Page 20 of Eat My Moon Dust
“A gift.”
“Yeah! You know, like a peace offering. I, um, made it last night. It’s a human drink with universal ingredients.”
Good job, Tin, real smooth.
When I didn’t lower my hand, Hunar reached forward and took the jar with so much care, you’d think it was a live grenade. With exactly zero enthusiasm, he set it on the windowsill and my spirits dropped a little further. So I smiled wider. I had a mission, and it wasn’t to impress my arch nemesis with my DIY food bay usage. No, it was to make Hunar feelobligated.
“It tastes best when it’s warm,” I instructed.
“Fine. Thank you. Now, what do you want?”
It was now or never. I needed to ease him into it. Small stuff first, then the biggies.
“Yes! Okay. I’m organizing a human holiday called Christmas, and I’d like to have BEO play some music in the home tower lobbies. I have a playlist ready to go!”
Hunar opened the holotab in his forearm and it scanned his eye. The colony’s AI beeped.
“Good morning, Chief Engineer Fareshi,” BEO’s smooth Old World voice greeted him. “How can I help you?”
“I’ve got music for you to play in the home tower lobbies.” He gestured to me, and I sprang forward, opening my own holotab. “Miss Tinsley Adams will relay it to you now.”
“Excellent.”
“Hey, BEO!” I said, waving unnecessarily.
“Hello.”
“Can you play my playlist calledSanta Shenanigansin the home tower lobbies and lifts for the next three weeks?”
“Accessing… Yes, your music is now playing in all lobbies and lifts.”
I beamed at Hunar’s holotab as if BEO could actually see me. “Thank you!”
Hunar closed his holotab, pressed his lips together in a mirthless smile and gestured back towards the hangar doors. “You’re welcome. Now, if that’s all, I have a lot of–”
My smile turned sheepish. I laced my fingers together in front of my chest in a pleading gesture and sucked in a breath. “Actually…”
“Seas save me,” Hunar groaned.
I could feel his attention and patience slipping away, so I leaned into the puppy dog eyes and the frail little human act, hunching my shoulders with a bereft flutter of my lashes. “It’s just, I have so many things to print and Piro said you’d be able to help!”
“So many things?Whatthings?” he asked with a sharp snap of his dental ridges. “The industrial printing bay is for colony infrastructure only.”
I bounced up, grabbing onto that. “It is! Infrastructure I mean.”
He crossed his arms and raised one brow, waiting for me to elaborate.
“...cultural infrastructure?”
Hunar’s tendrils hissed as he rolled back around to face his workbench. “Unbelievable–”
“It is though! Holidays are important! They build community and tradition and give people hope–”
“So build it yourself, Miss Tinsley.” Scrooge McAsshat picked up his spindly, smoldering pen arm thing and hunched over a circuit.
“I have been! I’ve been working really h–”
“I don’t have time!” Hunar growled, cutting me off with a sharp glare over his shoulder. “I need that bay to stay open and loaded. What if we have an emergency and need to print triage pods? Or rebuild someone’s unit after a fire? Replace a burst pipe?That’swhat my printing bay is for, not arts and crafts projects.”
