Gardenia Comics [Part 95]

"We Three Cats"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 94]

"Collections"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 93]

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Gardenia Comics [Part 92]

"New and improved!"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 91]

"New and improved!"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 90]

"No comics this week"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 89]

"Backseat writer"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 88]

"Fan Mail"
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Free Bread

There are free loaves of bread out on a rack in front of this church. No strings attached. It's outside so you don't even have to go in.
Pan Gratis.
Our Savior Lutheran Church
4153 Rainbow Blvd
Kansas City, KS 66103

Gardenia Comics [Part 87]

"Autographs"
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Gardenia Comics [Part 82]

A pig faced General Manager...
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Alien call center stories - The end?

Your replies to the question at the bottom of this post will determine whether this series of stories continues.First, here are the stories:
A Pet Rock Hotline Day
Taco Tuesday
Sigma
Eavesdropping
A Weird Book
A messed up day...and stupid Facebook games
Depressed
A strange CD
RASUKI
Training
Disk 2
Sexual Harassment
Odd little meeting
Out of sight...
Kwacebs and Ponai
lets-all-call-at-same-time
Hairy women
The weekend
Private Freak Show
Sightings
"Dogos"
Project work
Mad House
Trifles
I feel violated
on the threshold
back-on-terra-firma
back-to-grind
such a waste
slime
clothes
zufa
mens-skirts
at the station
second-day-back
space-station-tour
going-in-space
uniform
management-party
jupiter-call-center
minda
Tarjay
alien-routine
stupid-call-center
alien-religion
ass-kissers
crisis-of-faith
credit-card-suck
the conflict-begins
http://akktri.livejournal.com/660724.html
religious-spat
isolation
Registry suck
uryanzor
friday-at-the space-station
fruit-juice
drunk-out-of-my-mind
stranded
reprieve
coming home
back-to-earth
And finally this:
2009/10/ update
What do you think will happen next? Any questions or comments?

Update

I've just contacted Sigma on my computer. She's doing all right. She's still a Christian and she's checking to see what she can do about my paycheck. She also asked me to come to her planet, or maybe go back to the station.
What should I do? Any and all comments would be appreciated.
If no one says anything, I don't think I'm going to post any more stories like this.

Back to earth

I was relieved to be finally going home. It had taken far too long, but now I was actually going. I slept through the first leg of the trip, waking up just as a small blue dot appeared on the monitors in the cockpit. I had breakfast and then Sigma showed me her planet's social networking "site". That's not the right word for it, but it's kind of like what it is, except with video phones and some crazy stuff earth people haven't invented yet. Anyways, I registered an account and tried it out, which was interesting. Sigma told me Minda was on there, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to break her heart again. I eventually decided to add her, but I didn't wait for a reply. I watched a movie from Sigma's planet, a drama about a couple separated by a long distance in space and a child they lost due to being mauled by a Cuizlu. It was sad and made me feel depressed about leaving Minda. I watched cable to lighten the mood.
By then I felt gravity tugging on me and decided we were nearing the surface of the earth. I played one of their computer games, then naped in a sofa until Sigma shook me and said we were back.
Once she had the hatch open, I quickly hurried outside, looking for my suitcase.
It was lying open in the field. Things were slightly dirty. It contained bits of weeds and had bugs crawling in it, but nothing was missing. I was able to rescue a shirt from a nearby bush. The rest of it was tucked safely inside. Everything was there except the food and what Sigma took.
I asked Sigma for my things and she returned the confiscated items, and my car keys, and my wallet (no money was missing, thankfully, but it still smelled funny). I hurried to my car (which luckily hadn't been towed away) and hurried home.
The moment I got in the door, my dad and brother and mom asked me a lot of questions about what happened, so I had to make something up. Well, I'd formulated a story to tell them while coming home, so I basically told them that one, as quickly as I could. It was a good thing they were watching a movie and didn't stop to think about it. So now they think I went to a conference and did nothing but have a lot of long, boring seminars and work in their call center. That's good enough.
I didn't mention this before, because nobody would understand the situation until I explained my story, but on Friday of that first week back I got my paycheck and it was only $600, just like I had only worked 40 hours. I asked Sigma if it would show up in the next paycheck and she said no, she had an account on planet Pathilon that contains the rest. I told her I couldn't use that and it's probably void after 90 days or something anyway. But she said it wasn't legal to give me that in earth currency without it being taxed, and I'd already paid the taxes once, the taxes for her planet. I asked if it counted in insurance or something and she said no. That was frustrating. I asked her if she could bypass the law for just one paycheck, like calling it a "gift" or something, and she said she'd think about it. And we didn't talk about it again that day.
When I came back the following Monday, she was gone. And she stayed gone the entire week. So now it's been, what, two weeks? Three? Anyways, it's been awhile since my little adventure. I still haven't seen Sigma. I hope she's doing all right. I haven't seen my money, either, but I'm not sure how to prosecute something like this. I still think about my time on the station, and wonder if they still believe in Jesus and if their souls are at peace.

Coming Home

When I was told to get ready to go, Sigma didn't have to tell me twice. Since I was already in my jeans and t-shirt, I hurried down the hallway with her, at which point she starts talking to this lady with blonde hair and purple fur and tan skin. This was the Mekhilta I'd heard about. We introduced ourselves. After that, I made my way to the spaceship.
As I was going through the airlock, I heard Minda calling me, telling me to wait. I turned around and waited. She came close and told me that she loved me and would miss me and then she's hugging me so tight with her arms and tail that it knocks the air out of me. Then she kisses me on the mouth. I quickly pulled away and said bye, not knowing what else to say. I wasn't sure I wanted to promise anything. I told her that Jesus loved her and waved goodbye and got on the ship.

Reprieve

Tuesday.
We were still stuck at the station. Nobody had brought the ship back yet. I wasn't happy about that, or having to work every day of the week. I grudgingly went about my work, biding my time.
I had this one guy call about a problem he had with a retailer. It was one of those dumb situations where the guy wanted to complain to a supervisor because he couldn't get away with violating company policy. I offered to send him to corporate but he said they wouldn't listen. His voice sounded funny and I couldn't help smiling a little too much. Before I could shut off the picture, he really got mad and kept demanding a supervisor. The problem was, the escalation line was busy and my two crewmates were busy. So he just waited and waited and then he insulted me and made fun of my looks and made comments about one of the stories circulating about me. I just put up with it because it was my job. He wouldn't let me put him on hold or anything. Eventually I got Sigma to take the call.
The other calls went more smoothly, though more people were asking strange questions about me getting drunk on something called Vefrek. I wondered how they knew that but didn't ask them.
I went to lunch and asked Minda about it. Her response was "I don't know, maybe Sigma said something." And then she looked sad. I asked her why she looked glum and she said "You're leaving." I sighed and said yes. I told her I was tired of the station and wanted to go home and she could come visit me if she wanted. She just sighed and said nothing. I told her it was good we hadn't done anything beyond what we did or it would have been worse for her. That made her nod. Then she just stared at the table. I thought about doing something to comfort her, but I figured that probably would have made the parting worse.
I took some more calls. Another crisis about scientific instrumentation on a Liobvalx cruiser. And stupid account system problems. Just the usual stuff, nothing memorable. The architecture of the spaceships and dwellings was pretty uniform and uninteresting for the most part. The novelty had passed the first couple days I'd taken calls. And those calls weren't any different. I logged out for the day and went to the break room to watch cable.
About a half hour later, Minda comes into the room, looking like she'd been crying or something. I didn't know what to say. She sat down next to me on the couch, wrapping her arms and tail around me, so I put my arm around her. She tries to kiss me, but I push her back and tell her no, explaining the biblical stance on marriage. She said that wasn't what I was saying that night we were kissing, but again I said I was drunk.
Then she asks me, "Is it worth marrying someone if your partner is of a different species and you don't know if their sexual equipment is compatible?" It wasn't a very subtle question, so I said if she's talking about an Abreya, then yes. Until I knew for certain, the marriage would be a valid thing. If it really was impossible, the two could just go their separate ways, but all that means is that their wedding shouldn't be a huge spectacle. She sadly nods and we just cuddle.
I have another study session with her, do some exercises, and prepare for bed.
When I was heading down to the crew quarters to sleep, I heard a shout. I went out to investigate, and Sigma was telling me to get ready to go and that the ship was here.

Stranded

Monday came and I was still stuck there.
I was fed up and frustrated and wanted to go home. I climbed up to Sigma, demanding that she get me out of there. I couldn't really stomp up to her since I was floating, but I wanted to.
She just told me to relax, and that the ship would arrive that evening. I told her I'd expected it Saturday and Sunday, but she said she never made that promise, but that it definitely would show up that evening. She didn't know exactly when.
So I waited.
I went about my usual duties.
At lunch, I asked Minda about the ship. She said it would arrive that evening.
I asked her if she had anything like a sabbath on her planet and she said yes, it was just different in space, especially with so many out sick. She said there was normally someone there to relieve you so that you can rest and do whatever while other people work. It sounded like a factory schedule to me.
I had nothing but clothing calls that day. The end of my shift came and no spaceship.
In the call center, in front of Jupiter, Minda taught me a song from her religion, and translated it for me. I still wasn't comfortable singing it, so I modified it with my own words about Jesus and sang it that way.
She seemed a bit offended at first, but then she started singing it with me, and Sigma joined in.
After that, we played a modified version of that game with the scoops, worked out on the exercise equipment, then watched cable in the break room.
While we were sitting there, Minda asked me if I meant all that stuff I said to her a couple nights ago.
I asked her what I said, and she said I told her about my feelings for her, how I found her physically attractive and might even love her in more than the agape sense.
I told her I was drunk, but I said I kinda did like her a lot.
So then she's snuggling up close and wrapping her tail around me. We just watched TV, with her purring on my shoulder.
After awhile, we played some alien board games, then I went to my own bed. Minda asked me if she could lay beside me, but I said it wouldn't be a good idea, and besides the bed is too small, so that was that.

Drunk out of my mind

Like I was saying, I woke up Sunday morning, and I was wearing a dress.
I was cold and wet, because I'd just been sprayed all over with some sort of alien Super Soaker.
With my head throbbing, I glared at the two Abreyas, yelling and cussing at them about how there was no good reason for waking me up that way.
Then they point to the clock. It was already part way into the start of my shift. I ask them what happened and they said there wasn't any time to explain.
I headed to the bathroom, but they said I didn't have time to shower or anything, they needed me on the phones.
I said I needed to use the toilet, but all they did was hand me the diaper thing. So I put it on and went to the phones.
Work was...interesting. Some of my customers complimented me on the dress. Others (mostly Dogos customers) said it wasn't professional and said I should be wearing a uniform. Other people didn't care, being too obsessed with their own problems.
The hours slowly crept by. When I came to her for help on a call, Minda complimented me on my outfit, which made me really embarrassed.
I had to deal with a registration issue with a Dogos customer, and answer a lot of questions about some bustier thing with a loincloth (for women), and then this one guy called about login problems. He said that his order was being shipped to the wrong planet, and he wanted it stopped before it went out because he no longer lives there. I told him I'd be happy to help him, but I couldn't verify his account information. He looked like he was lying, but he found some paper in his messy room and I had to help him.
Of course by that time, it was already halfway across the galaxy. There wasn't anything I could do. He started making all these demands and I kept telling him no. That call lasted to about the middle of my lunch time. I eventually managed a refund to shut him up. I eventually went into lunch, but only after I recorded some compliments (for a store location) and sent them to corporate.
I wanted to shower and change and everything, but I decided something more important had to be addressed.
I went down to the break room and found Minda at a table, grinning at me. I asked her what was so funny and she said I "looked cute." Whatever.
So I asked her what happened the previous night.
She said I got drunk and started dancing, and I gave them a fashion show. I asked her what else I did and she said that I kissed her, then I started blabbering about silly stuff and made everybody laugh. Then I started kissing her again. After that I fell asleep and they put me in my bed. I asked her if she were sure that's all I did and she just giggled.
That scared me. I became angry, angrier than I already was, and demanded she tell me what else I did. I told her I wanted my conscience to be clean before God and that I had a headache.
She sighed and told me we came close to doing something...wrong, and then I started preaching at her and I just ended up falling asleep on the couch and they had to carry me to bed.
I was horrified. I felt betrayed. I have always been afraid of getting drunk and doing something I regret. That's why I have never touched a drop before, even on my 21st birthday. And I'm 30. Unless you count communion wine, but obviously I wouldn't drink more than a sip of that. I felt disgusted at myself. Feeling sick to my stomach, I just took a quick shower, put on my proper uniform and went back to the phones.
Lesson for the day: Ask questions before you eat or drink or smoke anything indigenous. And ask the right questions.
When I went to ask Sigma for advice on a call, she said she was disappointed that I wasn't wearing the dress anymore. I ignored it and asked my question. After I got my answer, she asked me to "do that dance again." I told her I didn't know what she was talking about, so she does this goofy dance.
I just went back to the phone.
After my shift, I just recuperated from the...whatever the hell I drank. I had a bible study, exercised, and did the usual stuff to unwind. This did not include that juice, whatever it was called.

Fruit juice

Saturday came. No sign of the ship yet.
I had worked 48 hours total (and probably more due to training), but I was asked, or rather told, to work more. I got the news at breakfast. I had to change into my uniform and then go back to work. I wondered if these Abreyas had labor unions, but I figured I'd deal with that issue later. I had a call about malfunctioning spaceship appliances that turned out pretty well, a store search for a special vest made of Grunkiahu leather, whatever that is, and a call about the account system that got a little crazy. I guess someone hacked the system and took his money or something. I transferred him to the appropriate department. I got another call about accounts, but it wasn't about fraud that time. Then I had some other stuff, and a call about pre-ordering that led to a supervisor transfer (I didn't have the information, and he'd bought a Dogos package before that I guess didn't work out so well).
I went to lunch and asked Minda about the Wodov, but she didn't know when he'd be there, and that she'd keep watching while Sigma was gone.
I got a little distracted watching cable and logged into the phones late, but nobody said anything. I took more calls.
I got off the phone and went to the break room to watch TV. As I'm sitting there, Sigma and Minda come in and sit down on either side of me, and I'm offered a beverage. I asked what it was and they said "fruit juice," so I had some. It tasted good, so I drank more.
I wasn't sure what happened next, but when I woke up, I was in one of the beds, I was wearing that gray dress, and my head hurt. I surmised that I had ingested something alcoholic, but that was all I knew.

Friday at the space station

I was glad it was Friday. I thought I was going home. I thought about asking if we had casual Fridays, but I didn't bother because I didn't have much of a wardrobe at this point anyway. I made my morning preparations with a gusto and went down to the break room.
I sat down with Minda and asked her when I'd be going back and she said when the ship returns. I asked her when that was and she said "whenever" and that it depended largely on Mekhilta's transit time and/or if there were any complications with her trip. I asked if it were possible for that to be today and she said it was unlikely. That depressed me. I was tired of the weird food and diapers and vacuum toilets and not being able to go out to restaurants or parks or breathe fresh air. With reluctance I went back on the phones.
I didn't get any Dogos calls all day. I got nothing but calls about clothing. I had a couple escalated calls, one about me not knowing everything there is to know about a "dress" and "heels", the other was some guy complaining about how the security was so high and that he placed the order and wanted information I wasn't permitted to give him. The rest were okay, and I figured out how to negotiate to avoid it getting that far.
I had only one call related to the wild story I gave that paparazzi guy. Some guy asked me about my sexual exploits and if I'd ever done a Muperzguz or something. I shrugged and said maybe and laughed. Then I took care of his problem with his order.
I went to lunch then went back on the phones for a few more hours.
A lot of people seemed to hang up when they saw me. Not sure what that was about. They'd look at me, have this weird expression and then they'd disconnect. Oh well.
I logged off for the day and the two females took me aside and started asking about praise songs. I taught them a few, and we had sort of an informal praise service, which included an alien composition that Minda wrote. We studied and did the usual boring stuff until we retired for the night.

Uryanzor

Thursday, we had working toilets. I woke to find Wlodek sleeping on one of the bunks, and the machinery in the bathroom worked, of course. I still didn't have breaks, so I wore the usual outfit. I went down and had my breakfast.
The girls seemed to be in a much better mood and they talked to me. They told me I'd be speaking to that Wodov guy later that day so I said whatever and went on to the phones.
I had a pretty even mix of calls. I started out with Dogos calls, and then suddenly I was helping Abreyas with clothing orders.
I had to deal with a Uryanzor store complaint and several Uryanzor ordering system and login problems, in addition to the usual calls requesting a mechanic and Dogos account issues.
When I went to lunch, I found out that Wlodek was working on the showers and would have that done for us as well, which was excellent.
I sat with Minda and she told me about this Wodov guy I was going to talk to. She said he was a really nice guy, that he was well studied in the Quaceb faith and knew what he was talking about. She told me about how wise he was and how he ran her Reugen group and his credentials and what good things he did for the community. I was impressed and said it could definitely help to talk to him.
I finished up and went back to the phones. I soon got used to the new company and its customers and the flow of calls. Pre-order questions, account issues and some other things weren't that different from Bebe or Lacoste. The billing was hard to get used to, but other than that, the real difference was the clientele. These people seemed much more agreeable than the ones on earth. Of course, it could have been due to my status as a newbie, my strange looks, or it being an easy day. Not sure.
The end of my shift came, and the two Abreyas escorted me to the meeting room, where they set up a hologram device. They pushed some buttons and this old guy in a colorful dashiki thing appeared.
He stared at me, and I stared back. I guess their pelts turn gray when they get old, because his was near white. He looked very stern and serious.
I introduced myself and we got to talking. I told him my opinion on converting space aliens and everything, and said I wasn't sure what to think of the whole thing.
He told me he thought I was some kind of cult leader until he spoke to me. I just shrugged and explained my situation. We asked each other questions about our respective faiths, and then the guy says he wants to come see them at the station. Okay. I wasn't really sure how long that would take, but whatever.
I took some more calls. I had a weird, unfunny prank call, a call about clothing material, some guy confused on how we charged him for clothes (he didn't realize that we didn't need pending charges to process a payment) and some problem with misspelling. The good thing about this department was that you can't really get confused between companies when one guy complains about his spaceship and the other guy complains about his dress.
I guess that might change if they add another clothing store to my skill set, but whatever. I kept hoping the upcoming paycheck would make it worthwhile.
All through the latter part of my shift, I kept hearing banging sounds coming from somewhere. Once I got logged off the phones, I discovered that Wlodek had fixed the showers. I hurried through a workout and immediately used them. It was great.
When I got out and dried myself in one of their machines, I noticed my clothes were missing. At first, I thought they had drifted off, but then I heard laughing. I hid in a stall (thankfully they were opaque) and yelled for whoever it was to bring my clothes back. After I stood there naked for a few minutes, I saw Sigma's grinning face at the crack in the door. She handed me my old clothes (my jeans and t-shirt!) and said they'd been washed. At last! So I put them on. With the exception of my time on the phones, I would keep wearing them for the rest of the time I stayed there.
Anyways, after I got dressed, I told her not to play that kind of game with me, that a good Christian would respect a man's virtue and respect herself enough not to do that sort of thing. She responds by asking me if I thought it sinful to see a naked monkey in a zoo, or see a naked dog. I said no, and she said it was the same thing with me. I told her that her actions betrayed what she was saying, and she said mine did, too. I didn't know what to say next, so I just told her to never do that again.
I taught the two some more about the bible, and they taught me their book. I cleaned my teeth with that thing, then killed time the usual way until bedtime.

Isolation

The following morning was equally quiet. They made it a point to avoid me. That could have depressed me, but I was looking forward to actually having working toilets on board, since they said they'd be fixed that day.
I ate by myself and went to the phones.
Things were going okay until I had a call about an accounts security related problem. The fact that she knew me from the paparazzi didn't help matters. It escalated and I needed a supervisor. I found Minda, but she gave me a cold brush-off like supervisors at my old department did. Did you check in the knowledge center. You shouldn't be doing x, now go handle the call that you can't handle. On the subliminal level, they are saying "Don't talk to me. Go away." I ended up sending it to another department, on another planet, I'm guessing.
I took one call about alien clothing, which was a strange experience. I spoke to this guy that acted like a sissy when he didn't get his boots. And I mean a sissy. He didn't act manly at all about it. After that, I went to lunch and sat in the break room all by myself. Nothing new about that. I'm a loner. I've been eating alone for years before I came to Jupiter.
Being alone like that gave me a lot of time to think about things. I started to figure out I had feelings for these aliens, and I cared about them, and I really wanted to help them to get to this "Chisda" they spoke of.
Also, I realized that being in isolation tends to increase one's fear of abandonment.
I went back to the phones.
At the end of my shift, as I'm leaving my desk, both Sigma and Minda approach me and say that Jesus might be their religion's messiah,a nd they wanted him in their lives. And so, after telling Minda that she won't go to Beptot for rejecting Jesus since she came back, I asked them to apologize to my God and led them both into a conversion. Again.
Very awkward. I wasn't sure if this was what space aliens needed, but I felt better, I guess.
We did some studying then. They showed me the prophecies from their book and said it had to be Jesus and that's what made sense and it seemed plausible to me the way they said it. But I really didn't know their holy texts well enough to be certain.
Once we stopped for the evening, I had a workout and watched cable and went to the crew quarters.
As I was going to my bed, Sigma came up to me with another clear package. She pulls out the contents and I see it's a cape and some silky gray dress with elegant patterns stitched into it with red thread. She told me it would look good on me, but I said no.
As I was lying there in my bed, I heard banging sounds. I followed them to the bathroom, where I saw a male Abreya in person for the first time. His name was Wlodek. He had a gold pelt and wore a blue halter jumpsuit with harem pants. I wasn't too bothered by the outfit because I'd seen them wearing that on the hologram, but I still thought it was weird. The good thing part was that he was fixing the plumbing, which made me very pleased.

Religious spat

After the usual preparations, and a lesson about emptying out my "stillsuit" (Minda showed me a vacuum attachment on the wall you plug into a pocket on the side), I went down to breakfast.
As I and Minda were eating, Sigma comes in and starts yelling at us. I didn't really know what her problem was, since she really never behaved like a religious person anyway.
But during the course of her ranting, I surmised she was afraid that the rest of her crew would also convert, and that it might somehow cripple business.
I just shrugged and said it wasn't under my control.
After this, she said she was going to "make things very painful" for the both of us, unless we changed our ways.
Minda looked a little upset about that, but personally I didn't care what happened to me. I told her she wasn't convincing me to believe her religion was right, or that Minda was missing anything by becoming an apostate. After that, Sigma asked Minda to pray with her.
She did, and after voicing her concerns, Minda prayed about hers, and Minda started expressing her doubts. The next moment she was apologizing to Ponai for Jesus worship and we were back on square one again. I gave up and went upstairs to work.
It was the usual stuff. No clothing calls, no paparazzi. Just the usual weird Onstar thing.
At the designated time, I logged off the phone and went down to the break room to have lunch. When I got there, I saw Minda seated at a table, studying the Gaxea. When she saw me entering the room, she seemed to pale, then she was packing up her food and taking it elsewhere. I decided to leave her alone. I just ate by myself. Then I went back to the phones and did that for a few more hours.
When my shift ended, Sigma, looking sort of smug, put me through another introduction to the clothing company I'd be doing calls for. I learned about the product, the marketplace, the clothing terms, and the way the reward system worked. We went over the general etiquette of communication with these new "clients" and then I just killed time on the space station. I could have done more work, but eight hours is far too much for me already.
I played a couple computer games by myself, tried to read their books, exercised and went to bed. Everyone avoided me, so it was a pretty quiet evening.

The conflict begins

As I was climbing my way to the workout room, Sigma stopped me and gave me this long lecture on how I was wrong to convert her friend. I told her she'd asked for it and I had no idea if it were the right thing to do. I just did it because she asked. She said that, because of me, Minda wasn't going to Chisda, her version of heaven. So I repeated the fact that I'd been asked to do that, and it really wasn't my decision. She argued that I taught her all that stuff and so it was supposedly my fault. I told her I believed people had something called a free will, and that it allows them to make wise decisions and poor decisions alike, and that I never once threatened her to do anything. So she sighed and went away, and I had my workout.
After that, I had a study session with Minda. We read through her holy text and read from the bible and talked about them both. She found some interesting prophecies in the Gaxea, stuff that could be construed to mean Jesus, but I pointed out that they could be interpreted to mean other people as well. She said nobody else really fit the bill, so I wasn't sure what to make of that.
Halfway through our study session, Sigma came in, looking angry. She told me to stop teaching "my myths" to Minda, and that she could fire me for creating a hostile work environment. I told her it's not my fault, Minda was just curious. So she asked to speak with me privately.
So Minda leaves the room and she tells me to convince Minda not to believe in Jesus, and that she'll really fire me if I keep this up. I told her that really sounded like religious discrimination, and said I couldn't do anything about it. I was a bit gleeful at turning the tables on her, but I tried to hide my emotions so that things wouldn't get worse. I told her firing me wouldn't change Minda's mind, but only reinforce her convictions, so she floated off in a fuming snort.
I went back to studying with Minda. She was so obsessed with her spiritual crisis that she didn't want to do anything but search for answers, so I didn't do anything but study with her until bedtime.
Up to now, I hadn't brushed my teeth or flossed at all, and it's been about two days. I asked Minda if she had anything like a toothbrush onboard, and she takes out this small device.
It looks like a crab. Some kind of robot or something. I watch her stick it in her mouth and it pokes and drills and sprays like a miniature dentist.
She takes another one out of storage and hands it to me.
When I tried the thing, it started stabbing my tongue so I had to pull it out. Minda quickly reprogrammed it and it worked fine after that. Better than a toothbrush any day.
I got into my "jogging pants" and went to sleep.

Gardenia Comics [Part 80]

Bubble yum.

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Crisis of faith

At the space station.
Monday morning I woke up early as usual. I "showered" with that brush thing, etc., because the plumbing still wasn't fixed, then went down to breakfast.
I found nobody in the break room. Figuring they were working, I got my breakfast and went up to start working myself. For the first part of my shift, I got a bunch of Onstar type calls.
I didn't mention it before, but having a "video phone" is both enlightening and distracting. For one thing, you can see everything within the window of the "camera". Everything. This is helpful when they want to tell you about something that words cannot adequately describe. However, there were also some unpleasant visuals I wished I hadn't seen, and at times I saw fascinating things in the background that made me lose focus on the task at hand. There were pets, babies and odd alien lifeforms that totally threw me off the topic of conversation when I saw them. And a couple times I almost screamed when I saw something creeping up behind the "caller." Another distraction was their manner of dress, or undress. Some people dressed up for the "camera". Others didn't seem to care about anything and wore slovenly, shabby clothes, dirty clothes, or next to nothing or literally nothing. But later I learned how to shut off the picture.
Anyways, I had a call about failing air equipment, a couple calls about malfunctioning alarm systems, and some others, then I had another guy asking for a supervisor. Something about broken refrigeration units. I tried the escalation line, but nobody answered, so I got up, looking around the ship to find help.
Minda was gone, and so was Sigma. I checked the conference room, the break rooms, the garden, I even shouted in the bathroom to see if I could get someone.
I eventually found them in the crew quarters, sitting on a bed and talking in their language. When I came in, they gave me a worried look, and they started asking me religious questions. I told them I had a supervisor call and would be happy to answer them later, but Minda said this couldn't wait and that nothing else is more important than this discussion.
Sigma clicked something on a computer she had and said the phones were shut down. Then the two asked me the questions again. I told them what I knew about my religion, but said that anything related to aliens was just guessing. They didn't care, so we had a long theological discussion. I found out that Minda had been having night terrors for some time and hadn't been telling anyone, and the night before, when I was asleep, she'd been crying out, enough to wake up Sigma. (I don't know what Sigma was doing sleeping in the crew quarters when she had a nicer bedroom up top, but whatever). It had woken her up, and she'd gotten worried for her friend. She seemed a little worried herself, but she seemed intent on trying to convince Minda that their god grades on a curve and that my religion is fine for my people but not for hers.
I found myself getting angry, despite the fact there wasn't any clear moral stance to take in this situation. They are space aliens, after all.
I fumed silently in frustration, my emotionally charged opinions thwarted by an absolute lack of concrete textual support.
So then Minda wants to pray and they wanted me to pray with them. I told them I wouldn't be doing that because my God gets angry when I pray in the names of other gods. She said Ponai is just another name of God, but I said people used that same line to argue for the worship of Buddha and Allah, and since those arguments are wrong, there was no reason for me to believe that hers was right. I said I needed to research her religion and check with my God to see if this were acceptable. But I said I'd watch them pray. So I did that.
They touched their fingers together in a funny way and voiced their concerns to Ponai in their own language, basically asking for guidance for them, and, oddly enough, for me, and they asked Ponai to use me for communicating his message, and provide guidance. Once done, they told me they'd check with some guy named "Wodov" and that I should go back to the phones. So I did.
I called the fire department for one caller, requested a repair of a hologram system for another, then contacted "animal control" for some guy that had bugs filling the ship from ceiling to floor.
I was waiting for (or perhaps dreading) some calls about that...whatever they were telling me about, but I didn't get any.
I took more calls and went to lunch.
I went down to the lunch room and saw Minda looking at me expectantly. I got my food, sitting down across from her, and she says she wants to be saved. As in what Christian groups mean by the expression. So I led her through the prayer and everything. I've never converted anyone, so it made me kind of happy. However, I kept wondering if it were the same as preaching the gospel to the Labrador retriever in my basement. Pistol doesn't talk, but I wasn't sure if God wanted me converting space aliens.
I told her some more about the Christian faith walk, then finished my lunch and went back to the phones.
After doing a name change on account for a customer, I had my first dealing with the call center Paparazzi. This Abreya guy, surrounded with weird equipment, asked me to smile, then started asking me all these questions unrelated to the job, like my romantic life. I didn't take too kindly to this and replied with ridiculous answers. The calls I had after that were relatively normal. A misdirected call about mechanical defects in a popular brand name spaceship, amperage issues on an electrified burglar trap, questions about food built in processing units.
I had one last call about payroll and then I was able to clock out for the day.

Alien religion

After working at the station call center, I spent some more time staring at Jupiter. You can't get tired of something like this, seeing it up close and watching it change.
I noticed Minda floating up to me again. She didn't seem as interested in the view. She talked to me about a hairy call she had. I wasn't too interested, having had my fill of craziness, and she must have picked up on that because she changed the subject.
She told me that on her planet, there is a subculture that posts reviews of phone reps along with their pictures, so it's important to do well. I thought that was horrible. She shrugged and said there wasn't anything anyone could do. I told her that my planet has laws against slander and libel like that, but she asked me about tabloid newspapers. I told her that was for famous people and she said we were sort of famous. So I sort of understood then. We then got on the topic of music.
She has strange tastes. When I told her what music I liked, she said her favorite song is the Beepbeep.com jingle. I thought that was awful. I told her it was on ten times a day and was advertising a company, so she said she also liked movie themes and recordings of animal calls. She told me it was common for lots of people on her planet to buy many recordings of animal calls, and that the animal call Pofdons (I guess they're like CD's) sold millions of copies, better than some rap CD's on earth. I asked her about her favorite movie themes. She liked a few that I liked, but a lot of them, however, were overplayed, like John Williams. I was amazed, however, that she liked that little song that was in the movie Troll. Very few people even know what that is. We talked about some other stuff, like video games, then she showed me a new game on the computer. One was like a sports game where Abreyas in jumpsuits played polo on the backs of giant bird creatures, and then I played a couple others that were like racing and action games.
When I tired of messing with them, we went into the conference room and watched cable.
As we were watching a program, she asked me what I thought about the afterlife, so I told her.
She asked me if I thought aliens went there, and I said I didn't know, the bible didn't say anything about it and I guessed they had their own place.
She asked me what if they didn't, and I said I didn't know. She told me they didn't have anyone equivalent to Jesus, and they offered sacrifices to atone for sins.
I asked her how she took care of that on the station, and she said she didn't. She said she was afraid of going to Beptot, their version of hell. She asked me if I thought Jesus could save her, and I said possibly, but I really didn't know if it applied to space aliens.
She said she hoped he did and then said she wondered which religion was true.
I told her I believe mine (the Judeo-Christian one) is true, that every other religion on earth isn't, but I didn't know anything about hers, so I couldn't tell.
So she started telling me all this stuff about her religion. She said she believed that her god, Ponai, sculpted the entire universe out of stellar nurseries, and crafted all life forms from a soup of proteins and chromosomes. She said that her people had a temptation similar to Adam's at the beginning of her race, but they didn't give in to it, and as a reward Ponai taught them space flight and other technologies, but then something happened. Her people called it "the great test", or "the great Qubitgarr" (a word that translates to something like `terrible wave of corruption'). The Gaxea, their holy "book" (it's composed of thousand year old computer documents) said that a giant wave swept over the galaxy from a far off place, infecting everything with evil. She said the source of it is unknown even to this day, but scholars say it is either a test from Ponai or that an evil entity called Kaon called it to happen. Another theory is that an Abreya named Mustafa succombed to the first temptation after a hundred years of peace, but that's an apocryphal story.
She said she'd been watching some of my planet's religious broadcasts and heard of how Adam's sin caused the entire world to be corrupted, and wondered how far the corruption spread. I told her that was very creative, but I really couldn't say for sure.
I asked her how much she watched such programs and she said not often, because she found them boring, or too busy preaching about how praying and doing good deeds could make you a millionaire, but she had learned about Adam and all that.
I told her I didn't know what the right course of action would be, since the bible doesn't say anything about space aliens.
She asked me if I knew what I was talking about and I said yes, I study the bible more than most people I know, with the exception of my pastor.
I said it would be ridiculous to assume that a culture, one that believed that space was just a dome that covered the earth, would think that there was anything but God and angels and heaven up there when they didn't even know about planets.
When she asked me if I thought she was an angel, I said no. She asked me how I could believe in aliens if my religion didn't teach about it and I said God can make whatever He wants, and the bible doesn't talk about gravity or electromagnets, either.
Of course she got confused and I had to tell her that I believed creation is like what it says in Genesis, but that simple words like "light" and "firmament" can have complicated, possibly scientific meanings unknown to the original authors. After all, the earth's atmosphere is arguably a dome of sorts. That being said, I told her, I couldn't make a case for anything regarding extraterrestrials based on the bible. Unless you're talking about angels or something.
We debated the subject a bit further. She finally told me she needed to research this a bit further and she'd get back to me.
I went down and wandered the garden, then paid the caged creatures a visit.
Figuring I was a tough enough guy, I made motions like I were going to reach into a cage to pet one, but it snapped at me. Not nice.
The one next to it was just like it, so I decided they deserved to be dinner and moved on.
I'd noticed a bookcase in the main conference room, so I went up there and tried to read one of the books.
It was in their language so I really wasn't sure what I was reading. I thought it was fantasy, but it confused me. I knew the basics of communication, and this was full of higher level vocabulary. The other books were no better. I put them up and headed to the sleeping quarters.
I found Minda sitting on one of the jellyfish things, clicking buttons on a small device she had. She seemed completely engrossed in whatever it was and didn't even notice when I came in.
I found a transparent package tucked inside the flaps of my bed. I looked inside and found a gold jumpsuit made of some cottony material. It was kind of bizarre looking. The top part had no shoulder straps, being more like a tube top, and the bottom portion looked like capris.
After apologizing for interrupting her studies, I showed Minda the jumpsuit and asked if it were hers. She said no, Sigma got it for me.
After staring at it a minute, I decided it might look okay if I put the tunic over it. Guys wear yellow jogging pants, right?
Anyways, I changed and went to bed. Like the night before, I tossed and turned for awhile. It didn't help that someone was having a religious crisis on the bunk below me and they kept making sounds with their computer thing while I was trying to sleep.
Eventually I got settled and got some rest.

Gardenia Comics [Part 79]

Castrovolvo and its brochure...
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia384.html
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Gardenia385.html

Archive:
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/Archive.html

Updates on the status of the comic:
http://www.furnation.com/akktri/inprogress.html

An alien routine

The second day there, I woke up, and did what I had to because we didn't have working toilets. They said they'd have them repaired on Wednesday, so I had to make do until then. At least they were telling the truth about them being like a stillsuit so I didn't have to sit in it.
I probably slept six hours or less. I went to the big break room in search of breakfast. I found no one there. I looked upstairs, in the other break room and the conference room and the call center, then when I found nobody there I went back down and found Sigma waiting at a table. She was wearing a "uniform", but with a red tunic. She had a box for me, with that alien stuff in it. I went ahead and ate it. As I was eating, she asked me if I'd ever looked at porn. I told her I used to a long time ago, but I care too much about God to do that anymore.
She asked me what was wrong with it if you didn't actually do anything with the person in the picture, so I told her it was a sin of the heart.
Because she asked, I told her more details about my religious beliefs, including some things that I thought were obvious to just about everyone on earth.
It was Sunday, but she said I was working that day, and I would work until I returned to earth. I sighed and said fine.
Once I got done eating, I went upstairs and worked. This story is going long anyway so I'll spare all the details.
Sigma showed me how to use the scheduler to figure out when my lunch and work times were, so I was able to go to lunch exactly when the thing said to instead of having to wait for someone to tell me.
I went down to the break room kind of wondering where the food would come from. When I got there, Minda was at a table, eating, and she showed me the compartment where I could get food from.
I got my lunch and ate. I think she was nearing the end of her lunch, but she sat with me, and started asking more personal questions. Like if I had a girlfriend.
I told her I didn't, explaining that I'd that I've dealt with so many bitchy, emotionally manipulative women at Target and BBL that I avoid looking for women for fear of having to deal with one 24-7.
I told her that if women were like ninety percent of the customers I talked to at Target and BBL, I'd rather not marry.
She laughed and said "not all of us are like that." I told her that Mennonites and some hillbillies, and probably some ugly women are exceptions, but other than that, I wasn't ready for someone that looks pretty on the outside but unmasks her ugly interior self when she doesn't get her way.
She asked me if she was different. I said possibly, if she could prove to me that women aren't the same throughout the galaxy.
I told her how she made me uncomfortable the day before, and that she watches stuff that I consider immoral. But I told her I was fine with being friends.
We talked about some other things, about my social life, and that in comparison to other human beings, and earth culture in general, then Minda pointed to an electronic display and asked me when my lunch ended.
Since I'd studied the language enough, I figured out the readout was saying I was late and hurried back to my computer.
I went back to the phones for awhile, taking more calls. I discovered the supervisor transfer line and sent a few calls there when they got bad. I don't think I was doing a great job, but I figured I was doing good enough, and my previous experience in customer service didn't hurt.
The hours went by quickly due to the constant stream of calls and the complicated and sometimes frustrating nature of some of the problems, and customers.
Halfway close to the so-called "end of shift" on the scheduler (it's impossible to reckon time very accurately in space since 4:00 only means something if you know where the sun is supposed to be), Sigma floats up to me, telling me to go into meeting mode and to come with her to the conference room. I told her there wasn't anyone but Minda here, but I went into meeting and got out of my chair. She said that the chairs in the meeting room are better, so I followed her into the room.
So I followed her into the conference room. She was right. The chairs were more comfortable.
She told me they'd opened up a new division, and asked what I thought about selling Abreya clothes.
I asked her if she were kidding and she said no. Apparently there was this company called Uryanzor on her planet, and they sold apparel kind of like the stuff from that box she showed me. Men's skirts and all that.
She said if I didn't have a problem with it, she'd send some of those calls to me. I asked her how she could do that if we're being slammed with the other calls, and she said she had other call centers, and I wouldn't be doing that many.
Then I asked if I had to learn a new system, and she said yes, and I could start training at the end of my shift.
I kind of said I'd do it and that was that. I did more calls, and my shift ended.
I found Sigma working the phones, oddly enough. Knowing what I knew about her language, I figured out she was doing supervisor calls.
When she got done with the one she was on, and I had gotten an earful, she noticed me and showed me what programs to use in my computer to do training.
This was little different. There were modules for me to get acquainted with the company, the demographic, and the product itself. There was an inventory database, but a lot more sophisticated than Bebe's 360 tool. This one had a name search, so you were only limited by your vocabulary, and it had pictures.
You could put in vague words like "black dress" and "bag with the frills on the side" and it would find something. Not only that, but it actually asked you for clarifications if it was too vague.
If the same thing could be done in English in the 360 tool, the program communication would be something like this:
ME: Black dress with ruffles on the side
COMPUTER: Does this dress have shoulder straps?
ME: (Talks with customer) No
COMPUTER: What material is it made of?
ME: Satin or silk
COMPUTER: What year was it released?
ME: Not sure
COMPUTER: Was it released this year?
ME: (Checks with customer) Yes
COMPUTER: How much did it cost?
ME: Around $150
COMPUTER: It is either the Cassandra Slinky Dress (SKU 423423) or the Shimmery Satin Diva Dress (SKU 232342).
And it shows a picture of each one. And the prods prevent it from pulling up a hundred.
So it's got a sophisticated AI system, and it's not as stupid as the ones I've been using. The more I tried it, the more I sort of figured out the AI was telling me it was out of stock because it didn't have the info, but it made the job a lot easier.
Not only that, but I can show the picture to them, because it's a "video phone."
I learned some other programs, then I could relax and recuperate from all the craziness for awhile.
Sort of.

Tarjay

Monday. Another great day at work at Tar-Jay. Read more here:
http://akktri.livejournal.com/639993.html

Minda

My cable was out yesterday, so I couldn't post this until today.
I ended up just floating in front of the window, staring at Jupiter. It was very surreal to look at the moons slowly orbiting the place, and see the clouds and storms moving around. It's not like you can normally get a live feed of that sort of thing anywhere.
All of a sudden Minda is floating next to me and talking about how lovely the view was. It kind of startled me. I asked her if she was on a break or lunch and she said her shift was over. Since I looked confused, she said ours wasn't the only call center and that there's a big one on a planet called Pathilon.
She then asked me to pull up my sleeve so she could see my arm. I did that and she asked if she could touch it. I told her I guessed and she ran her hand over my arm and giggled and asked me to pull up my "pant" leg. She was making me nervous so I asked why. She said she'd never seen my kind in person and she wanted to know if I were truly as hairless as the people she saw on cable. I shrugged and pulled up a leg on the leggings to humor her. She giggles some more, then starts running her hand over my calf. The hand goes higher and I tell her to quit. Thankfully, she does, and she pulls her hand away, too.
One thing I could say for her is she was more respectful of boundaries than Sigma. That being said, she still had no tact. The moment she stops touching me, she asks to see my privates. I told her no and asked what made her think I'd even want to do that. Her response is that the people on cable did that sort of thing all the time, and she just wanted to see for herself that mine wasn't bifurcated like Abreya males. I asked her to change the subject.
She told me she'd never met a human before and was surprised that I wasn't a sex fiend like the people she saw in various programs. I told her she watches too much cable, and that seemed to quiet her for a moment, but then she asked if this were some sort of game and the sex came later. I told her no, I was serious, and told her to stop talking about it.
She asked me if I liked men, and I said no. She apologized for bringing up the subject again, but then asked me if I were a Puebuku. I asked her what that was and she said someone belonging to a religious order that takes a vow never to have sex.
I told her that pretty well describes me, but the right girl could change my mind, provided we share the same values and are married.
Her response? "You're an interesting person." And that's it.
Okay. I thought about it a minute, and decided I was grateful for such a normal, non-aggressive response.
We stared out the window quietly for a few minutes, then Minda asked if I'd ever heard of "Roalogi." I said I had not, so she took me to a computer and showed me a weird game. It's kind of hard to explain it, but it was kind of a shooting game. Shooting isn't quite the right word to describe it, since you don't use guns or bullets or laser beams, but it had projectiles of some sort, and you kind of made the projectile roll down a pipe inside a hole in your target. It was oddly addictive, and had really realistic graphics, though admittedly I didn't have those particular objects available for me to compare it to. I played this for a good hour or so. It was complicated, but Minda showed me how to operate everything.
We took turns playing the game, and as we did, she taught me some more about her language, some of the odd expressions and other nuances I couldn't pick up from a training module.
And cuss words, too. As my usual habit was to cuss at a game when it's too difficult, it rubbed off or something, and I heard her cussing, and she was telling me about her culture's curse words. I hope this doesn't ruin my customer service.
The game was hard to figure out, and it didn't have a plot, but after practicing for a few minutes, I at least could keep pace with it.
I guess she was somewhat impressed at my quick reflexes, because she asked me if I'd ever played the game before and what games I normally played.
I told her some things that were similar, and that video games are really a vice I keep trying to wean myself off of.
I started to get tired, so I went down to the sleeping quarters.
The uniform wasn't the most comfortable thing in the world, but I decided to keep it on for modesty and attempt to lay down on a bed.
She'd told me that the jellyfish things were beds, and how to use them, but used to laying on them. For one thing, instead of blankets, there were these flaps of translucent skin stuff. There were also tentacle things hanging off it, and you were supposed to sort of stick them together with its own secretions and you'd use that to keep yourself from drifting around the room when you slept.
I tried it, but I just laid there for a long time, tossing and turning and trying not to think about things that stressed me or kept me awake. I don't know when I fell asleep, but I somehow managed to eventually.

Jupiter call center

After a couple calls, I noticed a sound like water running over rocks in a stream, and soft chirping noises. I looked over and saw Minda in the desk five cubicles away from me. I kept staring at her, probably because she was the only one in the whole place besides Sigma, she was amazingly quick with that weird keyboard, and I thought she was kind of cute. I sat there wondering if she were more polite and civilized than her boss.
I was fine for about six calls. It was relatively simple to verify the required details to open up Vunlid's, Qufdams, and Dagmivos (apparently the three major types of vessel preferred by most of my customers). I got some stares, but other than that no one really seemed to care what I looked like. But then I got a difficult call.
The guy was naked and locked out of a Wivaren (he loved how I pronounced it, by the way). He knew his name and the ID issued by his country's government, but he didn't know the names of the owner's relatives on the file, his payment card number, the answer to the security question, or his "Firbo" address. (The last one needs explaining. Firbo is something these aliens use instead of e-mail. It's not quite the same. I tried it out. You kind of talk to it, for one thing, and it's not arranged according to the concept of postal mail (the icons make no sense to me).
Anyways, he didn't have any of that, but he was outside naked and he said I should let him in because the ship is an old piece of junk and doesn't deserve such security. When I said I couldn't do that, he yelled for a supervisor. I tried to at least get him to ask twice for one, then put him on hold.
I couldn't find Sigma anywhere in the call center, so I climbed my way down to Minda.
I tapped her on the shoulder. The moment I started talking, she held up a hand like she were on a call, but there wasn't a call. Then she's like "Hold on! Wait! Wait!" And I wait, and she wiggles in her chair and looks like she's relieving herself. She farts, and I'm pretty sure she did relieve herself. Oh lovely.
She asked me to continue, so I do, after taking a moment to recover from the shock and disgust. I described the problem and she told me to just hang up.
I said "really?" And she said yes. I asked her if I'd get in trouble and she said no, not if he's naked. So I did.
I got a call about servicing scientific equipment, so I ordered a repair. Then I ordered repairs on faulty weapon systems for a couple people, spoke to some guy calling about a missed shipment of Wusu seed (wrong number), and handled some other stuff.
I had two more calls after those, then another problem happened. This guy's air equipment was failing and he was out in the middle of space somewhere. He was rattling his information off so fast that I couldn't find his account. I guess I don't blame him for being so upset, but it was difficult to help him when he was like that. Not only that, but our system couldn't bring his air system back on. I tried it. Several times. It gave me an error message and wouldn't cooperate. I told him there wasn't anything else I could do, and he told me it might be because it's a problem that needed to be fixed manually and he wanted me to send him a repairman. Actually, he demanded that I send him a repairman.
I tried to request one, but the system told me he hadn't paid his contract for three months and so was not covered under the service program. I discovered this when I tried to request service. So he called for a supervisor.
I went to see Minda again, explaining the situation. She said we really can't help him. She said it was "tough but fair" and that it's not our fault he's in that situation, he should have stayed on a planet that had air instead of flying around without coverage. Then she tells me to hang up on him.
I could kind of see the logic behind this, but I asked what would happen if he'd call back. She said to hang up again. I asked her if that was what she did and she said yes. I asked her if she ever got in trouble and she said no, so I asked her if she were lying. She said no.
I really didn't feel good about that, but I hung up on him.
The next five or so calls were simple. Then this guy calls in wanting to make changes on his account, but he didn't know his Firbo address and had no useful information, and he wouldn't get off the phone for nothing. He ends up asking for a supervisor. I still felt nervous about just dropping calls, so I go over to Minda's desk. Unfortunately, she's on a call. Not sure what to do next, I just hang up on him.
I successfully handle another handful of calls, then Sigma tells me I can quit for the night, unless I want overtime. I say no thanks and wander the ship.

The Uniform

Since I just soaked my clothes and everything (actually her clothes), I asked her how I was supposed to clean up. She takes me to this room at the end of the hall, where I see toilets and showers. I ask what's wrong with them and she says the waste processing system isn't recycling like it's supposed to and it just ends up clogging and flooding the bathroom and she'll get someone to fix it in a few days. But she says there is one thing that works and she hands me this hose thing with a brush attachment. She said it's a little harsh, but I could use it to scrub clean for now. She washed my arm to demonstrate. You push a button and a spray comes out with soap, and at the same time a vacuum sucks the liquid back in.
She then says it's high time I get into uniform anyway. And she leaves the room.
It's quiet for awhile. All I hear is the droning hum of the ventilation system. I just kill time by looking around at everything, opening cabinets, looking in the showers, messing with the weird buttons.
I jump because I suddenly hear someone whistling. I go to a vertical tunnel to investigate but can't see anything.
Then Sigma comes in with a white plastic container. She opens the container and I see the "uniform", a green tunic with a gold logo on it, a plastic diaper and a pair of black leather leggings with no crotch.
I said "you've got to be kidding." I said this couldn't possibly be the uniform. But she said it was. I said I wasn't wearing it, but she said that in addition to it being required as part of my job, there are no toilets, we don't have breaks, and the tunic is branding. I said nobody will see me, but she reminded me that I can see people on the computer, so they can see me. I asked her if I could just wear the top and get some real pants or at least wear something over the diaper, but she said that was "impractical" and the thing she had was what people have been wearing for years. And plus she wanted her clothing back and didn't want me to ruin any more. I said that was an accident, but she said she didn't want any more accidents and to just wear what she gave me, and that it's a required uniform. She just floated there, with this expectant look on her face, not looking too happy. I asked her how she'd wash her clothes if the system's broken and she said the clothes washer worked. I didn't think I could climb into that, so I just stared at my "uniform" and weighed my options.
I needed a job. I was stuck on this ship. I hadn't seen a paycheck for my wacky little excursions yet, but I knew I was soggy and couldn't just go in her closet and get something else because I didn't know where her clothes were on that station. I finally said okay and took them. I told her to leave. She said the...whatever went over the...something and left.
There was sort of a privacy curtain there, so I drew it around myself, cleaned up, then put on that ridiculous outfit. I put the leggings over the diaper because I thought that was what you were supposed to do. When she came back in and saw me, she said it went the other way. There was a big enough hole on both sides for that to make sense, so I reluctantly went back behind the curtain and changed it around. After that she said it was time for me to work.
So we go back up to the cube farm, with me dressed in that ridiculous costume.
I thought I'd be safe from embarrassment, since I presumed it was just me and Sigma on the station, but I was wrong.
The moment we walked around the corner of the cubicles, this female with pink hair and pink fur comes floating up to me.
She had on a "uniform" like mine, but she wasn't wearing the leggings. Probably on account of having such hairy legs.
She looks at me and giggles, then we're introduced.
Sigma tells her who I am and we're introduced. The pink one's name was Minda, and I guess she'd been with the Dogos program for more than three years. Sigma explained how I was there to "fill in" for the sick people and says there will be plenty of time for us to get acquainted later. So Minda goes off and I'm led over to a cubicle.
It reminded me a lot of the cubes we had at GE Money Bank. Instead of the low type where you could see over the top, they had high walls where you couldn't see much of anything once you're sitting at one. The desk she picked for me was facing Jupiter, but I had to stand up to see it.
I had a desk, a hologram computer with a rock keyboard, and a leather office chair with a back support that clamps onto the desk like those safety bars on roller coasters.
Briefly, I considered asking for another desk, but I realized I still would have to turn around backwards to see Jupiter. So with a sigh, I buckled myself into the seat, activated the computer and wondered how bad it could be.
It was crazier than I expected. There was no lull between calls. As at NCO, I had 30 seconds to notate the account, and then bam, the next call comes in.
I still found it jarring to open up windows and put people on hold by rolling rocks around.
It's difficult to remember everything I did on the "phone" that first day, or the ones that followed, because the calls just kept coming.
I'll write what happened next some other time.

Management party

I'm glad it's Friday and I can just relax from all the insanity.
Now that I'm at a different desk, I've been getting Target calls all the time, and there's more demand for me doing e-mails. I'm not complaining. Doing e-mails makes my day simpler because they can't talk back immediately. I basically did that for half the day.
For some reason, all the managers and team leads were in a meeting in the lunch room every day I went there. There was lots of food but I knew it wasn't for me. For reasons unexplained, they had a light-up Christmas tree on a table behind them. Not sure what that was about, but management was generally unavailable today.
Anyways, lots of crappy things happened when I got back on the phone, one of them being a guy wanting a discontinued Ipod delivered at an impossible speed. I told him I couldn't do that because we don't have it anymore, so he wanted a store credit, which I also couldn't do, then he asked for a refund. The catch was that we refund the method of payment and he used a giftcard he'd thrown out. So I filled out a form in my computer but I'm not sure it will work because it's not an order for a giftcard, it's an order placed with a giftcard. I requested to have the card deactivated and his credit card refunded, but I'm willing to bet money the stupid giftcard department will screw this up. I guess he won't be my problem anymore, though.
Another thing that sucked was this Mexican lady wanting items that were lost in the mail. It would have been simple to remedy but the system said something stupid like the billing address and shipping address don't coincide, which is illogical because they were the same ones that were used on the order. It's not like I was trying to send a replacement to a new address. It was the same friggin' address she put on the order. Horrible. I told her I'd try to get a team lead to fix it and e-mail her about a refund if I couldn't. Team lead couldn't do it, so she got a refund.
The rest of the calls were okay, I guess. I screwed up on a call because I was trying to notate an account and this lady starts rattling off her problem and I didn't get a word of it. Luckily she didn't notice how completely she'd been ignored, and, like a good little employee (good by my company's standards), I filled out two of those super complicated, pain in the ass calltag forms while I put her on hold instead of doing it while she was off the phone like I used to do them. Ideally, I should be able to fill out this form with the complexity of an IRS 1040 form while having a brilliant conversation with the woman and selling more things to her, but I'm not that wonderful, so hold prevents me from getting marked down for dead air.
For most the day I was slammed with Target calls. The only thing I could do between calls is mess with HSX because it's not important and I can pay full attention to the customer while messing with my stocks. For the most part I only had 30 seconds to breathe before the next call came in. Insane, but I suppose it's ordinary in comparison to what I've been doing.
I think I refunded and replaced stuff a lot more than I should have, but it served the purpose of greasing the wheels of the phone queue and made the day go by smoother.
Not much else of interest to report.

Going in space

Okay, so back to what happened Saturday.
I had a few Cokes before I came onboard and I suddenly had to go. When I asked her where the restrooms were, she said "that reminds me. We've got to get you a uniform."
I told her I didn't understand the connection, but I had to pee. That's when she tells me the toilets are all broken and the company has provided special suits that absorb our waste and converts it to water and fertilizer packets. I said "like a stillsuit" and she smiles and says "exactly." I said no thanks and I'd go back to the ship, but she said someone named Mekilta took the ship to Titan while we were touring. I thought I could hold it awhile so I asked when she'd be back. She tells me Friday. Great. So an entire week of pissing in a stillsuit.
I said I never saw Mekilta, and she said she "was probably in the workout room when we came in and left through another tunnel". I told her I wanted to see for myself that the ship was gone, so she leads me back up to the dock where we came in, and she takes this white rubbery suit out of a compartment, handing it to me, along with a helmet. I asked her if that were my uniform, but she said it was a space suit so I put it on. She did the same. My bladder settled itself, so I said it was about time we tried a space walk.
We donned our helmets, and she opened the "airlock." Once there, she closed us in the chamber and hooked umbilicals to both our suits, and the opposite hatch came open.
The air around us blasted out, and I felt myself drifting.
I didn't see the ship we came in on, or that fleshy stuff. I crept forward, looking around the edge of the "airlock", and that was when I noticed things weren't right. I saw no ground. No floor. No scaffolding or any trappings of artificiality. Not satisfied, I found a railing with handholds and crept along the edge of the airlock, onto the outer hull.
About a yard or so away from the hatch, I looked around and I peed in the space suit. This wasn't earth. This thing was floating in the middle of nowhere, with big assed Jupiter looking like some kind of huge whale's mouth about to eat us. I was floating. I wasn't being pulled towards the earth like I would have been if I were in a plane flying in the upper atmosphere.
I freaked out and scrambled back in. Once we were back inside and had the door shut and the helmets off, she saw my expression and laughed at me. I told her I went in the space suit and she sighed and said she'd have to get someone to clean it.
I told her I believed her now, though. I believed everything.

Space station tour

Sigma has a weird toilet on her ship. I didn't mention it before because it just looked like yet another wacky movie prop, but I've had to use it a few times before during my language training sessions. Sigma told me how to use it. On earth, it was fine because I could just go in the big cup and not have to do anything weird with the vacuum attachments. Well, since we were floating and I had to go, I actually had to use those attachments. If you know anything about astronauts, you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyways, I used it a couple times during the trip, and this is going to factor into the story later. So we're at the "station". Sigma gets out of her chair and I follow her down a hallway to a hatch on one side of the room. She opens it and I see this fleshy bridge thing connecting to a metal airlock structure. She scans a badge through a device on the door and I'm looking at a carpeted hallway you'd see in an office building. She leads me in and starts playing tour guide. We climb down the hallway on handlebars and footholds set in the walls and floor, and she shows me the break room, the main conference room, and the call center. The call center was the most impressive, since the cube farm occupied the entire wing of the structure, and it had a huge window overlooking the planet Jupiter. She was right. Jupiter was so huge that I couldn't see anything else, even though that side of the building was just one big long window. I asked her how we weren't being sucked into Jupiter's gravitational pull and she just laughed at me. I didn't see anyone there. Not a single person at the desks or anywhere else. I asked her why that was and she said they were out sick. I guess they had some sort of space crud. I forget what she called it, but I guess it wasn't fatal. She said they were at another base recovering. She showed me another conference room, then we went down a vertical tube tunnel to another carpeted room. She showed me a gym (which we had to use to avoid atrophy), our "sleeping quarters" (more jellyfish beds), and another break room. This break room "upstairs" was a bit small, but this one was more like the lunch room at NCO, roughly the size of one and a half semi trailers. Okay, not that big, but close. Like everywhere else, the tables were bolted to the floor and there were seatbelts on the magnetized chairs. I was surprised to see vending machines, but they basically contained nothing but blue Fanta soda, flavored water, and thin diet pretzels. That's it. Row upon row of them. I wondered who put those machines in, who's rotating stock, and who's buying. I still don't have the answer to that. On the sides of the break room were two "gardens". She showed me those next. They were basically greenhouses equipped with lamps and sprayers, and they only seemed to contain one or two different types of plants. They weren't the type of plant I've ever seen before. They reminded me of sea plants, like anemone more than anything, but they had mouths and eyes and lots of wiggling tendrils. One of the "gardens" contained a farm and I got to see "Zufa" firsthand. They were gray and they had no eyes on their heads, only a proboscis. They had tails like puppy dogs and claws like lobsters. They sat in stacked cages like some PETA unfriendly chicken farm, but I didn't feel sorry for them. I just thought they'd be too fatty without them exercising. She showed me the freezer, and then we looked around the garden some more. I sketched the layout on one of the work handouts I was given. It looked like this:( Picture here) The circles with the X's on them are the tunnels we used to go from one chamber on the ship to the other.

Second day back

When I came in today, they decided to play musical desks on me again. Apparently some call monitors were going to be moved in or something. I had to search the office area for another computer. I signed into it, downloaded the stuff from my other computer, only to notice that the calls were coming in and then they'd just hang up again. I was messing around with my settings and stuff so I didn't notice it until it said "after call". I moved to another computer after telling the phone control guy about it, and it happened again. I told him it could be CSC, and then he tells me to put in my new extension number. Apparently the system was making the phone at the other desk ring, and hang up. That sucks. I killed about twenty minutes trying to find a desk and figure it out, and bothered Arthea, who looked really sick or tired or something, and worse, I didn't get paid for it because I wasn't logged in the phone.
It seems that you end up doing mostly one company, depending on where you sit in the office. I must have been sitting on the Target side. However, I only did a few calls before the phone guy sent me a bunch of Lacoste e-mails that took the rest of the time up until break.
When I got back, I took some calls, but after awhile Elliott sent me another slew of e-mails, and that concluded my work day.

At the station

I didn't know what time it was because my watch was coated in filth and she'd taken it somewhere.
I thought about how it was that we got to Jupiter so fast, but since I had difficulty believing we were in space, I figured a better question to ask was how she managed to get everything to float, and if we were inside an airplane flying around in the atmosphere somewhere.
She asked me what I thought I was seeing and I said probably something like they have at Epcot Center. She asked me what I saw in the "septic system" and I said you can find some pretty horrible stuff in the Amazon jungle or under the ocean and they could have been from there or outer space. That made her laugh.
I told her I wouldn't believe we were in space until I actually took a space walk or stuck my head out an airlock. She said it could be arranged, but not at that moment.
We went back to the entrance and watched cable.
A quarter of the way through a movie, I heard this klaxon sound and she went to the room at the end of the hall. I followed her, watching as she made noises at someone on an intercom.
A big bug shaped object came into view, and we slowly drifted towards it. Jupiter, in the meantime, just kept getting bigger and bigger.
I was floating, so it didn't tire me to just "stand" there for ten minutes. We approached the object, then sort of passed to one side of it. The thing was all metallic, and sort of blocky. Kind of surprising, considering I was in a big sea cucumber thing with rubbery skin.
I heard some hissing sounds and she said "we're here."
Wow. This was a lot longer than I really intended, but it really can't be helped. A lot of weird things happened to me all at once in the course of only a few short days. Nobody will understand them if I don't at least try to explain it a little. And I do mean a little. I skipped over the boring parts, and I've forgotten some things between then and now so this is only an approximate description of what happened to me. I'll go into greater detail about some other things if I have time and remember them.
I'll write a post about what happened on the station tomorrow or something.

Men's skirts

I think I had an allergic reaction to either the soap or her hair because I kept itching. I told her about this and she said sorry, but she didn't have any other soap.
She then started talking about why she didn't understand why earth men had such a problem with wearing things like skirts and other things I saw in that box. I told her there were Deuteronomic commands against wearing women's clothing and I was probably breaking it now and wouldn't have if she'd told me about the compartment. She said that was a disposal chute and then started talking about how men wore kilts. I argued that was different but she kept saying it wasn't, that males on her planet think it's perfectly fine to wear skirts and they're not gay or anything. I argued that the colors are not manly, so she argued that Korean men wear colorful robes for ceremonies and it's no different, and plus she picked read and green instead of pink. She said it "was only fabric." And then she said that it's not comfortable for her people to wear a lot of clothes and her people have tails, so skirts can be ideal. I argued that I didn't have a tail so the point is moot. She kept going at it, so I gave up.
I watched cable some more. She told me there wasn't much earth food on the "station" and that it's "good that I have my implant." I asked how could that be when we're only a few miles from earth, so she says the station has better refrigeration than earth and there's a freezer that contains enough food to feed a hundred people for three years. I asked her how many people were onboard and she said barely a sixteenth of that amount, and that they had a farm of sorts onboard as well. And she offhandedly mentions that nobody on board likes earth food.
I asked her if I could take a look outside. I'd been too angry to think about it before, but now that I had eaten something and had clothes on, even if they weren't a good fit, I was feeling better, so I asked. She took me down the hallway to a round chamber with a single chair in the center. The room was pretty well featureless except for that chair, which had all kinds of devices attached to it, I presume for controlling the ship.
The walls all displayed a view of space. I figured they were either monitors or some type of glass.
Apparently we were already close to to Jupiter. I could see it up ahead. It was huge, and Sigma told me it wasn't even that close to us. She said that it fills up the entire office window and you can see all the storms and satellites moving around. I said it sounded cool.
Then out of the blue she starts asking me these religious questions. Kind of awkward to be talking about that dressed in women's clothing but I tried not to think of it. She asked me what good my faith was when I behaved more or less like other people she knew with no religious convictions. I briefly explained the whole thing about how my religion is for lost sinners and how the Great Physician came to earth to heal the spiritually sick, not the "healthy", and that there's a comfort, and a peace in that. That made her quiet. She finally asked why I followed some of the rules but not others, like hitting people and calling them bad names and cussing, but I refused to sleep with her or wear a skirt. So I gave her a short speech about how the Christian faith walk was a contradiction, that we're in constant need of grace and of the Holy Spirit to guide us in righteous actions that we ourselves don't have the power to perform. At that point I felt compelled to say I was sorry, and I said I hoped she'd forgive me, as I'd be asking Jesus for forgiveness as well. I basically did that to "pitch a sale" so to speak, and to sort of cover over the fact I contradicted my own words I'd said to her a few days ago about loving my neighbor and all that.
She was quiet again, and we just watched Jupiter get closer.

Zufa

After she took a shower herself, she cooked me supper, and it was pretty much like I expected. Gray hairy crab legs, some leftover meatloaf, and something like caviar. Since I couldn't care less about being poisoned or drugged at this point, I ate everything on my plate.
She called that gray stuff "Zufa" and it was halfway decent. It wasn't what I expected, but it was all right. The closest thing I could compare it to is pork mixed with candy and thousand island salad dressing. That's not accurate, but it's kind of what it was like. The caviar tasted, well, like caviar, with sort of a cheese flavor. I only ate the stuff because I was hungry.
While I ate, she told me stuff about the job. She said we're required to wear uniforms on the station, and that the station is fairly large and you could actually see outside. She said we were in a shuttle and that's why it had no windows. She said the station is powered by solar energy and gravitational power generated by Jupiter and that the break rooms get all the channels because we're up in space where the satellites are.
She also told me about some new policies, like how there aren't any breaks, only a fifteen minute lunch and that the caller needs to scan their identification into the computer before I can assist them with their locked spaceship.
The break thing caught me off guard. I asked her what happened if I had to go to the bathroom, being there's no "health breaks" or breaks period, and she just said "I'd learn more about that when I got onboard". Whatever. I figured I didn't have a choice, but I could probably find some wiggle room somewhere.
We got done eating and I went back to watching HBO on the hologram. Since we weren't talking, she made bad attempts at conversation. She asked me what I thought about my coworkers at BBL. I gave her a guarded response, so she asked me if I had any prejudices against race.
I said I was okay with black people, and as a Christian I have to love people of all races, but certain customers get on my phone and give the whole African American race a bad name.
She tells me that her people are discriminated against by the color of their fur. That made me laugh, but she was serious. She said it was difficult for the green people to get work. Okay. Sure. That's great. I'm wearing your clothes and a bikini because you made me throw out all my stuff and ruined my food and I'm supposed to feel sorry for you.
She asked me if I liked her fur color and I said it was okay.