Chapter 8

The PA system had an extra dose of saccharine in her voice:

“All personnel, please report to your administrators now. Draft procedures will be begin in twenty minutes. Personnel groups are to be identified at this time. Thank you.”

Ah, drafting day. The wholly unique and utterly pointless Summit original.

Lines of employees began forming in the ancillary corridors and off-rooms that connected the labs, with each individual filtered and separated by position. You had your uppity Primary Engineering fellows occupying the relatively comfortable staff rooms, your Secondary Engineering drones crammed in tight hallways that spidered out from main labs (one of them was a maintenance passageway), and your tertiary staff and robots milling about scattered in a jumbled pile in the lobby or wherever else they could be crammed into. The Primary Sigma boys, of course, where nowhere to be found near the riff-raff.

“Drafting day,” as we called it (the actual name for the event escapes me), was a drill executed biannually at Summit. It wasn’t a safety drill for fire, earthquakes, or whatnot—those concerns were too unimportant for Tetra. The drill was for, no bullshit, espionage. Seriously. So in the event Summit is attacked by rival bands of flipped-out corporate ninja spies bent on stealing our secrets, destroying our important projects, or putting clear plastic wrap around the bowls of all the bathroom toilets, we totally would be prepared… by standing around a hallway and having roll call. I never questioned Tetra’s methods, for that would be like questioning the Pope.

Well, yeah. I got paid to do it, so why complain? Easy money. I was too poor to make a fuss.

“Goddamn you fucks!” Mark bellowed at the line. Drafting days improved his disposition quite a bit. “Get in the goddamn line so I can finish this goddamn report, you assholes!”

“Hey Mark, how’s that new date of yours last night? Heard she was a real biter!” someone called out to a sea of laughter. I didn’t know the entire story, but I gathered Mark had an incident the previous night involving his newest lady friend, some sort of foreplay, teeth, and a trip to St. Lucy’s.

Mark fumed his face red, but otherwise said nothing.

Security guards began their phase of the drill and swept along the corridors to inspect employees with baseline scanners. Occasionally, they would tag an individual out of the line and take them away for mock search and interrogation. They picked out at least two dozen people, even though only one “simulated hostile” was in our group. Why expend the effort for positive identification when picking people out at random worked just as well? That was the Summit engineering way.

While the security force was taking turns roughing up the employees, I heard a familiar “click-clack” echoing along hallway. I across and found the expected culprit.

I could see, even at this distance, that the Isian was distinctively female, but not from her shapely figure, girlish mannerisms, or feminine gait (because let’s be honest, Isians have none of those). Even after all this time, I couldn’t tell the damned difference between Isian males or females on appearances alone. Tia came with a novel solution: clothing. Ingenious for a lizard, anyway. It was dark velvet collar that Arlene apparently gave her. That’s it. It’s simple, but it made a good match against her white neck. I guess that no matter the species, a girl just needs to make herself feel pretty sometimes. I don’t know about anyone else, but I thought it was cute.

She wove and pushed through between the rows of peoples and, every so often, would stop and scan through the throng. She came to the line for my group and then spotted me, and she lifted herself on twos and used her arms to shove obstacles from her path. Mark groaned and gripped my arm when he saw the Isian making her way towards us.

“Son of a bitch, what the hell is that thing doing here? I can’t do my work with goddamn animals in this place.”

“Aw, but she likes you. Tackling people is a sign of respect in Isian culture.”

“Like hell it does. I’m tired of this bullshit and I don’t need fucking lizards to make things better.”

“Now that’s not nice at all.”

“Shut up. I have to finish this crap, and I’m not going to be bothered by you or your damned lizards.”

Tia strangely disregarded the pets she was receiving and came up to me. She ignored the rub I gave her head and said, “Please come with me?” in an unusually straightforward manner.

“I can’t. I’m busy waiting here for the next hour.”

“You can skip it. Come with me. Please?”

“I’ll get in trouble, Tia. I have to stay here.”

She reached behind her neck and pulled out a small paper card that was strapped to her collar. A holographic film bearing Tetra’s logo and a lengthy serial number shimmered on the surface. She took the card, pulled off the film, and rubbed onto my chest until it stuck. “There,” she said with a final pat, “now you don’t have to. Please come with me now?”

I glanced to Mark, who had been observing us. I had expected him to fume with some ultimatum, but he just shook his head at me. I nodded to Tia, and she clicked her tongue and yanked me out of the line by my hands.

“What’s this about anyway?” I asked.

“I need to talk to you.”

She dragged me out from the hall, across the empty lobby, and through the mazes of the Spire’s gut—her destination known only to herself. We passed several security guards on their patrol, but they ignored us. Since all the elevators, automated walkways, and transportation tubes were shut down for the day, the trek very quickly took a toll on my lungs and legs.

“Slow down, Tia! I can’t keep up with you!”

She paid no mind and continued towing my increasingly leaden body.

I found myself going through the administrative office spaces, a hell of winding passageways cramped with little rooms and cubicles where business majors came to die. They were empty for drafting day, the bulk of the staff paid to stay home, and the void leeched out the sounds into a freaky echo. Eventually, we reached a dead end past the office of the senior manager, a windowless terminus where the lighting from the end of the hall diffused into a monochromatic soup. I slumped against the wall, next to a fire alarm, and sucked in nice cool breath of mildew and carpet detergents.

“So what is it that you needed to talk to me about?” I asked when my lungs refilled.

Tia sat away from me in an outline against the distant lights, her hind legs tucked to her sides and her tail curled around her body. She held her head low and she stared off down the hall. I crept up to her side. Emptiness had bleached her expression as clean as her scales.

“Tia? Is something wrong?”

She didn’t respond and continued staring out to nothing. That disturbed me more than anything else did. I moved my hand behind her, hesitated for a second, and rubbed her back. That was the catalyst it took to have her explode.

“Oh Ly-lee!” she cried, bursting into a shower of tears.

Her screech jabbed into my ears, and then she wallowed in teeth-clacking whimpers. A waterfall of tears streamed down her cheeks and detoured around the side of her neck. Before I could react, she clutched my arm, wrapped her body around—knocking me to floor on my butt—and straddled my lap. She clamped onto my chest and sobbed into my left shoulder.

Instinct told me to hug and comfort her, but I didn’t know what to do beyond that. Sure, it’s been a dream of mine for a girl to cry upon my shoulder so I could be the hero, but now that it’s happened, the next course of action escaped me. Plus I’d figure she’d be human. But I knew I had to—wanted to—make her stop. I couldn’t bear to hear her cry much longer.

Tentatively, I wrapped my arms around her neck and stroked the back of her head beneath her frill. I could feel her tears warming my shoulders. “Shhhh… it’s okay.” I said. “It’s okay. Just take a take a deep breath and calm down. It’s all right.”

Her whimpers sedated a bit, but the tears kept flowing. I held her head to my shoulder until the crying stopped and left behind a shell of sniffling fits. I could still feel her ragged breathing rippling through our chests. I held her a little while longer so she could calm. I chinned her head up and wiped away the tears that pooled in the bags of her eyes and on her face. I cradled the sides of her head and lined it up so I could look into her blue, laden eyes and asked her if she felt better. She nodded.

I lifted a stray tear from her cheek with my sleeve. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s horrible! They’re going to kick us out!”

She struggled to force out the words between stutters, and the last few provoked her eyes to well up again. It took steel nerves and an act of God to keep back a new deluge and have her explain the bizarre situation.

“It was yesterday, I was sleeping around here in of the rooms around here that no one uses. I woke up and heard some people talking. I didn’t recognize them at first, but then I listened harder and I heard Arlene. She was talking to some people. They a bunch of things that I really didn’t understand. But I knew one thing that they talked about, Ly-lee, I really did. They said that we didn’t belong in the lab and wanted to take us out. From our home! We didn’t do anything wrong, honest we didn’t. We were good! Really good! They’re going to kick us out, and I don’t know what to do! Horrible, horrible!”

I couldn’t believe what I just heard. The administration treated the Isians as virtual royalty here in Summit with their every whims and desires indulged and their every peculiarities tolerated. Now after all this, they’re just going to shove them out? What the fuck was going on here?

“Are you sure about this, Tia?”

“Yes! My ears don’t lie. I heard it, I really did!”

“Let me understand this right. After all you and your brother did for this place, they’re just going to forbid you from Summit? Just like that?”

She sniffled and shook her head. “They want us to keep working. But we can’t live here anymore. They want us out from Summit when we’re not working anymore.”

Now it made sense! Of course they would want them out of Summit, that’s just a common sense that’s been a long time coming. As much as I liked the Isians, they really were a handful, and I’m sure that Tetra would prefer them to reside away from its largest and most expensive development facility. But she probably didn’t get the entire context before freaking out.

“It’s okay,” I said. “They don’t hate you. No one does.” Well, no one but Mark, anyway.

“Then why do they want us to leave?”

“Well, everyone has a home outside of Summit. I have a home, Arlene has a home, and even Aimee has a home she goes to sometimes for maintenance outside of Summit. They want you to have a home too. A good home, a nice one.”

“But this is our home.”

“Tia, do you know why they want you to move out from here? Because it’s a horrible place to live. It’s cold, it’s too bright, and there’s many things here that could hurt you. Plus, isn’t the food bad?”

She pondered it, and then she agreed with pensive nod.

“Well, that’s why they’re doing this. They got a much better home somewhere else. They’re kicking you out of Summit, yeah, but kicking you out to a much better place. They didn’t do this because they hate you, but because they love you.” I rubbed her smooth back. “Hey, it’s going to be all right. Trust me.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if I want to go anywhere else, Ly-lee. The city’s too big and too loud.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure everything is going to be fine,” I said. Hell, just thinking of the sweet new pad Tetra had in store them made me wish I were a giant lizard.

She twisted her head. “You think so?”

“Yep. It’s going to be great. Hell, your new place is going to be better than the dump I live in, I guarantee it.”

“Oh Ly-lee, you don’t live in a dump!” she said with a chirp, temporarily forgetting she was supposed to be crying.

“Have you ever seen it? It really is.”

“It’s not!”

“Oh yeah? You can stay there a few days there and we’ll see if you can still say that. I tell you, you’ll be screaming back out to live in a zoo.” I squeezed her by the shoulder. “Come on now, everything will be all right, yeah?”

“I think so.” She smiled. “Thank you, Ly-lee. You’re so nice.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me. I rubbed her back with my right hand while gripping the floor with the other.

“Hey, no problem,” I said. The shrill of a security alarm fired off in the distance and sputtered to us like tinnitus. “Shoot, I have to get back before Mark starts throwing fits again. You’ll be okay?”

She nodded, got off my lap, waited for me to leave.

“Well, maybe you take me back? Because I’m completely lost here.”

With a chirp and a smile, she took my hands.