“Alright, alright, let’s settle down. I know this is the start of a new year, but can we please keep the unnecessary comments to a minimum. *indistinct* …Yes, that counts you too dear, sorry. I’ll make it up to you later. *light chuckle* Now… *indistinct* What was that? ‘Director Fornax looks like he fu…’ Please, Rexia Yaltrop, save the spicy remarks about interspecies inclinations or proposed threesomes for your local meetings, not the main Alliance chambers. So, as part of the new system instated following Document A92-T3 of the Alliance Financial Act of 2259, please raise your hand if you have an amendment to the bill Rexia Zeentach proposed during the last session. Then, we’ll take some votes. *pause* Alright… Christ. This is going to take a while, but let’s get started.” – Councillor Vigino, Assigned Deputy Chairman for the Out-Han High Council, 2259. Leaked recording from a Cambiar fan-site of an Out-Han Alliance meeting. Camera recordings were later found spliced together with neo-wave pop music to produce an edited ‘fan-cam’ of Counciler Zeentach.

  Elias had just finished verifying a complex theorem as part of his interspecies harness project when he saw how late the day had gotten. Breaking into a sprint, he headed for a particular recreation room in the centre of the wing. Bursting through the doors, and facing a table of faces staring at him, he checked his watch to see he had barely made it. He only twelve seconds to spare before he would’ve missed the seven o’clock deadline.

  “Argh, dammit!” Kurt cursed as he handed over a palmful of utus to Bernard. “You’re late all the fucking time and the one time I bet on you being a fuckin’ slowpoke, you rush to get here?!”

  “Hehe, see Brick Hardmeat?” Bernard smugly said, jabbing the bodyguard in the side. “This is why you need to trust your friends. Elias might arrive overdue nine times out of ten, but you have to trust that ten percent chance sometimes.”

  Elias panted as he saw a mixture of expressions around the table he had organised earlier that day. The rec-room was dimly lit; the main lights being turned off and the only source of illumination a spotlight seated above the round wooden table. Sitting around its edge were Bernard, Madison, Kurt, EXCAL in the form of a one of his remote humanoid drone bodies, and Chel-Lin. His Tylas partner, lacking any limbs, had plopped her inner body onto a chair, and bracing herself with her mantle. It seemed she was getting used to the idea of ‘sitting’. Still, she had switched out her normally plain purple scarfs with embroidered ones that trailed far longer than usual. Elias felt it was nice to see a change of appearance from her, appreciating the effort she had clearly made for that night.

  Loosening his tie, Elias took his position at the table across from his Tylas partner and pulled out a deck of playing cards, flashing an excited grin all the whilte.

  “So, who’s ready for poker?” Elias asked.

  Earlier that day

  “A poker night?” Bernard asked unconvinced. He rubbed his bleary eyes as he looked at Elias with a dazed expression.

  “Yes? I mean, right now? With only a few weeks until the first checkpoint?” Madison shared a similar bedraggled look.

  Elias leaned against the wall of the computation lab at the two clearly exhausted scientists. The space was fitted with a series of supercomputers designed for testing hypothetical scenarios before they were put into practice. It appeared that both tired researchers had sought to use the equipment at the same time, and were halfway through fighting for control when Elias had interrupted them.

  “Look, I know its rough right now, but if you don’t relax at all, you’re just going to end up banging your head on a brick wall,” Elias said. “If I have to, I’ll argue with Rannos to strip back your recommended lab hours under health and safety laws, ok?”

  His two lab partners looked as though they had already hit that brick wall, literally. Coffee stains marked the collar and chest of Madisons lab coat, the previously pure colour now closer resembling a patchwork mess of browns and greys. Bernard didn’t fair much better; days’ worth of stubble had built up, and his hair looked dishevelled. He rubbed his Echorist amulet between two fingers.

  “That’s easy for you to argue about relaxing, Savage,” Bernard muttered. “You honestly look good as new. Well, as new looking as you get. No offense.”

  Elias looked down at himself. Whilst the ache of many late nights hadn’t affected him as badly as his colleagues, his usual untidy self did admittedly result in a rough appearance. Hmm, maybe he should actually try to fix that. Maybe instead of an unkempt asshole he could just be a regular asshole. That might work.

  “I’ll… take that as a complement,” Elias cautiously said.

  “Yeah, don’t. Look, Savage, if you want to host a little card game with yourself, your guard, the computer and your little Tylas friend, be my guest. Us two are actually rather busy doing real work.” Bernard tutted before he seemed to register his own words. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. I’m just… really wanting this to go well. I have other things I need to do after this whole project, and I need this to go well, alright? I have a lot riding on this.”

  Elias was unphased at the irritated tone of the rock and roll scientist. He had been told far worse by others; a little snappiness was honestly deserved on Bernard’s part considering the stress he was likely under. However, Elias had already made plans for the poker game, and he would need the duo there to round out the group, no matter what. Without speaking, Elias walked over to the computer system, currently occupied by Bernard’s simulation and inspected the data.

  Though Bernard’s gene-splicing project was far from Elias’ forte, even he could make out the errors in the input information. Moving the various applications around the screen, he could see the main problem why the computer was dumping millions of errors into the results page.

  “Your plasmid size is completely off. What restriction enzyme are you using for this?”

  “Thalmar-92. Look, Elias, I appreciate you trying to help but-“

  “You’ve got the wrong data sequence from the Bulsapod plant genetic code if you are trying to implant it into a… potato it looks like? Seems like you took it from the second to last stage of its life cycle. Switch it to the stage before, just as it does its weird genome double cross, and you’ll be fine.”

  It was a simple error, almost elementary for a real scientist to make, but it was clear that weariness was not helping Dr Warnick’s faculties at that point. Bernard stumbled over before looking over his scrawled notes. A couple of page flips later and a glazed look later, he moaned in defeat.

  “Huh… How did you… Shit, you’re right. Great Observer, I need to stop working for a bit.”

  Bernard cancelled the computer and flopped against a nearby table, sighing. Elias turned his attention to Madison, who scrutinized the younger scientist.

  “Elias, if you think you can pull the same magic trick on me, you’re going to be mistaken,” Madison said, arms crossed.

  “Try me,” Elias said. “I actually moonlight as a magician.”

  Elias did, in fact, not like magic. Well, magic tricks at least. In fact, he hated every magician he had ever met. Admittedly, that list consisted only of the one that his father had commissioned for his fifth birthday party, and who ended up being an assassin targeting his uncle, but that was neither here nor there.

  “Alright,” Madison started. “How do you fix syraline over-compartmentalisation during its refractory twining stage involving a dual-infiltration module at less than 200 kelvin after sti-“

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Elias held up his hands in defence against the verbal barrage. “I might be the next best thing after sliced bread, but you have got to slow down. Alright, Madison, let’s walk through this again. Tell me your project from the very start. Like I’m a baby, ok?”

  Madison pouted after being interrupted but was willing to start again. “I’m attempting to fix the two big issues with syraline production – the cost and speed.”

  “Alright, not my main subject area, but let’s give it a try. I know the price is mostly due to the fact that the main component is Polytetrahite, and the speed thing is due to it needing to pass through a S-Field at a specific frequency and resonance level. Good so far?”

  “Uh huh. So, both of those are what I’m trying to fix. I need the machine to test my theory on alternative combination methods for the precursors to the Polytetrahite.”

  “Ok, and why’s that giving you a headache?”

  “Because the different sections of the mixed pre-syraline compound get segregated into different compartments during the… well, you heard all of that before.”

  “Ok…” Elias sat and thought for a moment. Though he was inexperienced with syraline production, he had worked with another S-Field altered material in the past – baryonic gravitation plates, or ‘baryplates’ as they were often shortened to, were the most common. He had come up with a solution to the production of the plates as a teenager when developing his second paper on the Markowsky Principle. It could potentially fix both of Madison’s issues, but Elias wanted to focus on the cost first.

  “Why not pull a stripped waveform field during the mixing process? Up the subatomic blinding rate of whatever S-Drive you’re using to match the pre-mix, and just twin them together through four, no wait, five overlapping S-Fields. Of course, you’d need to apply a Dalet spin to the whole waveform but that wouldn’t be so hard.”

  Elias finished and flipped out his comm-device. Based on the glare Madison had been giving him, she was doing her very best not to interrupt him until he was done. How nice of her. However, as soon as he concluded, she spoke up.

  “No way. That’s impossible. I considered that method, but the level of accuracy you’d need would be impractical. I can’t have every production line running at lab level conditions, as much as I’d like for that to be the case. So, yes, Savage, I did think of that, but now we’re back to square one. So, without using a Dalet spin or exact blinding rates, what would you have me do?”

  As if to answer her, Madison’s comm-device dinged as it received a data transmission whilst Elias put his own away.

  “What is this?” Madison said, scanning the phone’s screen.

  “It’s what you need,” Elias said, resisting a smile. “Read through it carefully, should help.”

  “This is… one of your papers?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “That’s what it says in the authors section, last I checked. Section five should help. You can get the accuracy you need without the lab equipment if you follow the setup there. It’s how I managed to develop inter-system matter transport for cargo earlier this year. Of course, please practice it first before actually trying to mix syraline together. I, for one, would not like to spend a few weeks cleaning up a flood of exotic liquid metal. Let me know if it has any issues, but I feel that should be enough data assurance to get you over the first checkpoint.”

  “I’ll say…” Madison’s tired look was now one of stunned shock. She blinked a couple of times before looking up. “Elias… you…”

  She walked close to him, looking up at his tall frame, since he no longer hunching over. Then, she squeezed him in a tight hug.

  “Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she squealed.

  Elias attempted to speak but found his lungs uncooperating with the force of Dr Dallas’ hug crushing them flat.

  When she finally releasing him, he gasped, “Yeah, well, you can make it up to me tonight, alright? Same goes for you, Bernard.”

  Elias limped away, feeling as though his torso had been crushed. The slumped form of Bernard looked up, weakly smiling, as Madison practically buzzed with excitement. It was then that Elias realised there was something he could ask.

  “Hold on, wait! Madison, have you requisitioned any S-Drives for your project?”

  “Well, duh! I’ve got a dozen or so smaller units for testing purposes. Wait, eleven now. I slagged one last week. Oops. You need one?”

  “Maybe. Depends. Can you save one for me just in case?”

  “After you just saved me a titanic headache? Anything.”

  Madison giggled as she sat and scrolled through Elias’ paper. Part of Elias felt he should be smug about spoon-feeding her what she needed for her project, but decided otherwise. Bernard’s had not been so blinded by Elias’ efforts to miss such a detail, however.

  “What the hell do S-Drives have to do with interspecies harnesses, Elias?” Bernard asked, eyes squinting.

  Elias put on a false expression of thinking as he mentally shat himself. Damn Warnick, wasn’t he meant to be an alcoholic – since when were they so observant?! Thankfully, Elias quickly dug up a decent enough excuse to save his ass.

  “If you beat me at poker tonight, then I’ll tell you,” Elias bargained. “Deal?”

  Bernard smirked. “You’re on.”

  Elias cracked his neck as he began shuffling the deck. EXCAL had felt it pertinent to bring a number of snacks to the room and was noisily opening one such bag as the group prepared.

  “So, playing for money, or fun?” Kurt said.

  “I can go for either, as long as we have a good time!” Madison said.

  “I have no such need for human currencies. But I will play along with whatever you bipeds choose.” Chel-Lin tried to act aloof, but the rhythmic swaying of her outer cape let Elias see her excitement.

  “Look, I’ve got a supercomputer backing me up – I don’t think it’s fair for me to bet when I’ve got a perfect poker face and can calculate the exact probabilities.” EXCAL said.

  Bernard swung back up from… untying his shoe laces? He looked slightly confused.

  “Betting?” he asked. “I mean, we can, but on top of… you know what?”

  Everyone then shared Bernard’s confused look now as they turned his way. With a shrug he seemed to relax and lean back.

  “Doesn’t bother me though, I’ve got plenty of cheese to bet. That’s what being the most popular scientist in the entire CCH gets you.” He reached over and grabbed ones of the beers EXCAL had opened. “Still, let’s not get too wild! The last time I played strip poker I got an STD.”

  Everyone froze at the surprise announcement before looking at Elias.

  “Wha- Hey!” Elias cried. “Don’t look at me! I said nothing about strip poker!”

  Multiple overlapping voices broke out. Chel-Lin concerningly asked Kurt what strip poker entailed, EXCAL panicked over not currently wearing anything on his drone, thus breaking the rules, and quickly searched for something to put on its chassis, and Bernard howled with laughter. Finally, the room calmed as Elias did his best at damage control.

  “Ok, I didn’t intend for this to be goddamn strip poker. It was likely just some miscommunication with Bernard, ok?”

  “You definitely said something about stripping,” Bernard said, hands raised in defence.

  “Look, can we just play it normally, ok?” Kurt seemed very averse to undressing to his birthday suit. “The goddamn robot and alien probably can’t even play.”

  “No, I can play!” EXCAL chimed in, hauling a number of spare uniforms for maintenance workers and guards through the door. “I am strip-capable! And Chel-Lin, you can take off your scarves, right?”

  “I… um…” the Tylas in question murmured. Her swaying had ceased.

  “I think we should do this.” It was Madison who surprised him with a defiant tone. She had clearly set her mind to this. “We’re all adults here, and this is just a bit of fun to blow off steam. Besides, what’s a little stripping in front of friends, right?”

  EXCAL, after donning an ill-fitting hi-vis vest, said, “Yes! Let’s do this! I don’t have much to reveal down there, but this is gonna be great fun!”

  Elias finally left the decision with Chel-Lin, ignoring Kurt’s pleas for modesty.

  As her outer cape pulsed in apparent anxiety, she eventually responded, “I mean… if it helps assist my understanding of human interactions, it could be worthwhile. As an experiment, of course.”

  “Right, an experiment, sure,” Elias said.

  He grinned as he dealt out the cards alongside some plastic betting tokens, risks now raised far beyond petty matters of mere currency. He was wondering what the hell a Tylas would look like naked. I mean, without the scarves and little ribbons Chel-Lin wore, there wasn’t exactly much to be exposed. Who knew, maybe losing the few scraps of cloth she had would be a sinful display of shame for her people. Getting a rise out of her was honestly far more important than the nakedness. Though, that could be nice to see as well.

  It was only after Kurt lost the first round that an unexpected thought gripped Elias – it would be really embarrassing if the big guy was terrible and was the first to get naked whilst the rest of them remained dressed. That wouldn’t even be funny, just a bit sad, awkward, and just a tiny bit gay.

  Thankfully, the tides turned as the others around the room discarded their first items one by one. Elias had tried to jokingly only remove a pen from his lab coat pocket when he lost his first round, but a stealthy EXCAL had snuck behind him and quickly snatched the coat away in seconds. When Chel-Lin lost a hand to a rather poor bluff on Madison’s part, she removed a single cloth strip to the sound of many exaggerated ‘oohs’. The way she squirmed at the reaction was almost… cute? Could a Tylas be cute? No, of course not. Especially not Chel-Lin.

  That was dumb. And Elias was certain he was anything but dumb.

  Unfortunately, some important obstacles quickly arose. Firstly, his CAI companion didn’t have much to lose. EXCAL played badly, but just kept donning and removing the various items he found around the room. As it turned out, he couldn’t exactly go naked, lacking a flesh and blood body and all. It also didn’t help he repeatedly played a sound bite of some neo-wave celebrity saying ‘n-n-nice poker face, jackass’, mid-round which constantly threw everyone off. The second aspect was the fact that whilst Chel-Lin was inexperienced at poker, needing to be told the rules early on, she had realized that lacking human features made for an excellent poker face. After her second loss, she disabled the emotion sensitivity setting of her translator and left her eyes semi-squinted the whole game. It looked a bit ridiculous, but seemed to hide her reactions and aided her bluffs for most part.

  Still, Elias was happy to wring out the occasional win against the Tylas. He had based his judgment on the sound of her untranslated voice – the minute warbling as it was translated differed from its usual calm hum and was a dead giveaway that she had bluffed. Elias had later won a well-fought victory against Bernard based on what he initially figured was a tell. Mid round, a light shaking overtook the older scientist’s hands, and he folded soon after. However, after Elias reached under the table to discard his shoes after a disastrous mis-read of Kurt during the next hand, he saw Bernard’s hands still shaking. Odd. Nerves? A lingering STD, as he had offhandedly mentioned? Or something else?

  The game progressed in intensity as more and more clothes dropped to the floor. Still wearing his trousers and undershirt, Elias was by far in the lead when he surveyed the rest of the room. Most sat one or two items away from indecent exposure, with Madison barely hanging on with a bra and panties, Kurt sweating buckets in his tighty-whities, and Bernard proudly resting his bare legs on the table, a pair of unmentionables, emblazed with the pineapples, being all that covered his privates. However, the round was left with only Elias and Chel-Lin playing.

  Head to head, they locked eyes. Elias had a two pair in his hand, and had kept his cool. If they were betting, he would have felt confident in winning big that hand. However, as usual, Chel-Lin was making things difficult. Hard to read as ever, he was about to fold when she spoke up, reengaging her translator to full emotional capacity.

  “Um… If I… discard my last item, it would be considered…”

  “Naked?” Elias initially smirked, but found that there was serious trepidation in Chel-Lin’s voice. Did he really want to put her in that sort of position?

  “How naked we talking – tits or pussy?” Bernard said, earning him a glare from Elias. Asshole, it was Elias’ job to make the alien uncomfortable, not his.

  “Um… I don’t think our customs work the same way but… it would be very socially unacceptable to remove my adulthood scarf.”

  Chel-Lin sent a rolling cascade down her mantle as a tendril felt at her last and particularly thick bolt of cloth wrapped around her neck. Damn, she was genuinely worried about this. Perhaps it held a greater significance to the Tylas to expose one’s self fully. Based on her words, it seemed like certain shawls were tied to different meanings. Ah hell, Elias didn’t consider himself to be the most gentlemanly guy, but even he had his limits. He folded.

  “Damn, good play. How about we trying something less… titillating?” Elias looked around the room at the half naked scientists and colleagues. They could go… further, but Elias wanted to at least maintain some sense of professional decorum. That, and he didn’t want to wake up the following morning needing a medical checkup from something Bernard spread around. It didn’t help matters that, for all his bravado, Elias couldn’t exactly consider himself ‘experienced’. Hell, the closest he had gotten to the fairer sex was when he purposely invited a vain researcher from a past project over, giving all the hints as to where the night would lead, only to disappoint her with pure scientific questioning.

  Dr Warnick seemed disappointed the game had ended without any real nudity as Kurt and Madison both sighed and laughed as one. The bodyguard practically collapsed in relief, head on the table. Elias had an idea for a different game, one that hopefully wouldn’t devolve to primal nakedness, but realised he didn’t have a physical set of it. He knew the other humans would have a digital version, but needed to ask Chel-Lin.

  “Alright, new game,” Elias clapped his hands together. “Chel-Lin, your comm-device thing has stuff from the shared IGS archive, right?”

  “Most of it, but not all,” she said, detaching her strange, holographic equivalent of his own rectangular device. “Only things that would be considered ‘culturally valuable’, as my people would put it.”

  “Well, surely you must have UNO, right?” Elias immediately heard a groan from the rest of the team.

  “Hmm. UNO? I… don’t think so.”

  Elias saw the chance to rile her up a bit without exposing any alien nipples. Wait, did Tylas have nipples? He didn’t think so.

  “Ah, of course. Only the best species in the galaxy has access to UNO. Us that is. Or maybe Rannos and Lucian didn’t trust you with UNO. It’s very important to us as a culture, so that would be expected.” She looked up, squinting at him. Did she know he was fucking with her? Elias tried to hide his smile as he continued. “Or maybe you have UNO, but can’t figure out how to play it? Very complicated, only humans would understand.”

  “I don’t have UNO, ape.” Chel-Lin said firmly.

  “Oh, you sure? Actually, now that I think about it, I’m pretty certain I heard Rannos say everyone got given UNO when we started. Company policy, standard stuff. Maybe you don’t even know how to start it up?”

  “I don’t have UNO, mud-dragger, so find something else.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure you have UNO,” Elias couldn’t help but smirk. “Perhaps your machine can’t run it?”

  “Shut up, moron, my Jhil-San-Quor device is far older and more advanced than any of your tacky little boxes.”

  “Well, I got mine the first day Black Sun released this model; it came with UNO pre-installed.”

  “Well… mine doesn’t have it.”

  “Oh come off it, Daksira. You have UNO!” Elias said, half shouting, half giggling.

  “I don’t have UNO you fucking moron!” Seeing Chel-Lin slip into direct expletives was a definite win.

  “Uh, guys?” Bernard tried to interject, holding up an old, peeling cardboard box EXCAL had found. A shake resulted in a rattling, hinting at a potential board game inside. Neither Elias and Chel-Lin were in the mood to care.

  “Not now, I’m almost enjoying my anger!” Chel-Lin said to the intruding scientist who began backing away from the slowly rising alien as she spread her mantle out.

  “You can just download it, kite. What’s the problem?!” Elias yelled, standing up as he attempted to match her height.

  “The problem?! The problem is that I don’t have one, two, three, four, five…” Chel-Lin started as Elias overlapped her.

  “It’s a free card game! YOU HAVE UNO!”

  “…Eight, nine or ten, you ingrate!” Chel-Lin finished.

  “It’s free! It came with your spiky holo-thing! You can just download it!”

  “I DON’T HAVE UNO! I WILL NEVER HAVE UNO!” Chel-Lin shouted.

  “YOU HAVE UNO! FUCK!” Elias collapsed to a chair.

  “Guys, guys, relax!” Bernard said. “We found another game we can all play! I don’t think its UNO, thank the Great Observer, but we can chill out a bit, alright?”

  The two turned over to look at the nondescript box, the outer packaging had been stripped clean, leaving just the cardboard lining. Finally, after working with the pull tabs, they finally got it out the container as it fell to the table, its contents strewn about. Fake money spilled across the wood as a handful of distinct metal figures scattered about. A dog, a hat, and a thimble amongst others.

  It was Monopoly - GaltCorp edition.

  The group decided to call it a night.