Steirdrar heard snickers and murmurs about formality behind his back before he had even left the office, the nosiest not having bothered with any kind of discretion in their hunger for more gossip material. Whatever. Maybe this would give people something other than his past actions to talk about.

QWERTY set aers tablet down once Beyari returned to the loungeroom after seeing Commander Urrang off. "It turns out the next harvest from the Plucker tree is yours."

QWERTY remembers aers first boot and going through the identity selection program. Name — aers first name, Lora, based on aers serial number, LO-12-1 — preferred pronouns in gendered languages — ae always sounded lovely — and so on. It was followed by the initiation program, which acclimated aer to the world and aers basic functions.

<the rant about why this story is almost a day late>Boy, oh boy, was this story an insanity to work on. I was on the road yesterday, so my writing time and energy were less than half of my usual, and by the time I finished the first draft, it was 11 PM and 1221 … Continue reading FFM 2025 11: Conclusions

Beyari grinned as she sat down at her tablet and opened Kohar's message. The text section read, Bay, you gotta see this. She shook her head and played the video.

Something about Agent Ket's smirk set off alarm bells in Steirdrar's head but at this point it was too late to retreat. When they reached the loungeroom, the android he had briefly met yesterday looked up from the tablet in their hands, looking between the two with a blank expression. "Commander Urrang, meet my partner-in-hunting, QWERTY. QWERTY, meet Commander Steirdrar Urrang," Agent Ket introduced.