Alagael and Darren's Story

Alagael waited with her elbows and forearms resting on the counter, leaning on them idly, looking around the shop. It was set up in a kind of organized chaos, the walls and display case crowded with models for sale and for examples. She'd come at the wrong time, it seemed, though, for there was no one about. Rather than calling into the back room-- there was a door slightly ajar behind the custom counter, or what she assumed was the counter for requesting customized cyborbots, given the examples of such on shelves behind it-- Alagael had decided to wait. Someone would show up eventually, and what if the shopkeeper was working on something delicate that would be ruined if the process was disturbed?

So there she waited, somewhere between bored and distracted, leaning on the counter and looking around idly while thinking over how to word an introduction to the next section in her paper on the conclave of Atuan elves she'd not long ago returned from field work among. It kept her mind occupied, for the most part, though she could certainly think of more comfortable places to be thinking about it!

"Yes?"

Alagael looked up with a blink as someone finally came out into the customer's portion of the store. Or, rather, something. A hovering cyborbot, completely spherical, blue-lensed, and with a coppery hue to its exterior, zipped through the door to the back room and came to an abrupt stop in front of Alagael's nose. She blinked again at its proximity, so close as to be blurry, so she straightened to see it more clearly through her lenses. From the amount of attitude in the bot's voice, even discernable from a single word, it was clearly one of those kinds with a lot of personality-- and from the voice itself, "it" was "female".

"Uh, hello..." Alagael began hesitantly, not sure just how to address a cyborbot in this rather particular situation. "Are you who I should be speaking with about purchasing a cyborbot?"

The 'bot whizzed back to the door, where it-- she?-- called, "Hey, Archimedes! Customer!" She was answered by a series of clicks and chatters, completely incomprehensible to Alagael-- and a giant insect poked a mantis-like head out of the back room. It was only living on a space station with every kind of alien imaginable that kept Alagael from staring. For having seen every kind of alien imaginable, she had somehow missed the presence of giant insects. Or was this an insectoid anthromorph of some kind?

Whatever the fellow was, he was obviously the shopkeeper. "Ah... hello," Alagael tried again, smiling some. "I was curious about ordering a custom cyborbot?"

A few more clicks came from the insectoid shopkeeper, and the female copper-top translated. At least, Alagael assumed it was a translation. It sounded rather surly, coming from the 'bot, but she doubted that was the tone originally intended. "He says you've come to the right place," the 'bot sighed. "This is Archimedes, the senior Master at Robotics. Oh, and I'm Scion."

"It's a pleasure to meet you both," Alagael nodded with a bit more of a smile, trying to be gracious. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Oh, just some delicate programming; tricky stuff, you know, very imporant--" Scion began loftily, but was interrupted by a sharp series of clicking words from Archimedes. Alagael was fascinated, wondering exactly how that would be translated-- she always did love linguistics. Scion heaved a sigh that was voice only, having no lungs with which to actually expell air, and translated a second string of unintelligible sounds: "Archimedes says, not at all, what can we do for you?"

"I'll try not to keep you from your work," Alagael began, "but it's for my husband's birthday. He's wanted a pet, of sorts, for a long time-- but-- well, you know how it is, I'm sure." Well, he probably didn't, but she continued doggedly on. "Can I order an RCD, one of those big snake versions?"

"No, you can't," Scion said sarcastically, but then said, "Of course you can. That's what we're here for, remember?"

"Sorry...." This coppery 'bot was a little overwhelming, actually!

"Bigger, you said?" Scion translated a few more clicks. "How big? The biggest we've got is four feet long."

That didn't seem all that long, to Alagael; but then, one of the serpents she'd seen on Atu had been ten feet long, so maybe four feet just wasn't much, to her. "That seems fine, to me."

"What colors do you want?" Scion persisted. "What personality type?"

"Uh--" Alagael took a moment to re-collect her thoughts and remember what she'd decided. "Personality type A, for certain." The other types just seemed... boring. "Colored like a ribbon snake-- um, they're from Earth. A pretty greenish-black color with a creme sort of underside, and three thin, yellow stripes running down their back and sides. And green eyes, I think. Is that enough?"

"Plenty. Want to slide a little plastic through for us?"

That was expected-- the first thing she'd expected that had happened, since she'd entered the place!-- and she whipped out her credit card to scan. Then, with the order to come back at a specified time in a couple days, she trotted off to work more on her field work write-up. Darren was going to love this birthday present, she just knew it.