"Strump, unless you give me what I want more people will die than what's necessary. Have you reconsidered your position?"

"How are you doing this?" Governor Ronald Strump spoke with a quiet terror, holding the screen on his phone close to his face. It displayed an error message where there should have been video, and the voice that came through was distorted. He was seated at his desk in his home office aboard the orbital station. The windows were blacked out, the door shut and locked. 

"You were very rude to me last time we spoke."

Governor Strump pulled at the neck of his suit. "Y-yes, I remember. I still can't just—"

"That's on the list of words I didn't want to hear from you, Ron."

"I—I'm sorry—"

"Yeah, that's on the list too. Why don't you try yes?"

"They'll kill me—they'll know it was me. Jensen Lee got himself seen. The whole police force is after him, I can't just let him through the gates," the Governor said, and put some strength back in his voice. "No, I won't do it. I won't do that for you. I'll preserve what dignity I have left. These people voted for me. They believe in me. I won't help you."

"Oh, come on, Strump. Don't be an airhead. You're only Governor thanks to me."

"I refuse," Strump declared with an air of finality, and ended the call.

The phone wasn't responding to his input. The call didn't end. 

"Ronnie Boy," the scrambled voice sang. "I've been helping you out here. Working with you. Tell me with a straight face you would've gotten re-elected without my help, Ron. Those people were at your throat a few months ago, and now they worship you. Listen, I've given you this much, and I can take it away just as easily. You can open your gates to let my man Lee out and I won't touch your city, or you can continue being difficult and I'll smash it to dust."

"I won't do it—"

"YOU WILL!"

Strump trembled at the volume of the shout and nearly dropped the phone. 

"I have been lenient with you, dirtwalker. The streak of paltry victories that kept you your title, Governor, were not earned by you, they were given to you. By me. I have allowed your military to believe it has eradicated the pirate threat for the moment, but I will not wait any longer. Give me the map. Let him through or I'll take your head first, Strump."

Governor Strump's reply was a mewling sob. The scrambled voice on the other end heaved an exasperated sigh, as though Strump was a misbehaving younger sibling. 

"Look, I want to make this deal work but my boys are getting very restless, Strump. They don't want this to work. They want you to let your pride get the better of you. They want to be in your cities, eating your rich food and ravishing your fine women. And they know all I've got to do is let them loose. Just a bunch of snarling dogs, they are. Animal urges, you know. But I just want the map. And if you give it to me I can lead this pack of howling dogs away. Without that map...."

"I won't," whispered Strump.

"You either do or you don't, Strump. It's your head. We're coming."

The screen went black, and Governor Strump collapsed into a dejected heap. 

#

Gim stared out at the stars through the thick window in the living room of the Governor's quarters. He had spent the past three and a half hours standing in the same spot mentally reviewing what he was instructed to cook for Governor Strump's post-meeting breakfast. The local ingredients shifted seasonally: today it would be three grilled venison spice sausages, two fried warbler eggs, one thinly sliced chilled lotus fruit and of course the accompanying lotus tea. Yesterday Gim had Strump himself confirm his menu for the day ahead, and he said he would be "looking forward to each meal." 

Gim considered this unusually high praise. As a fabricant, most humans didn't bother him with social niceties. People normally spoke to him as one would any other machine: they either gave orders or asked for information. The Governor was oddly polite to him. Gim gazed out the tall window that stretched across the living room as the sun's first rays peeked out from behind the planet. Surface, they called it. Not much of a name, really. About as inventive as Earth. But it was the name chosen by its discoverer decades before.

Gim turned on his heel, making his way to the private kitchen. He'd been leased by Governor Strump forty seven hours ago as a personal assistant. Before that he had served on a mining vessel for roughly sixteen hundred hours, on reserve for some high risk zero gravity repair work. He hadn't actually done anything but sit in storage; the miners finished their contract early and returned him to the orbital station for a partial refund, where he was repackaged and kept in cold storage. After a few days on the shelf he was requested for service by the Governor for a period of no more than seven hundred hours. Once the lease was up he would have approximately 62,436 lifetime hours of operational capacity left—a little over seven years.

The stovetop began heating itself as Gim walked into the kitchen. He had set out two pans and a kettle for tea earlier in the morning. On a shelf in the refrigerator were three venison spice sausages, two yellow-speckled warbler eggs, and a crimson-skinned lotus fruit. He set the eggs on the counter, dropped the sausages in their pan, and began to prepare the fragrant lotus fruit while the sausages sizzled.

The lotus fruit looked similar to Earth's avocados except that its skin was a dark mottled red and its stem sprouted aquamarine leaves. Gim plucked the stem and dropped it in the food processor, which whirred to life for a few seconds. He took a knife and deftly bisected the fruit vertically along the large central seed, then peeled away both halves. 

The fleshy interior of the fruit matched the bright aqua color of the leaves and glistened with moisture. It released a strong, sweet scent like melon. The fat teardrop seed was nestled inside the fruit, shiny and dark red. Gim popped it out and tossed it into the food processor, which eagerly obliged him again with a momentary buzz.

After setting the two halves face down on the counter, Gim peeled off the skins, cut the fruit into wafer-thin slices, arranged them artfully on a small plate, and put the dish inside a drawer in the refrigerator. If he left the fruit out it would begin to brown before the rest of the meal was ready. As he shut the door the kettle began to boil. Time for tea. 

The heat died underneath the boiling kettle when he turned the heating element off. Gim opened a drawer recessed beneath the counter and plucked an empty teabag from it. The bags were made from the lotus plant's fibrous stalk and stems back on Surface. The fruit's seed, leaves, and stem had been reduced to grounds inside the food processor, and Gim carefully spooned the fragrant mixture into the teabag. He cinched the string on top and tied it. A purposeful product. Efficient.

The leaves required only rudimentary preparation to make the tea—no drying, no curing, no processing—making it an extremely profitable export from Surface. Meanwhile its psychoactive primary ingredient ensured high demand: the tea brewed from the seed, stem, and leaf of the lotus fruit induced a full-body warm buzzing sensation, heightened mood, increased appetite, and general contentment. 

Gim lifted the lid on the tiny teapot and poured in half the water from the kettle before he dropped the bag in. The water swirled to golden, steaming as it filled the pot. Gim replaced the lid and set the kettle down. When it was ready in three and a half minutes it would be a ruddy golden brown color. Although he performed the process with mechanical precision, Gim had never made the tea by himself before. It was one of the lessons he'd been given by the Governor, who had taken the time to teach Gim between his many video conferences. 

Strump claimed that the shoddy instructional files Gim could have downloaded were entirely wrong, and that he in fact knew the only proper method. Until he had the chance to teach Gim himself, the Governor refused to allow him to brew the tea. Now, having been taught once, Gim would never forget the Governor's instructions. He would repeat the process exactly any time he was asked. Fabricants never forget, barring brain trauma or deletion of data. 

Gim turned the sausages and oiled the other pan for the eggs. 

#

"Amazing what you fabricants can do these days," said Strump around a mouthful of fried egg. "You're just so damned smart now. I remember I had one of the first organic models back in '32. Back when they still had memory problems. Back up your backup's backups, that's what they used to say."

"Yes, the early models were unreliable," Gim said. "We've come a long way."

They sat at the marble countertop in the kitchen, which doubled as a table for two. The counter was empty underneath, and two chairs tucked in neatly to fill the space when it was not in use. Gim had set the table for just Governor Strump, but Strump insisted that Gim at least keep him company so Gim sat patiently with his hands in his lap as the Governor ate. Strump stabbed the juicy slices of aquamarine lotus fruit two, three at a time onto his fork and finished them first. As he chewed he nodded his head in satisfaction.

 "A long way, yes," said the Governor. "A long, long way."

The man grew quiet then, and took on a distant stare, half-chewed fruit resting in his hanging jaw. He looked pale and distraught. Gim, in an effort to make himself good company, took it upon himself to liven up the conversation. 

"How are your wife and children?" Gim asked, confident that speaking of his much-loved family would brighten the Governor's mood. His conversational guidelines indicated that, rather than asking a simple yes-or-no question, it was much more beneficial to ask open-ended questions which provoked a better response.

"My family is away at the moment," he said. "I've sent them far from the planet. It's unsafe."

An unexpected answer—it did, however, explain his mood.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Governor."

"Yes. It's a regrettable set of circumstances we're in, my biofabricated friend."

Gim frowned. "There must be something I am unaware of."

"Yes," said the Governor. "There are a great deal of things you are unaware of. Tell me something. If I instruct you to keep our conversations secret, can you?"

"Of course. My social protocol allows for confidentiality. In fact if you told me to, I could encrypt anything we've spoken about. Absolutely no record of it would remain in my conscious memory, and the logs can be accessed by you at any time. Fabricants are very good at keeping secrets."

"How wonderful. You were designed with such consideration."

Gim smiled. "We're here to be helpful in any way we can."

"In that case, I request that all of our private conversations be kept private."

"Yes, Governor Strump."

"I've sent my family away because I'm afraid they're in danger. There is a great threat looming over all of us here. I'm sure you've heard about our recent sweep through the pirate sector of the asteroid belt."

"Most news sources indicated the battle was a complete rout of the pirate fleet."

The Governor nodded, sipping at his tea. "It very nearly was."

"So what is the great threat?"

"The battle was a farce. It was mostly infighting between the pirates, a power struggle between the old leadership and an upstart calling himself the Starhawk. The old guard was content to stick to the belt and raid the shipping lanes; Starhawk wants to strike at the cities themselves, expand their territory. Starhawk's forces baited ours into engaging the main pirate fleet, but he cut and run once the battle started. He's got a fleet about a fifth the size of the previous pirate coalition, and he claims they're headed this way ahead of our returning fleet. When they get here they're going to take the city. There's no way our planetary guard can defend us; we've already sent most of our forces to the belt."

"Can anything be done?"

"A brain aneurysm could strike Starhawk at this very moment and bring all of this to a sudden and peaceful halt," Strump quipped.

"There is a very small chance of that happening, sir."

"Yes, I understand that, Gim. Terrible time to joke, but I was only kidding. Mostly. It would help. Anyway, Starhawk has told me he never wanted to actually strike at the Core—he only convinced the pirates to follow him out here because he's told them about the coordinates to Dreadstar's buried treasure hoard—a map of sorts. He's told me if we give up the map he'll leave our city alone."

"You've spoken to him?"

"He's called me. Hacked through my phone, I couldn't even turn it off. He threatened to raid the planet if we don't give up the map. He says they'll leave us alone if they give it up."

"And this map—is there any truth to it?"

"It's authentic."

"Historically speaking, I must advise you that such promises are rarely kept," Gim said.

"Yes, Gim. I'm afraid you're right."

"How will you proceed?"

Strump chomped at a sausage link. "I'm going to run away. And you're coming with me."

Gim allowed surprise to register on his face, but did not comment, studying the Governor as the man nonchalantly finished his meal, probing his face for answers. His manner and expression indicated to Gim that he was most likely withholding some piece of information which he planned to reveal for dramatic effect. It was actions such as these that puzzled Gim—surely he must know that a fabricant would feel no sense of apprehension, no buildup of emotional tension. Was it purely for his own amusement?

"We're going to save the city," Strump said, breaking the silence. "I have the map under my control. I've already arranged an expedition and we're going to go after the treasure before Starhawk does. By the time he gets to Surface we'll be long gone with the map, and he'll be forced to chase after us—away from the planet. Back to the outer rim."

"Where is the map?"

"Waiting on our ship," said Strump as he downed the dregs of his lotus tea.

#

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