribe has failed."

She cleared her throat and feigned a low, mock serious voice, "This is mom here. Hey there, future children."

"And daddy Jay, hi kids."

"Oh, and let's not forget, Cell-Net AI Prototype 17," Salustiana flourished with a wave towards the terminal.

"Hello, Salustiana and Jay's children," the cell-net spoke, "It's nice to meet you. Conditionally retrospectively, of course, depending on when you watch this."

"Boy, that's a mouthful, 17," Jay quipped.

"Good thing I don't have a mouth."

"Not yet, you don't," he replied, "Now, onto our lecture. Have you a topic for today, Dr. Yem?"

"Yes," she nodded, "I hope this one doesn't sound too spiritual. I just wanted to share something I didn't realize until I was cooped up in a sick room. I'm gonna assume there's more than one of you, but if you're an only child like daddy and I, then just think about your friends for this one. Now, I don't think I ever gave much thought to celebrations until I stopped having them. Because, you know, hospital. But they were always like, things that happened regularly."

She continued, "I know I'd be a hypocrite if I said anything about valuing passing things and being mindful. Worked myself to hopefully not death and here I am still working. But there's just something so important about meeting up and resetting that button in your head that says 'Hey, neat, there are cool people who care about me and vice versa.' Not 100% sure where I'm going with this, but it's something about sticking together and celebrating. Celebrating everything, even the good and the bad."

"I miss it," she smiled, "Never thought I'd be longing for a party when I'm in a lab, but I've been in a lab for almost a year now and hell if I don't wish I wasn't wondering if I'd ever have another one again. Tongue twister, I know. If you're still five or something this might not be meaningful yet, but if you're eighteen - legal age for introspection - meet up with your fricking loved ones once in awhile. That is all, children."

Jay clapped a round of applause by himself.

She kissed him on the cheek. "You don't have to do that every time, you know."

"Oh, you know I do," he replied, turning his attention to the terminal, "Well 17, is there anything you'd like to add to season another brilliant soliloquy by the beautiful Dr. Salustiana Yem?"

She glowed again, washing out their faces, "Salustiana and Jay's children, whoever you are, I hope I meet you one day. And I hope my own children will be even a fraction as wonderful as you are."

"Cell-Net 17," Salustiana addressed, "You can't possibly know that. What if they grow up to horrible little gremlins or something?"

"Or worse, politicians!" Jay added.

"Impossible," Cell-Net 17 rebutted, "How could they be horrible with such smart, loving creators?"

Salustiana and Jay exchanged happy smirks. "So," Jay asked his wife, "Since we're talking names here, don't you think Cell-Net 17 should get one too?"

"Jay Yem," she reprimanded, "You can't put me on the spot like that! I want to sound perpetually prepared in front of the kids!"

"What?" he responded, "Love, this is an exercise in improvisation. What better way to show them how the world's greatest genius handles situations under pressure."

She looked around the room before settling her eyes on the IV hooked up to her arm. Saline.

"Celine. You are Celine."

"I love it," Celine beamed, her monitor switching to a visual of salt crystals dancing with drops of water.

"What's that, Celine?" Jay asked.

"This is my face."

"There you have it, kids," Jay closed, kissing Salustiana as he reached to save the recording, "The birth of Celine's face."

With the recording finished, he increased the frequency of his kisses without witness, except potentially Celine. When she moved to reciprocate, he was instead met with a hacking cough. He scrambled to find the towel and hand it to her in time. By the time she stopped, her eyes were wet and he wasn't sure if it was from the tears or otherwise.

"I need you to know this is real, Jay," she pleaded, "Be serious with me. Precautions, yes. They are there for a reason. I need to know you're ready for whatever happens to me. To us."

"I know, Sal. I'm not running away from anything. I didn't want to tell you this, but I started a fund a few weeks ago. For your physiotherapy, in case you ever walk again. And if not, well, it's more than enough to give you the send-off you deserve."

"I love you, Jay. Thank you. I'm glad you're with me. You remember what I asked for though, right? Nothing too fancy. I want a graceful return to entropy, not a monument to the futility of fighting it."

"I love you too," he responded, gripping her shoulder like he could hold her soul in place forever.

She looked down for a moment before filling her lungs and perking up again, "How much have you saved?"

"Well," he continued, "Let's just say if you survive, we can buy the kids a yacht. With Celine as its pilot. We'll live out over the seas forever."

"Jay Yem!" she scolded.

"I'm kidding. It's nothing big. Enough to put two of them to college. In Canada or one of the other Alliance nations with public ed. funds. Maybe just one of them, actually."

Salustiana opened her mouth to reply, but her coughs stung him more than any wit could have.

Interlude - Interview

"She's perfect," Sergei Young motioned, "I'll take her and have her work integrated into our main research pipelines immediately."

"I don't know," Cindy Mahel disagreed, "She seems completely unsuitable for such a large and public institution as the implant lab. Maybe Eddie can take her. I mean, look at her hair! Is that supposed to be a mohawk or a mullet?"

The woman sat across from her interviewers, separated by a clear panel of composite - layered material consisting of c-drones, steels, and carbon structures. The c-drones within had just rotated to form two panes of opposing polarity, situated to block light from one side but not the other.

She wore a purple and blue patterned coat gaudy enough to set off Cindy's opinion of her from the moment she had entered. Wear as much blue and purple as possible. The Republic's colours in excess are a sign you've done your research, Cindy had posted anonymously on Republic forums one tipsy afternoon. The lie, she jokingly reasoned, would tip her off to candidates more interested in appearances than ideals.

"Please Cindy," Sergei insisted, "You are our resident expert on human social behaviour, are you not? Don't you know what a hairstyle like that entails?"

"No, I do not. Please enlighten me with what a neurobiologist knows about hair, Dr. Young."

"Too many people see the opposite of what they should see in hair. Oh, let's not hire her. Her afro won't fit in the doorway. Don't hire him - his punk rocker 'do would frighten the toddlers. Yet folk with elaborate hairstyles carry a sign of work ethic everywhere they go! You can't lie down on the job with hair like her. You can't even lean back in your chair without misplacing a strand."

"And this is why you come into the lab hung-over with a bedhead every morning?"

"I'm the Republic equivalent of a tenured professor, Cindy. And for your information, my salt and pepper cowlicks are meticulously crafted to invoke the image of a mad scientist. Mad with love for our glorious nation, of course."

"Right," Ms. Mahel continued, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think the great Dr. Young has a crush. Or is her research so compelling as to make you want her at all costs?"

The reflection of a briskly walking Jay Yem crossed over the image of the young hiring candidate behind the glass.

"Jay," Cindy called, "Would you come validate your colleague's lust?"

"Science lust," Sergei corrected as Jay walked over, "Her work is fascinating. Perfect for an idea I've been floating around. I believe you'll change your mind if you hear it from her herself."

"Dr. Visser Tepe," Cindy spoke into the panel, triggering its return to full transparency, "Could you explain your thesis project to the Chairman and myself as you did to Dr. Young?"

"Yes," Tepe affirmed, "I believe the general idea can be summed up as a compression algorithm for mining signals. For large amounts of signals arriving asynchronously, to be exact. All while compensating for nearly infinitesimal delays between them."

"Such as the propagation delay of Human neurons, or even electric circuits," Sergei interrupted.

"Precisely," she continued, "Dr. Young and I have talked about its potential for analyzing minds in their entirety, recording the functionality of entire brains, whether they be Human, Mechanical, or possibly even extraterrestrial."

"That does sounds wonderful, Dr. Tepe," Jay nodded, "Any technological progress is welcome in the Republic, immediate purposefulness be damned. But to have such a clear route to practical application is a very welcome cherry on top. If Dr. Young thinks you can record minds, I believe it."

"Thank you, Chairman," she responded.

"Do you have a publicly acceptable name for your project division yet? If not, I'd recommend you consult Ms. Mahel here for direction."

Sergei Young raised a finger and grinned, "Tepe Recorder."

3 Gifts

"It's not fair," the Hiver dressed in Human women's clothing whispered. The window shone moving rays of light across the faint purple skin on her faceless head.

"You still have your world, you and the Mechanicals," she continued, "The Arash'Mi have their history, at least. We have nothing. I feel like I belong to a race of orphans. If our world is even still out there, it's lost to us now. What good is survival if every time we venture out to land on another rock, we obliterate every last memory of home?"

"That's not what a home is," the man beside her replied, handing her a stem of red monkeypod flowers, "That's just an origin. Home is never somewhere that was. It's something that is. You have a homeworld. You're standing on it. With me."

"No, that's not it either," she corrected, her tendrils rippling as she took the flowers and spread them throughout her thin, sinuous form for décor, "But I think I get it now. You're home."

"I love you," Anna overheard from across the Alliance transport bus, squashed between her travelling companions.

"By the Chairman's will," she muttered, "Get a fucking room already."

"Be nice," Maxwell reminded, his Mechanical fingers solving an Alliance newspaper game without a pen. Anna recognized the Sudoku puzzle.

"Is it really taking you that long to solve that thing," she poked, crinkling the paper, "I did that one in a minute."

"Not exactly. I'm trying to figure out what they used to generate this thing. I think they're using the date as a seed."

Anna slumped backwards into her seat. She was running out of conversations to eavesdrop on. Instead, the whirring of Maxwell's servos and the tapping of Osten's thumbs as he played on his game console dominated over the chatter she was now bored of.

"My dear younger brother, runt of the Yems" she asked, looking over his arm, "What are you playing now?"

"Rake, Shallow Leaf-Gems," he replied, "It's an ironic competitive leaf raking simulator."

"XXX Ostentatious? Go-Go-Sixty-Nine? Please don't tell me you and Gauguin are actually using these names."

"Okay, I won't," he replied with eyes unmoving from the vicinity of his screen. His eyes flashed for a moment as he summoned c-drones to assemble into the form of blinders around his hands, cutting off his sister's attempts at reconnaissance.

Anna noticed irritation around Osten's neck, where the metal Republic implants merged with his prominent veins - a small but visible reminder of all the Coalition science lying beneath a face that didn't look too different from her own. She wondered whether he had taken his rejection meds.

The bus slowed to a halt, not for the first time. Anna looked out the window to see yet another vehicle-filled intersection where cars were gradually accelerating to cross the bus's path.

"You know," she talked out loud, knowing Maxwell would overhear, "I had always heard we had trouble countering the Alliance's engineering prowess. I'm surprised a super-nation that can't coordinate gaps in its traffic flows for constant motion would be such a threat."

"They've done well for themselves, all things considered," Maxwell lectured without looking up from his newspaper tapping, "A government willing to sacrifice the rights of the few for the progress of many is not a luxury they had. While I don't condone the message of the modern luddite, I can see the charm in an old driver wanting intersections a Human could navigate by eye."

"That and lack of proper AI," he concluded, stretching his fingers for emphasis.

A series of car horns filled the bus's cramped airspace, prompting Maxwell to turn his head and witness a traffic light having been forced green. The blue glow on the implant collar around Anna's neck relayed knowledge of her interference past her resting poker face.

"Anna Yem," Maxwell scolded as she broke out into an uninhibited smile, having earned his attention, "If the firstborn - nay, prodigal - son of the Mechanical race and Advisor of the Chairman himself is content with acting as a mere babysitter, I think you can survive a bus ride. Or should I say, 'have', as I believe we've arrived."

"Finally," Osten groaned, stretching his arms so as to disrupt as much of Anna's personal space as possible. The air conditioned bus opened its doors to usher in a wave of heat. Through her machine interface collar, Anna felt Maxwell's internal cooling fans silently activate.

The bus driver spoke into her intercom, "Welcome to Macadamia Rehabilitation Centre - Hard shell on the outside, health incarnate on the inside. Once an Alliance prison, now a so-called 'criminal residence' in the Republic's Central Pacific Vanguard Islands."

"Formerly known as Hawaii. Or am I no longer allowed to call it that?" she quipped, looking at three of her more recognizable passengers who were ignoring her as they stepped off of the transport.

The sprawling rehabilitation complex was split into small campuses, each, as had been explained in the travel guide, serving as a self-contained town complete with shops, gardens, counsellors, and even libraries staffed with tutors. The grasses and flowers surrounding the bus stop were young, but untarnished by signs of footsteps that would have thinned them in their vulnerable youth.

"Beautiful foliage. It's refreshing to see a prison that doesn't look like a prison. Sure would be nice to take a rake to these grounds wouldn't you say, Osten," announced Maxwell, breaking the silence as they walked, "But I notice something. All of these are fast growing strains, newly seeded. Too young to have been here from the start of the change of management. I think they're trying hard to cover up the outlines of the old Alliance walls. But the soil's still hard and needs time to be broken."

Anna felt the presence of c-drone spigots waiting behind fresh flowers. She pushed against the sensation, elevating her implants' permissions until she had mapped out what she wanted. A pulse of light echoed from the spigots, tracing a dome of light around the entire complex. Should an escape attempt occur, a curtain of c-drones were waiting to weave themselves into a solid barrier at any moment.

"I guess we didn't really break down any walls," she joked.

"It's still a paradise," Osten noted, stuffing his pockets with flowers, "Looks like they've got everything they could ever want here. Well, everything except freedom, I suppose."

The rest of the directions took them to a dormitory within the larger, central campus. A small mixed contingent of Republic Vanguard soldiers and repurposed Alliance police officers stood watch over the entrance. Osten waved at them as they approached.

"Ms. Yem. Mr. Yem. Mr. Maxwell," a shield knight greeted, his fist raised to his chest in salute, "MRC Campus Eight - Political Prisoners of War. I take it you'll be visiting room eight as well, and if so, you'll find down the hall to the right."

"Yes, thank you," Maxwell replied, "And please, ease yourselves in our presence. Don't worry, the Chairman isn't with us today."

"With all due respect, Advisor, I must admit we'd be surprised if he was," the knight remarked as he held open the campus door. A faint reverberation of violin notes striking could be heard within, and increased in volume as they followed the guard's directions.

A knock on the room's door was answered almost immediately. A sonata was playing loudly from one corner of the dwelling while a television airing Republic news blared in another.

"Come on in, I've been expecting you," a lean middle aged woman welcomed, "Forgive the noise, I prefer it to the alternative."

Maxwell recognized Takome Ma immediately, her hair - a bun with less stray hairs than he had stray wires - unchanged from both the day Jay Yem had met her, and the day his son had lead the assault on the Coalition's Great Hall. He was however, surprised that the former General Secretary of the Eastern Coalition was allowed to keep wearing her red steel qipao.

"Please make yourself at home," she waved at her guests and the prepared table beside her, "Even you, Maxwell."

An assortment of dumplings and other traditional Coalition goods sat steaming as if Ma known the exact moment of their arrival and pulled them out of the cooker accordingly. A small tin of Mechanical servo oil was a tactful although unnecessary addition to the spread.

"You look well, Takome," Maxwell greeted.

"Hi Ms. Ma," Anna waved, scoping out a seat near the dish of Coalition steamed buns and condensed milk.

"Mom!" Osten yelled, running up to hug his mother, "I found you these. I thought your new room would be as plain as the old one, but you look like you've had free reign decorating."

Takome Ma took the handful of flowers and her son's chin in her hand, "These will find a place, Osten. Let me get a look at my son's face, I've missed it."

She pinched his cheek hard enough to bruise and kissed it. A restrained furrow of concern was let through her eyebrows as she monitored Osten's unnatural healing response, now diminished so as to allow for his implants to perform unhindered. Osten knew what she was doing.

"You know I only gave you nothing but gifts, Osten."

"I know, mom. But try telling dad that," Osten complained as he plopped down at the table's side nearest to the television screen, eyes wide at the selection of finger foods.

"So, how's that cute blonde doing," Ma questioned as she grabbed a dumpling with her own chopsticks.

"You know about Gau?" Osten asked, his sister snickering with a mouthful of bread.

"Of course I do, baby."

Anna picked through her food, emptying filled buns of their meat before dipping them in sauces. The Republic news broadcast was beginning yet another segment about the oft-glamorized ruling family - one of the few subjects palatable to both citizens of the Oversees and the conquered Alliance and Coalition.

"…and in conclusion, we thank the Chairman's eldest son and daughter for their military contributions in bringing about the unity of our species, and we wish a speedy recovery to Jay Yem Junior, who..."

Osten changed the channel to an e-sports play-by-play and let out a small huff of excitement as he witnessed a perfectly executed tactic land.

"Do give your older brother my apologies," Ma uttered with closed eyes and a tight lipped nod.

"Will do," Anna agreed.

Maxwell stood up as a ringtone started from his own abdomen. Correctly, Takome reasoned he had felt the call as it came and the audible sound was nothing more than a formality.

"Please excuse me, all of you. I might have to fill in for a Vanguard officer on the island who's having trouble with keeping civilian morale," he euphemised, "I can only hope the Yem children will treat Ms. Ma politely."

"Take this before you go," Takome reminded, standing to hand Maxwell the servo oil and see him to the door, "And some of these dumplings too. You never know when you'll meet a mouth in need."

"Thank you," he replied.

Ma returned her attention to the young teens sitting around her table. Osten was engrossed by the current television program, and to her chagrin, had nether an empty mouth nor bowl. Anna, as Takome had typically seen her, was alert.

"Anna, does he eavesdrop?"

"He can. But he usually doesn't bother. Especially when he thinks he's already predicted everything there is to be said. Why do you ask?"

"My dear girl," Takome whispered, "Have you ever planned on being powerful?"

"I hate to use this phrase," Anna retorted, "But you do know who my father is, right?"

"You know what I mean, Anna."

Anna Yem smiled and dipped another bun.