'-That's just Jupiter.' O'ryan texted Lyra the last of his dream from his tablet on a cafeteria tabletop. He always told Lyra the weird ones. Lyra would always respond with ideas on what it might mean about his psyche or problems of the day. Lyra's present theory was that O'ryan felt trapped in a place he enjoyed because of the work conditions as of late. O'ryan knew this was a logical deduction, though felt it was too presumptive. Lyra didn't know how frequently his thoughts drifted to moving away from Luna Prime. O'ryan figured that since the dream was on one of Jupiter's moons that meant he wished that he were still working on a moon, but a very different moon far away from here.
O'ryan did not really care what they meant, he was more interested in how to make them stop. He considered seeking alternatives to his bone density supplements. They were the only medications that he still takes with "mild hallucinations" written as a side effect.
The earth was present in the cafeteria windows, which were some of the largest on Luna Prime. There were many places to eat but the Main Hub cafeteria had the largest selection of foods, the largest windows, the most open space. It was quiet here, and contained the energy of observation and studiousness. It felt very unlike the restaurants of earth. People came here to eat in silence, to read, or to deliberate with grace. O'ryan thought there must be some unconscious triggers to induce this, as there was no law against being rowdy or acting like many of the other places that serve food. Nearly everybody here could be assumed to have graduated university. Does merely being in a place that reminds you of good behavior accomplish this? O'ryan wondered when the VIPs would show. The tour was a private one, so he could be very unconventional. He scheduled the meeting here for the environment specifically. He considered it to have the most upstanding feel of Luna Prime. Real windows, real stars. No TV screens of digital effects and glamorized appeal. The earth spun beyond the window with all of the perfect imperfections of raw sight. There was no elevator music or popular songs to set an exaggerated mood. He looked at the door, waiting for it to open. Then he looked at the earth, admiring its natural beauty. He alternated between the two until something happened.
Lyra texted him back, with the expected updates on her theory, which he had already dismissed in his head. He changed the topic, feeling his time for chatting was about to end, and took Larry's forced advice. 'What are you working on today?' it looked so innocent over text, he wondered why he never tried this before. People weren't psychic after all, at least, non-Larry people.
'I'm updating the navigation programs, why?'
Navigation programs? That was a very specialized and boring task. It was a huge database of raw astronomical data and astronomical equations, with outputs tailored to each individual computer system. The models were constantly changing, so was the data, so were the proprietary machines that use both of them. It was a triple threat: an academic, bureaucratic, and corporate bog of a system. There was no way around it at the moment, O'ryan didn't think it would change, it had been like this for a decade. There were too many places taking in information, too many countries, too much disparity in technologies. It was not work he liked to do, and could take a week getting caught up before even being able to work on it. He didn't quite believe that this could be her 'drive.'
'No reason… curious at what's keeping others from swapping with me.' he lied.
'Not a chance, even if I was on bathroom detail.' she replied.
O'ryan thought that was unlikely. But he didn't follow up, he changed topic again, thinking about Dr. Mirati.
'Have you ever heard of Nadia Mirati?' he sent, and noticed Lyra texting, and stopping, and texting again. It was unlike her to not send what came to her mind in an instant. O'ryan had looked up Dr. Nadia Mirati's academic profile over Luna Prime's mirrored database, and didn't find much else, certainly nothing to label her an outcast.
'We're not on these terms anymore, O'ryan… you get that, we never really were. I don't feel comfortable, you know? It's weird. Got to go.'
Where did that come from? O'ryan thought. He got the sense that he crossed some boundary just now, but how? What did he do?
The door to the cafeteria slid open, and a blonde bowl cut man with large glasses walked in. He looked mostly as O'ryan imagined, but lankier, and with a lab coat on. O'ryan expected acne, but there was none. Gibble seemed younger than his record claimed. He was in his late 30s, but looked a decade younger. O'ryan waved, and Gibble waved back, walking toward him above the cafeteria's atmospheric speed limit that O'ryan had deemed so. Gibble then broke the law of the appropriate distance and volume to have a conversation as he approached.
"You must be- ah- O'ryan! Yes, the coordinator told me about you. Engineer extraordinaire, if you don't mind the pun." Gibble said from ten paces away.
"Pun?" O'ryan looked at him quizzically as he shook a sweaty palm.
"Extraordin-aire, get it? I looked you up on the way over. It says you work on life support systems for the human boats-" Gibble said.
"Oh well, yes I -"
"Fascinating material, naturally I have a vested interest, as you must know, I work to support life, you work on life-support, we are bonded spirits."
"Human boats-?" O'ryan was falling behind.
"It's a big deal to invest in moving life around space! Don't I know it! You are a credit to the species. A woefully overspecialized species in predictive brain functions, in my opinion. But at least we predict the need for getting around-town eh? Did you build the systems in the boat I flew in on?"
O'ryan tried to answer "Um, no, that was a dissembler craft, it's a one way trip, it's built out of entirely reusable parts that we put to use on the base for other needs, so I couldn't have-"
"-incredible, just incredible" Gibble said. "You know, that's some impressive efficiency, and as you know there is an analogous relationship in the efficiency of the asymmetric trade functions of social squids-"
"Huh?" O'ryan tilted his head, but Gibble wasn't looking at him, Gibble was looking at his boots.
"What's the deal with these!? I was hoping to have some fun, you know, enjoying the low gravity here!" Gibble said, now squinting at the double high ceilings of the cafeteria.
"They're magnetic, to keep you on the floor while we fit you for a density suit." O'ryan said, thinking 'particularly for people like you.'
"Oh! Of course! and when is that? I like the look." Gibble said, eyeing O'ryan's. "Has that snowy mountain expedition appeal to it, I could use that extra bulk to round me out. Say, do you sweat much in those?"
O'ryan answered his questions, but each time he did it only created more questions. O'ryan had some questions of his own. Why did Gibble call ships, crafts, and rockets boats? Was it to sound strange by intent, was Gibble crafting this persona? Why did Gibble presume that O'ryan knew anything about water based lifeforms other than humans? He most certainly did not, nor did he think it was a common topic to know. O'ryan changed his strategy to letting Gibble talk a lot while answering with the shortest explanations possible, nodding his head to reassure the scientist.
O'ryan offered to get some food, and was quizzed on every aspect of Luna Prime's systems down to the ice cream machine.
"I know you must have a robust recycling system here on the moon, else food would become a big issue in record time, who wants to waste weight sending food up?"
"That's right." O'ryan said, agreeing and not wasting time to explain it.
"But then tell me if you will, is this real ice cream, made of milk? You must import this as a luxury, it certainly tastes like real milk. Perhaps a clever substitute? Dehydrated powder no doubt, if you do import it. The world's most expensive ice cream in that case. Look at me, I'm eating five dollars per lick. I feel like a millionaire."
O'ryan went to protest but didn't know how Luna Prime got its ice cream.
"I'm not really sure on that one," he admitted.
"Human milk." Gibble said.
"Excuse me?" O'ryan said, sitting down at the table again with his food.
"Human milk, you have humans, it could be done without the procural of offspring."
"You think we farm our staff for milk to make ice cream here?" O'ryan asked incredulously.
Gibble cackled. "Not likely! But it could work. I prefer the imported luxury hypothesis, feeling rich and all."
This man had a lot of energy and enthusiasm. O'ryan felt a small amount of appreciation for his forthcoming nature, but it was too much at once. He learned a lot about Gibble's person without learning anything about his history or intentions at all in a very short time. Now that they had food, though, Gibble was eating, giving O'ryan time to form a few probing questions.
"How did you end up graduating in Malaysia? Were you born there?"
"Oh, that's an excellent question O'ryan! You're bright, I can tell! But the answer… It's quite depressing, really." Gibble paused to eat. Gibble's eyes looked up and away.
O'ryan noticed a distinct change in his demeanor. Before he must've been on autopilot, and now he was deliberately forming his sentences.
"You must have noticed or read some of my peculiarities. There was a small problem in my homeland. You could say I had other credentials that were… redacted. It's nothing really. Same degree there as in Malaysia, but some of my public opinions were a tad unacceptable for the public eye. I should thank them, too, if I'm being honest." Gibble shook a yogurt covered spoon at O'ryan.
"It was very hard to get funding for my research. No. Deporting to Malaysia was the best thing to happen to me. They were glad to have me. It's a different culture entirely. Have you heard of Shell City?" Gibble asked.
"Wait, go back-" O'ryan said. "Do you mind me asking? What were you studying? What did you say?"
"It's nothing, really." Gibble insisted, waving his hands out wide and shrugging. He wanted to move past this. "All I did was run a UFO magazine. It's very serious, but few take it as such. I made some claims that my government was hiding information about UFOs. In the end… they didn't like my commentary."
"That's it?" O'ryan said. "I like a good conspiracy story, though UFOs aren't my thing. I can't believe they'd do that. I've seen such material coming from a lot of places, how do they get away with it and not you?"
"Mm-mm! That's the trick! It's a lot like your boats, O'ryan. It's all about weight. See, nobody cared what I did before I had public validity! I ran my magazine without so much as a flutter of interest from the government. It was after my PhD, or my first well cited papers that things went sour… it was very peculiar indeed. It seems to be that, quite paradoxically, as long as I'm expected to need to prove something, I can say it. When I no longer have to prove it, I am a threat! If that is the bar for villainy, does the real power lie, then? Hmm?"
" Why shouldn't you need to prove it anymore? You're a scientist, that's what you do." O'ryan said and gestured in disbelief.
"Quite right! That's what I do, and that is the issue. Once others in my society blessed me with their recognition and approval as a man of science then the public simply took my word as law, to a degree. And then, well, now all of my criticism of my government was for lack of a better term weighted heavily. I suspect that I was encroaching on their ability to be believed for no good reason at all." Gibble said.
A smile held on O'ryan's face. He was enjoying this quite a lot, since he held similar disparaging beliefs about the public masses. O'ryan continued to talk in this vein, but held the belief that a government was still unlikely to behave this way. O'ryan favored some conspiracy theories himself, but Gibbles theories were insane. He believed in most alien abductions and that they had a base in the moon. When humans visited in the 1960s, the aliens simply left for Ceres, the asteroid belt moon like object. That's why we didn't see them here, they prefer to not reveal themselves over keeping Earth's moon. It was a ridiculous backpedaling theory. Even with academic credentials, would a government really be worried about this enough to deport him?
O'ryan asked Gibble for specifics, and Gibble replied but gave off sour tones.
"I painted a very bad picture of my government, let's say. I claimed they were liars and greedy mongrels, they shouldn't be trusted, and so on. I think they were only worried about what I might say next, not what I said before, as they could not predict it! Hah. Well, that's my hypothesis, I never got an answer that sounded like honesty."
The two had been talking for nearly an hour, about Luna Prime trivia again, when O'ryan realized the other VIP had yet to arrive.
"Excuse me, Dr. Gibble, where is your partner on this trip? She should have been here by now right? Wasn't she with you?"
"Oh, Nadia, yes-yes, well she's having trouble with Bill."
"Bill? I wasn't aware there was a third person coming." O'ryan said, and Gibble almost snorted his drink out of his nose.
"You don't know?" Gibble said, laughing, choking on water. "That's her boyfriend." he said with a wry smile.
'Larry, what did you do?' O'ryan thought. It's not like him to pull this sort of stunt.
"I only made time for the two of you, since you want to visit different places, if Bill is here for a tour he'll have to follow along with one of you two. Presumably Dr. Mirati."
"Presumably, yes." Gibble said, attempting to hide his smile
O'ryan was starting to feel like everyone was in on some practical joke except himself, and that he was expected to act professionally while the rest of the room acted like children.
"Have you known each other before this?" O'ryan asked.
"Nadia? Yes! I mean, no! We both worked at Shell City for years. I only saw her a couple of times though. We share some acquaintances because of our partner universities. But I like to think we've become good friends on this trip so far! Since we'll be working together, it's an important thing to do!" Gibble held up his finger for emphasis.
"You will be? I thought this was a coincidental research agreement, sharing a ship to save on cost. Aren't you working in completely different hubs here?" O'ryan pointed out.
"Yes, I mean, yes. Yes. The cat's out of the bag it seems! Nearly!" Gibble chuckled. "There is more!" He said, reassuring the concerned look on O'ryan's face. "But it's confidential, you understand, Green Dawn has competitive concerns. Academia is not as nice as you'd think! These are exciting times, O'ryan."
Gibble was starting to vibrate with enthusiasm and toothy grins. O'ryan assumed that the content that arose in Gibble's mind, yet remained unsaid, was the cause for this energy. Why was it always a secret? He hated all these secrets. He thought Gibble was relatively innocent, at least, and more likely to want to expose secrets than try to keep them.
"How long do you think she will take? Perhaps we should start your tour and I'll just cover some of the areas twice." O'ryan said.
"Oh no-no-no." Gibble replied with a wagging finger. "I wouldn't want to do that to you. She'll be over soon I'm sure of it."
The two spoke for a few more minutes about Gibble's research on the base, it was 'amphibians in space' in a nutshell. Low gravity effects on animals were always on the scientific menu, though little use came from it in O'ryan's opinion. There were only a handful of such scientists here at any point in time. Gibble told him that he was working on a way to prove that much of the navigational behavior of his amphibians came from the magnetic fields caused by pH differences in microscopic spirals of water. Gibble claimed it would be easier to do this in a space-like environment where these subtle fields could be more easily isolated.
"That's… something." O'ryan said, failing to find an honestly appreciative word.
"Thank you!" Gibble did not catch the implication.