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.