Chapter 11

There were no stars this morning.

They were blotted out, hidden from view. For a moment Olyrean’s sleep-fogged brain panicked, thinking that now this time the Omega-Cola convoys had really done it, they had passed far too close to Moody Blue, so close they were certain to crash right into her section of the station. And, for some reason, their cargo ship appeared to be made from stone, carved into a decorative frieze of adorable animals playfully frolicking with each other while a benevolent-looking old man watched, smiling.

She bolted up, fighting with her tangled sheets, unable to bear the indignity of being crushed to death by something so hopelessly tacky. Slowly she realized that there didn’t seem to be any of the classic signs of a cargo ship crashing into a space station. What those signs would be, she wasn’t sure, but she thought they’d probably involve things like a great screech of rending metal and being sucked out into the cold void of space. Not warm sunlight and the gentle trill of birdsong, which was what she was currently experiencing and seemed more like the classic signs of a beautiful morning.

Eventually, she remembered she was in her guest room at the Grand Temple of His Radiant Glory, not at her home on Moody Blue. She stared sullenly at the wall and its hopelessly sappy scenes of contented worship.

“Bleh,” she said.

With some struggle, she untangled herself from the luxuriously soft sheets. They were nearly as soft as the long, colorful Quizbarling robes she slipped into, which were actually so comfortable that she shivered as they slid down her skin. The robes had been made by the clothesworms, which just so happened to weave gigantic cocoon colonies that took on the exact shape of comfortable robes of various shapes and sizes. The sheets had been woven by the bedworms, an entirely distinct species of worm which just so happened to do the exact same thing, except with bedsheets.

The mattress itself was the dried-out carcass of a slow-witted swamp creature that flopped to shore at the end of its life cycle to be eagerly harvested by the Quizbarlings for this specific purpose. The slippers she stepped into were the hollowed-out skulls of a pair of Nirri-pakki birds, cranelike creatures that pair-bonded and mated for life and whose skulls just so happened to be shaped like feet. Every slightest need of the Quizbarlings was met by some creature on their planet that seemed to have been designed for the role. The only inconvenience Olyrean had found was the pillows, which were organic sacs regurgitated from the gut of the blorfflallow beast, and which always seemed to be slightly damp.

There came a polite but awkward knock at the door. This was a custom that the Quizbarlings had to learn to abide by when dealing with the Americans. Otherwise they just barged in, the idea that anything untoward might be happening behind closed doors apparently lost on them. For such a stuffy people, the Quizbarlings did not seem to care much about nudity, though Olyrean couldn’t help but wonder how they got around the business of being so shy about mating.

“Come in,” she called.

A spry young Quizbarling girl slipped into the room, a servant. “Good morning, Fuzzy Ears!” she said brightly. “It sure looks like The Radiant One has set us off on a fantastic day, don’t you think?”

Olyrean grumbled at the use of her Quizbarlish name. She had wanted to protest at first, but Moyom had told her it would be rude to request a new one. “Would you ever say that The Radiant One had not set us off on a fantastic day?” she asked curiously.

The servant girl appeared to give it some serious thought. “Well, I suppose he’s got a pretty good track record of fantastic days at this point.”

“But what if it were raining? Really badly?”

“Crops need rain,” said the servant girl, as she set about gathering up Olyrean’s dirty clothes. They would be brought to a nearby river, whose frothing waters just so happened to run through some unique mineral deposits with a similar chemical composition to laundry detergent.

“What about a blizzard?”

“Oooh. Perfect weather for snuggling up by the fire and reading a good book. Don’t you think?”

Olyrean threw up her hands. “And what if it were raining lava,” she snapped. “What then?”

“I think that would be pretty bad,” said the servant girl slowly. “But I suppose it would be quite the sight. It’s not every day it rains lava! At least on Quizbar. In fact, I don’t think it ever has at all. Did it rain lava on your planet?”

“Sure,” said Olyrean. “Why not. I assume you’re going to tell me breakfast is ready.”

“Pirikki eggs and blunderhog bacon!” said the servant cheerfully. She exited the room and closed the door behind her.

Olyrean sighed. She hadn’t meant to be so rude. They had been on Quizbar for a few weeks by now, long enough to adjust to the flow of life here, but she hadn’t quite managed. Oh, life in the Grand Temple was pleasant enough, and the Quizbarlings were very friendly–they took the Americans on guided tours through Gorgeous View, served them sumptuous feasts of animals that seemed frightfully willing to be eaten, and everyone right on up to the High Priest was always glad to answer any questions the team had.

But that was perhaps exactly the problem. It was too pleasant. Everything was too soft and relaxed, like a hazy dream. There was no tension anywhere. There were, for example, no theological debates or even an idea of heresy or blasphemy. This was a blandness that was usually achieved only under the most repressive of theocratic regimes. But the Quizbarlings seemed to manage it with nothing more than the sense that they should always be polite and friendly to one another, and also, of course, they could go and ask their god in case any real disagreements arose. Not that they had to ever do that, really. In fact, it seemed TRO barely ever showed up, outside of some ceremonies. She certainly hadn’t seen them yet.

It was nothing like America. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to appreciate speaking her mind about any old thing, with little to no regard about how anyone felt about it. Being polite in America meant you said ‘sorry’ if someone got really angry and you realized that what you said had been a bit hasty. Being polite on Quizbar more often meant saying nothing at all.

It was, she realized with some uneasiness, similar to what being polite among the Sun-Elves was like. Only now that she had lived among Americans, she could feel a great prickly space in her mind where thoughts were now, and she thought that, in a way, keeping your mouth shut out of politeness eventually trained your brain to simply not have certain impolite thoughts at all. Perhaps that was why she felt so compelled to be rude, as though it might break them out of this happy stupor. Yes, that must be it.

Satisfied that she had arrived at an ideological justification for impoliteness, she went out to breakfast, fiddling with the little SPECTRA bracelet on her wrist along the way. Certainly part of her bad mood was due to the total lack of progress she had made. While the others on her team puzzled out the best ways to appeal to the Quizbarlings, Olyrean didn’t really know where to begin when it came to finding the previous liberation team.

The bracelet, after some prodding, had given her access to the previous team’s records. There was nothing that she could see which offered any clue as to why their predecessors might have disappeared. As a matter of fact, the records were almost suspiciously anodyne. The previous team had apparently focused on diplomatic outreach to the Quizbarlings through sportsmanship, teaching them how to play that great American pastime, antigravity hexasoccer.

Reading through the notes, she couldn’t help but feel that it was a bit too plain. Their whole team had all agreed to the plan, and stuck to it? Nobody had gone off to try some strange idea of their own? It was just a gut feeling, but she thought the reports were holding something back. And the Quizbarlings, as polite as they were, weren’t talking much about what had happened either. Priests and servants, farmers and artisans alike all seemed to know what had happened, and they all gave the same uniform answer: The previous team was alive and well, and ‘On Vacation.’

She’d had a humiliating call-in with Veezeebub and Tordle a few days ago. Inter-reality communications were expensive, so her superiors only checked in on her every once in a while. When she explained how she’d spent most of her time thus far adjusting to life on Quizbar and reading through the database her bracelet contained, there had been a small pause, and then Tordle’s glopping voice had asked, “Is that all?”

“Well, yes,” she replied awkwardly. “I’m sorry, but…you didn’t give me any training, you know. I don’t really know how to go about this.”

“We didn’t give you training,” came Veezeebub’s droning whine, “because training would shackle you. Quizbar has been a prickly pear for America for quite some time now. Unconventional problems require unconventional solutions. Your test results showed you were an unconventional thinker.”

“I don’t see how that can be. The tests were bizarre. I was just trying to guess what answers you people wanted to hear.”

“That was part of the test,” said Veezeebub. “Try not to overthink things. Take some initiative. You have it in you to solve this. Believe in yourself. Turn card over for more inspiring phrases for humanoids. Whoops, I don’t think I was meant to read that.”

“Well,” Olyrean said, “I’ll do my best to have a little more faith in myself.”

“That’s good,” said Tordle, “because I don’t particularly have any.”

Then they hung up. Olyrean had been trying her damnedest to figure out what she could try since that day, but her supposedly unconventional brain hadn’t been giving her much in the way of ideas.

When she entered the common room that had been set aside for the Americans, where they usually took breakfast together, Olyrean was surprised to find that only Moyom was there. “Where are the others?” she asked.

Moyom waved a grabber idly. It took some effort, since it had been weighted down with what looked to be hundreds of gold bracelets. She had gotten an awful lot of gifts from the High Priest. “Scale beauty and Jack, they are afoot with plotting,” the computer about her neck burbled.

“I see.”

“Brugga too a-plots! You know. We know! Today is a day of learning. Today mouths kiss with knowledge.”

That’s right, she had almost forgotten. Brugga’s (insipid, uninspired) plan had been to offer some preliminary civics classes to the Quizbarlings, and they started today. It was a stupid idea, extremely stupid, god he was dumb, but she had been graceful and courteous and recommended some students to him. Her bracelet’s database held some knowledge about local Quizbarlings as well, which she assumed had been compiled by previous teams, or perhaps picked up by spy drones.

Olyrean had used that local knowledge to pick out students that she thought might be most open to American culture. She certainly hadn’t picked out students that she thought might offer Brugga the most trouble by being inquisitive and prickly or uncooperative. No, she definitely hadn’t done that. Absolutely not.

Barely any Quizbarlings qualified, anyway.

Grabbing a slice of blunderhog bacon, she followed Moyom to Brugga’s classes. She hadn’t planned on watching, but she had nothing better to do. And it might be fun to see him fail. As she was certain he would.

***

There are many theories about what exactly binds a society together, especially one such as the United Worlds of Infinity America, whose territory stretches across stars, galaxies and even different realities, bridging an ever-growing collection of alien species who don’t even necessarily share the same laws of physics, let alone similar evolutionary history. What force is it that binds together such a people? What mighty belief, what political gravity keeps them from one another’s throats?

Is it their fervent mission to democratize the universe? Is it the superiority of their political system? Is it Ol’ Xubriq’s Classic Texan Hot Sauce: Please Forgive Us for What We Have Done™?

It’s unlikely that anyone could say for certain, even the best minds within Infinity America itself (and they’ve got some very good minds indeed).

But something that is certainly not getting in the way is the fundamental ethos of Infinity America. A billion books can (and have been) written about what, exactly, this ethos is, but drag a historical ethicist to a bar, keep giving him some good old SSSC cocktails (Something Strong and Slightly Corrosive), and eventually he’ll admit that really it all boils down to this simple rule:

Do Whatever You Would Like To Do, So Long As This Does Not Prevent Others From Doing Whatever They Would Like To Do.

This rule seems very fair and relatively relaxed, with broad appeal and easy marketability. Most sapient beings who get to the stage of having a written language have some concept of fairness–or if they don’t, a little genetic tweaking can give them one. Of course, there are interpretations and shades and all sorts of little peculiarities and debates about how this ethos is applied, debated in the courts, the legislature, and sitcoms of varying quality. However, no matter how the specifics are debated, it remains the animating principle of the American way of life.

Though at times, the results of applying this ethos are not quite what anyone would expect. We can take the tale of the planet Purla as an example.

The Markobians and the Uggublatts were a pair of species who evolved in unstable circumstances. The Markobians were a race of hot-headed equines who dominated the landmasses of Purla, while the Uggublatts were giant poisonous sea-slugs who controlled the oceans. Now, this might not have been a problem–they could have stayed in their own lanes, so to speak–except that evolution, in its infinite wisdom, had dealt both species a heavy blow: As part of their life cycle, Markobian colts needed to run majestically along their world’s beaches or else they would become very depressed. Simultaneously, the Uggublatts fed by squelching about in gigantic toxic tidepools so that they might digest the remains of whatever unfortunate prey happened to tumble into them. Their digestive systems, coincidentally, had somehow become very specialized in breaking down keratin. Of the sort you might find, say, in hooves.

Perhaps you begin to see the issue.

The two bitter enemies had waged ceaseless and terrible wars over the planet’s beaches for untold generations before the Americans arrived, and upon meeting with the representatives of the Interstellar Republic they both thought they saw an advantage with this potential new ally.

“The Americans say we should be allowed to do whatever we want to do,” thought the Markobian Chief-of-Chiefs, “and all we really want to do is raise our children without them dyeing their hair black and listening to all that loud music with the unsettling lyrics. Surely if we signed up with them, they’d side with us against the slime-sucking menace.”

At the exact same time, the Uggublatt high council was telling itself: “Oh, well, of course all we’re looking for is a meal. We need to eat, don’t we? It’s not like we need to eat every Markobian child, and besides, isn’t making more of them enjoyable anyway? Surely the Americans will take our side.”

So reasoning, they both signed treaties with the Americans, assuming that their courts would soon grant their race sole ownership over Purla’s beaches.

What happened instead was this:

The Americans arrived and promptly built massive underwater supermarkets to introduce the Uggublatts to the wonders of artificial meat and hoof, and their traditional diet was swept away by a tidal wave of dishes made a thousand times more palatable than anything they had ever eaten by SilCoMor Corporation’s taste-enhancing technology. Within two generations Uggublatts found the very idea of real, raw hoof to be disgusting, and were dealing with a civilization-wide self-image issue as the average Uggublatt had bloated to three times the size they had been merely thirty years ago, as they simply could not stop eating. Luckily, SilCoMor’s medical device branch was there with the GeroPorter™, a body-slimming gastral pouch which teleported excess ingested matter into deep space while accentuating your breathing pores (GeroPorter: Be the Slug You Were Meant to Be!)

The Markobians would have been delighted by this, except that all their children’s depressing music became a fad in the UWA. The next generation, rather than growing up to run majestically along the now nontoxic beaches, instead grew up and moved off to other planets, to star in grainy holo-films and croon moody songs to audiences of billions of aliens who adored them and offered them very interesting drugs and all sorts of bizarre sexual experiences.

Meanwhile, on Purla, a billion new aliens arrived at the now empty, majestic beaches and filled them up with beach houses and volleyball nets and imported enough piña colada to alter the planet’s gravity.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Now, it can’t be said that this state of affairs did not solve things. The Uggublatts are now widely recognized as the sexiest slugs in the universe. The descendants of the Markobians are so wealthy that each family now owns an entire continent’s worth of beaches, spread out across the republic’s many planets. And Purla, after some land reforms, now has some of the most beautiful seaside vacation spots in the UWA.

It’s just interesting how it turns out that when you let people do whatever they want to do, on the balance, you wind up with results that originally nobody would have predicted at all.

***

Brugga flashed a yellow, crooked grin at the dozen or so Quizbarlings who sat before him, arranged in a half-circle in a collection of mismatched chairs around his stone desk. The holo-film he had been playing which told the story of the Markobians and the Uggublatts switched off, and the lights and images which played across the wall of his classroom faded away.

“Are there any questions?” he asked.

“Yes,” said his beret, “why do you torment me with your sweaty cranium? Take me off your head.”

Brugga took his beret and placed it on his desk.

“Even worse,” it said. “Now I ‘ave to look at you. Disgusting.”

Brugga calmly put his beret back on. He fidgeted. One of the Quizbarlings raised a hand and, relieved, he called on the student. “Yes?”

The questioner was a lean, pale man in simple farmer’s dress. “Well,” he said, bending the brim of his woven straw hat, “I guess, uh, sir–”

“Please, call me Rude Hat,” said the orc. “That’s the name your people gave me, after all.”

“Well, I guess, uh, Rude Hat, sir, we’re just…a little confused why you showed us that.”

“Yeah,” another piped up, this one in the loose, colorful robes that marked him as an artist. “It doesn’t seem like the Markobians and the Uggublatts really got what they wanted.”

“Ah,” said Brugga. “I showed you that to be honest. I could go ahead and tell you that America grants everyone’s wishes and everything works out to be much better all around when we come by. It was that way on my planet, sure. But you seem like smart folk–”

In the back of the classroom, where she was watching the proceedings, Olyrean snorted. Moyom, who was lounging in a reclining chair next to her (though really, much more like a silk-draped throne) and being fawned over by Minor Fuss, shot a sharp glance at the elf. Luckily, none of the Quizbarlings noticed.

“–so I thought it would be better to show a more subtle case of improvement. Where there were some tradeoffs. If you join America, we want you to do so being well-informed what it’s about, after all.”

There was a rumble of skeptical murmurs in response to this, but there were some appreciative ones as well. Quizbarlings were big on the folksy virtues, like frank honesty. Perhaps Brugga’s approach wasn’t complete stupidity.

“You said your planet was a more clear-cut case, though?” asked the farmer.

The orc coughed nervously. “Ah,” he said, “yes, yes it was.”

“What happened on your planet?”

Brugga’s eyes darted nervously to the back of the classroom, where Olyrean stood, arms folded, utterly silent. “Uh,” he said, “Um. Without getting into details, it was, um. Very bad.”

“How bad, Rude Hat, sir? Bad in what way?”

Brugga was now visibly sweating. Olyrean was giving him the best glare of elvish condescension and contempt that she could manage and hoping very dearly that the stress would give him an aneurysm.

“Let’s just say my people did something very, very bad,” he said. “Something that we foolishly thought it was okay to do. The Americans came by and taught us that it was very, very bad, and gave us a second chance. Even now they’re teaching my people, still.”

The Quizbarlings nodded approvingly and chattered among themselves. Second chances were also very good. The Radiant One was big on forgiveness, too. “I’ve got another question now,” said the farmer. “Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to, say, adulterate himself with his neighbor’s wife, what would America require as penance for that sin?”

Another farmer jerked up in alarm and gave him a hard stare. “What are you saying? I’m your only neighbor.”

“Just as a hypothetical.”

“Uh,” said Brugga, “I don’t think America would care about that. That’s, um, between the three of you.”

“Wow, that’s pretty good! The Radiant One wants a year of hard labor and fasting.”

“What did you do with my wife–”

“Purely hypothetically–"

The artist raised his hand again as the two farmers sank into furious whispers to each other. “Suppose I wanted to carve something other than an image of The Radiant One,” he said. “Would I be allowed to do that?”

“Of course,” Brugga exclaimed enthusiastically. “That’s a big part of America. Letting you do what you want. Anything, so long as it doesn’t interfere with others’ ability to do anything they want. Endless possibility!”

“Couldn’t you do that already?” another Quizbarling asked the artist.

“I don’t know.” The artist leaned back and shouted. “Hey! Minor Fuss! Do I have to always be carving representations of The Radiant One?”

The High Priest was seated very close to Moyom, staring at her. It took the student calling his name a second time before he noticed. He looked away from her and pondered for a moment. “No, I don’t think there’s any rule about that, really. Hey! How about you carve a statue for Radiant Shell, here? Would you like that, Radiant Shell? A statue?”

“To paint me in stone is to make storage of the soul! A mouth of earth kisses me into eternity!” said Moyom.

Minor Fuss considered whether this was a good or bad thing. He waved his hand. “Carve whatever you’d like,” he said.

“Well, if that’s the case, I don’t see what’s all that special about America,” said the artist. “Oh, pardon me. I’m so sorry, I’m sure it’s very special. I just, I mean, from the point of view of, uh, joining up, that is–”

“That’s quite all right,” said Brugga. “That just means that Quizbar is already very compatible with the UWA. What would you like to carve, then?”

The artist thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I think I’d actually just like to keep carving The Radiant One, after all.”

Olyrean leaned back against the wall and laughed quietly to herself. Brugga’s ham-handed attempts to convince his students of the merits of adapting American culture were pathetic. It hadn’t been a bad start of things, she supposed, but of course he’d fumbled eventually. How could he teach the American ethos? She was sure that he barely believed it himself.

A wave of anger washed over her as she watched the complete idiot start yet another lesson, spittle flying from his lips. He was stupid, so stupid, him and his stupid talking hat. His beret. Whatever. What an idiotic thing for his assuredly moronic son to have given him. Of course his family would have tastes as crass and pathetic as his own.

It wasn’t right that he was here. None of it was right. He didn’t deserve it. She, she had given her heart to America, she loved the UWA so much, and it was so unfair that this idiot, this brute, this wretch, this slaver, this killer was put on equal footing with her–

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen your ears that red,” said Libby, materializing beside her in a floating hologram. She wore Quizbarlish robes today, too, though much more form-fitting than the ones Olyrean did. And dyed patriotically, of course. “Are you alright?”

“Of course,” muttered Olyrean. “It’s nothing.”

“Mmm hmmm,” said Libby. She watched the lesson for a few moments, and then said, “I notice that you have a very highly elevated heart rate and several other physiological indicators of spiking stress levels whenever you look at Brugga.”

“Probably everyone does, when they see his face. It’s a biological thing.”

Libby hummed quietly and looked down at the ground. “You know,” she said eventually, “I have some, uh, medicine. Tailored to your genetic profile, so it ought to be very effective.”

“Medicine for what? And when did you get my, uh…genetic profile?”

The AI gave her a frank look. “We’ve got them for everyone.” A small drone burbled its way across the courtyard to hover over her shoulder, carrying a small plastic bottle. “But anyway, the medicine would help with things like, ummmmm, racial-tension-induced trauma, for example, or murderous urges, or–”

“Is that what this is about?” Olyrean snapped. Libby wanted to medicate away her anger for Brugga. Suddenly her hate for the orc was focused on her friend. “What’s the matter?” she asked acidly. “Am I not playing well enough for the documentary? Sorry if I’m doing something so untoward as being angry at a slaver.”

“He’s not a slaver anymore,” Libby whispered. “And please. You know it would be great for the documentary! People eat this sort of drama up. But I’m worried about your stress levels. It’s not healthy.”

“Sure you are,” said Olyrean. “Well, if you’re so concerned, why even ask me whether I want this medicine? You went ahead and made it without asking me, didn’t you? Of course you did. What if I say no? You’ll just put it in my food or something, wouldn’t you–”

Libby sniffled.

Olyrean glanced over, startled. Her jaw fell open as the AI’s shoulders hitched and she began to quietly sob.

“You’re a jerk,” Libby mumbled, wiping a tear from one glowing eye.

All at once Olyrean’s rage vanished, like a bubble in a tar pit bursting. “I–I didn’t know you could cry,” she stammered.

“Of course I can,” snapped Libby. “Did you think I didn’t have feelings?”

“No, I mean, well, of course–but it’s just–why would you–you don’t have tear ducts.”

“It’s a visualization of an extreme emotional response,” the AI muttered. “I can’t just tell you I’m sad, can I? No, you need to see, you biological types don’t get it unless you can see, so they made it so I cry!”

“I’m sorry–”

“Normally I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t cry, even though you’re being a huge jerk I wouldn’t, except they just ran an update on me, and I always feel wonky after that–” Libby put her face in her hands and took a deep, ragged and completely unnecessary breath. Olyrean stood there awkwardly. Finally the AI seemed to calm down a bit. She glanced toward Olyrean and her lip quivered. “Do you really think I’d sneak something into your food?” she asked sadly.

“Um,” said Olyrean, “Uh.”

“You’re my friend, you asshole. I was just worried about you. I guess that makes me some kind of criminal. If you don’t want it I’ll just throw it away.” Libby waved her hand, and the little drone by her shoulder hummed and whizzed off across the courtyard.

Olyrean felt horribly guilty for snapping. Libby was one of her closest friends, odd as it was to think that. Perhaps, she thought, her anger really was getting unhealthy. “No, no. Look, Libby, I’m really sorry. Give me the medicine.”

“No, don’t take it if you don’t want it–”

“I didn’t say I’d take it,” said Olyrean. “But I’ll, uh, consider it at least.”

The holos were always full of commercials for mood-altering drugs of a wide variety of flavors. In the past, chemists had only been able to fool around with the big, blunt, dumb emotions: generic happiness, calmness, anger, etc. Good enough for government work, but such plain moods were considered passé these days. Now there were pills for all sorts of subtle, trademarked experiences, such as “marital afterglow”, or the feeling of satisfied happiness you got the morning you woke up after marrying the love of your life, or “productive depression”, a sort of bleak and soulful mood favored by artistic types when they wanted to go through a blue phase (heavily favored by the Markobians).

Olyrean was vaguely aware that there probably was something to these pills, but like many Americans she looked down on people who used them. After all, her emotions were sacrosanct and her mind a fortress, and no mere chemical reaction was going to change the course of the very special chemical reactions which represented her thoughts and feelings. But still, she didn’t want Libby to cry anymore, so when the little drone came burbling back, she held out her hand and caught the little plastic bottle it dropped with a rattle.

Libby offered her a wan smile, and a brief touchless ghost of a hug. “Thanks,” she said, wiping away synthetic tears. “I should have asked before having it made, I suppose. But I’d never give you medicine without telling you, you know. That’s totally illegal.”

“Well, I do seem to remember getting some medical nanobots injected into me without my knowledge,” said Olyrean, as she tucked the bottle away in a pocket. She’d just have to toss it while Libby wasn’t looking.

“That was before you were a citizen! You didn’t have your full set of rights yet. It was for your own good, too. Most of you bio-types have no idea how bad diseases can get, hopping from world to world. You can order those nanobots out of your body any time you want, by the way.”

Olyrean blinked. “I can?”

“Yes, of course, it’s your right. I don’t recommend it, though. You’d be dead within an hour.”

They turned their attention back to the ongoing class, where Brugga was now fielding questions from curious Quizbarlings on what sort of crops the Americans grew and was trying to clumsily explain what genetically-engineered supersquash was. Olyrean was very aware of Libby watching her, so she tried to control her rage. But without the entertainment of being allowed to stew in her hatred of Brugga it was all a little boring, so eventually she left, stepping out into the wide stone hallways.

It was busy there, with dozens of priests shuffling back and forth in the Quizbarlings’ version of a brisk, purposeful walk, which by American standards was a relaxed stroll. The Grand Temple was not just a temple after all, not really; the Church of The Radiant One was the center of government for the planet, as casual and loosely enforced as that was, and so there were petitioners among the priests as well, and representatives from towns all across the planet, very impressive for their level of technology. Despite the crowds, it was quiet in that religious sort of way, where everyone speaks in hushed whispers as if their god were taking a nap somewhere nearby and they didn’t want to disturb him.

Olyrean got relatively few glances as the priests passed her by. She could pass as a particularly short, tanned Quizbarling from a distance, so long as no one noticed her ears. Even those who recognized her as an alien did not look twice at her. They had gotten used to her presence, and besides, there were stranger aliens to goggle at here, like Moyom or Korak.

She had tried to spy on the Quizbarlings in these hallways. One of the tools she had access to were little spy drones made to look like common local wildlife. In this case, Zeeskee birds, which were tiny little puffs of feather and beak and not much else, which filled the ecological niche that houseflies filled on other worlds. The little pests were common enough to be innocuous, and the drones mimicking them could send video and audio back to her bracelet.

Olyrean hadn’t necessarily had anything in mind when she sent the drones out; she had really only wanted to keep an eye on those Quizbarlings who hung out around the Americans’ quarters. But the servants of the Grand Temple were fastidious about keeping things clean. They didn’t even crush her drones. No, instead the servants gently ushered the little robots outside with words of encouragement, so that when Olyrean looked, she found that she had a bunch of footage of the temple gardens and not much else.

She thought of what Veezeebub and Tordle had told her. About being unconventional. And she thought about how she had no idea whatsoever about what to do.

So she decided to play a game. She followed after a crowd of Quizbarlings, at a distance. Never so close that they actually knew they were being followed, but close enough that it actually let her feel like a spy. This was the sort of thing that was done in holo-films, after all. A lot of sneaking through hallways and trailing after people and kissing with handsome foreign spies. Of course, it could hardly be said to be unconventional to behave how the holo-films said a spy should behave. On the other hand, everyone knew it was idiotic to think that real life was anything like the films. So maybe acting like the movies was unconventional.

When the crowd that she was following split, she picked a group at random to follow. If the person she was following just disappeared into another room, she just picked another group at random to trail after. If anyone seemed to be noticing that she was following them, she switched to someone else.

She quickly became utterly lost, but at least she was getting to see new parts of the Grand Temple. The Radiant One had personally pulled it from the earth, or so it was said, and it seemed that in some places he had a more unconventional sense of aesthetics than his followers. She passed through a hall of glowing crystals woven into the walls in fragile spirals, sprouting bioluminescent fungi.

Another hallway contained statues of strange dancers, completely alien in form, with dozens of long graceful limbs and faces of serene blankness. They gave her the shivers. If this was a real lifeform, Olyrean had never seen it, not even in the chaotic, diverse jumble of America.

She had nothing to do, so she followed the rules she had set for herself to their extremity. Which was how she found herself slinking between the shadows of a mostly empty hall by moonlight, trailing at a far distance a tall Quizbarling whose face was buried in the depths of a cowled hood.

She couldn’t remember how she had begun following him, but she had done so for two hours now. He had followed a strange meandering route through the Grand Temple’s less-populated halls, always alone, and she considered it nothing short of a miracle that he hadn’t spotted her yet. Or perhaps he had, and he was leading her on.

Olyrean’s heart hammered with excitement, but she chided herself. This was some poor fool that she had just decided to randomly follow. Perhaps by some twisted logic, treating real life like the holo-films was unconventional, but this was really taking it too far. More than likely it was just an old priest out for his nightly walk, and here she was acting like a complete lunatic…

They came again to the hallway with the strange dancers. The hooded figure paused before one and looked up at it for a long, lingering moment. He reached out and caressed one of the statue’s long and bowing arms.

There was a rumble of stone on stone.

“No way,” Olyrean whispered, eyes wide.

Grinding, shaking, the statue slowly slid away to reveal a darkened passage. The hooded figure glanced back and forth before disappearing into it. A moment later, the statue began to rumble again. Olyrean hurried forward as quickly and as silently as she could, but she was too far away. By the time she made it, the statue had already settled back into place with a heavy click.

She stared up at it, breathless, disbelieving. She tried caressing the arm just as she had seen the figure do it, but nothing happened.

“No way,” she repeated numbly. There was, of course, no response. Only the statue, which stared back at her blankly as though to say yes way.

She lingered for a few moments more, stunned. Then she made note of which statue this was and quietly scurried off.