“Hey there,” the Borg chef said. “Can I perhaps implore you to stop shooting the employees? They’re just trying to do their job.”
“They tried to asssimilate usss,” Boots hissed with a sneer. He pointed his rapier directly at the throat of the drone and growled.
Helvetica put up a silencing hand and Boots stepped back. “The reception we’ve been given has been less than peachy,” she said. “In fact, I’d say that the hard sell is what goes for a greeting around these parts. They stop doing that and I’ll stop shooting them.”
“They are just doing their jobs,” the chef drone said.
He shook his head and went about wiping down the counter in front of them—which, to Helvetica, appeared spotless. As he worked, she inspected him. He looked to have once been human. Slightly taller than she even as he stood with a slightly stopped posture, perhaps from years of tending the bar. His skin had turned white with assimilation and seemed almost luminescent, sickly green under the incandescent lights. His implants formed black splotches and wires in patterns that crawled up and down his arms.
That’s when she noticed that the spatula wasn’t in his hand, it was part of his hand. It and several other utensils—a ladle, a salad fork, and tongs–appeared to recess into his forearm like a Swiss Army knife.
“Are we safe here?” Helvetica asked. “Won’t the ‘employees’ here attack up?” She motioned to the drones walking past.
“Of course not,” the Borg chef said, “they’re on lunch break. None of them really wants to lift a finger to do any work while they’re at lunch. They’re not going to get paid for it and it would only serve to shorten their lunch break.”
“I see,” Helvetica said. “So when people join the Collective they end up working?”
“Long hours, yes,” he said. “When you first join it seems like the benefits are going to be great and the pay sounds good. But then it just starts taking over your life. The schedule is erratic, the rules make no sense, and the next thing you know you’re looking forward to your lunch break every day as if it’s an oasis in a desert.”
“Why don’t you just quit?” Helvetica asked.
“A lot of us came from worse jobs to join the Collective,” the chef said. “We quit this job and we’ll have nothing. It’s a bad market out there.” He paused a moment to wipe the already pristine bar with his rag and let out a long, wistful breath. “A lot of the folks here don’t have a lot to look forward to and they came from worse.”
Helvetica looked over the drones sitting at the tables going through the motions of their old lives and frowned.
“Plus, working in the Collective kind of closes off other options.” He gestured to the numerous implants grafted through his ashy colored waxen skin. “Not many places want to take you after you’ve got this sort of baggage attached to you. Still, it’s a job and it’s something to do.”
“You have a point,” Helvetica said after a long moment. “But it doesn’t solve my bigger problem. This ship and its crew have attacked my ship and my crew. Not to mention that they continue to threaten me and mine. I’m not going to get around that without shooting more drones. I mean ‘employees.’”
At that the Borg chef froze and his already ghoulish face settled into a darker expression.
“You should talk to management,” he said. “If it weren’t for management there wouldn’t be assimilation, expiring benefits packages, and the rude treatment of customers here in the Collective.”
“Where do I find management?”
He raised a spatula and pointed to a sign in the corner of the Food Court that read “VINCULUM” in large, red block letters, beneath that a smaller sign read, “Management Only. Please knock.”
“Ah good. We were headed there already,” Helvetica said. She turned to Boots and Rocky-Road and added, “I think this is the boss fight, so get ready.”
“Just remember,” the Borg cook said. “The clothing makes the man, the manager is the one wearing the suit. Oh, and here’s a catfish sandwich for your trouble.”
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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