The team arrived in the “Food Court” by following signs set up on the green glowing walls. With every step they took, the cabled texture of the walls began to dissolve into smooth paneling, and the floor began to show signs of tiles instead of a mass of wires and glimmering lights. Boots seemed perturbed by the slow transformation but Rocky-Road seemed to take it in stride.
In fact, her nose started twitching as they approached the end of the hallway. In the distance, Helvetica could barely make out a dimly lit room that appeared that it could be filled with people milling about slowly. At this distance, they looked like indistinct forms, flittering through each other like a herd of zebra crisscrossing.
“I smell…fish,” Rocky-Road said. “I love fish.”
Boots sniffed the air. “I sssmell… Lots of humanoidsss, dry humanoidsss.”
Helvetica glanced sideways at Boots, he shrugged and said, “What? We eat humanoidsss on Gornar.”
“If this is the Food Court we’re headed to,” Helvetica said. “And Rocky-Road smells fish. I suspect we’re about to find out where all those catfish sandwiches are coming from.”
The trio emerged into a cavernous and very rectangular room. All semblance of the Borg cable-strewn walls had vanished. Instead the floors were tile, the walls greenish-grey paneling, and the ceiling vanished amidst sets of incandescent lighting extending to the left and right. Like any other Food Court, the room was filled with tables and chairs, all adhered to the floor, and all painted the same pale green-grey as the walls.
There were in fact figures in the room. Borg drones milled about listlessly, some carried trays of food, others sat at tables sitting in groups of threes and fours. Unlike any other food court that Helvetica had ever visited, however, there was no sound of conversation or chatter—the whispering subconscious umbral atmosphere of barely heard speech did not hang in the air. Instead, she could only hear the sound of shuffling feet, and the low-steady thrum of machinery.
Boots held his weapon at the ready, his mighty forearm muscles twitching.
“They have not moved to attack us,” he said.
“I don’t think they know we’re here,” Helvetica said.
True to her statement, not a single one of the Borg drones took notice of them. They remained at the tables, seemingly pretending to eat food and hold silent conversations. She even noticed one or two hanging out underneath a green light further in the back, leaning against a wall miming the motions of smoking cigarettes.
“That one knows we’re here,” Rocky-Road gestured towards a single vendor on the opposite side of the room. A Borg drone with a chef hat standing behind a counter.
He held a spatula in one hand and waved it over his head, when he noticed Helvetica looking at him he beckoned with the utensil.
“Let’s go see what he wants,” Helvetica said. “Boots keep your weapon ready. I am still not sure about this.”
“Yesss, Captain,” Boots said. He nodded, thumbed the weapon power level up a few notches, and twirled his rapier.
Rocky-Road’s nose continued to twitch. “Maybe he has fish.”
The author Helvetica writes the Helvetica Voyage, Helvetica Venture, and Hellvetica Chronicles for Vox Ex Machina and proudly supports the works of Kyt Dotson, whose writing includes Mill Avenue Vexations (a gothic webserial featuring cab driver Vex Harrow), Black Hat Magick, and Helljammer and invites you to check out the novel, The Specter in the Spectacles by Kyt Dotson.
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