The interrogation room had that smell it always does, mixed with something new. Everytime she stepped into the space, Miu struggled to place it. It was not quite the vague pine sol smell left behind by the cleaning Roombas. She took a deep breath and paused holding onto it for a moment. It was… a fruity sweat smell as if a peach had been working out in a laundromat. Satisfied with her analysis Miu turned her attention to the one way mirror. The figure currently handcuffed to the table on the other side of the glass must be the cause for the fruit side of the smell. Balancing on the back two legs of the metal chair was a woman with long white hair. Her roots showed that she used to be a brunette but the tufts of white made her look almost ethereal. A golden septum piercing connected to her earlobe with a delicate golden chain. The more Miu sized her up, the more gold she realized she was wearing, from rings to piercing to hair ties. It sent dancing pools of light across her face under the sickly blue of the fluorescent lights above. Despite the weather being close to freezing with old man winter yawning the outside trees brown, the woman was clad in bright flowy fabrics, her midriff exposed showing off yet another piercing. Overall she had the subtlety of a male peacock.

“Heeeyy, I know y’all are back there, staring at me or some shit. Took yah long enough tah get here and frankly I think you’re just bein rude now,” the Fabricator bounced her chair as she sized up the mirrored wall. Her loud drawl only made Miu’s eyes roll. She had the feeling this was going to be a long interrogation. Finishing the last of her coffee, Miu clicked her way to the door. Turning to Beeb, she sent them a authoritative glance. “I don’t think it will get to this level but you know where the panic button is if things get out of control.” “Yes Commander.” “Good.” She turned to the door and sighed, “Time to get some information.” Beeb clicked on the recording device and took their seat in front of the window.

The Fabricator beamed as Miu opened the door with her badge and promptly closed the door behind her, the clack of the lock bouncing off the walls of the empty space. “Lookie here, finally I get some face time with the Commander herself. Happy tah see me Miu?” the metal chair legs clunked as the woman sat forward, resting her hands on the table. “I would prefer it if you continued to call me Commander, Yoki.” Yoki rolled her eyes and moved to tug her hands behind her head until they were yanked back down by the chain on the handcuffs. “Well, Miu I hardly think that’s fair. You’ve been on my tail for what? A few months now? I think if you didn’t want me tah use your name you wouldn’t have put out that wanted poster with ‘commander Miu signed at the bottom,” Miu ignored her and took her seat so that she could read over the file. She had the information memorized by now but prefered to show off the tangible evidence she possessed.

“I was not going to sit idly by as you swindled your way from town to town. You managed to steal: an entire new wardrobe, enough rings to cover each of your fingers and toes twice, meals from 5 star restaurants for every meal, 3 cars including a porsche, and now… a house.” Miu moved her icy gaze from the printed pages of note into Yoki’s near golden brown eyes. Breaking the stare, the Fabricator glanced away. “I hardly call it… stealing. I didn’t use no weapons or nothing.” Miu let the file hit the table with a loud thwack. “You made up information and swindled people out of goods, out of life savings! So please enlighten me of the definition of stealing if that is the case.” Yoki’s smirk of a smile turned cold as she showed more of her teeth “Made up information? Say Commander, what color is yah jacket?” Miu blinked her lips turned down a disappointed frown “I hardly see how this is at all relevant to the case.” The prolonged silence goaded an answer out of the woman “Its a navy blue.” Yoki leaned back in her chair assuming her confidence, “And if I were to say its the color of a storming sea, is that making information up?” Miu blinked again losing her momentum “I suppose not, unnecessary but technically correct.” The Fabricator only growled at her “Don’t you get it, one paints a better picture than the other! And that’s all I’m doing! If this entire world is tryna get information outta me, I don’t get why the world’s gotta tell me how I’m gonna give that information.”

For a moment the words hung in the stale air of the little room. But a moment was long enough for Miu to collect her thoughts. Of course she had opinions about this new demonetized system of living. The stripe of white hair on her head was a tangible reminder that she lived through the age of the downfall of paper money. It started with switching from cards to wearable chips. It was all about making it ‘easier’ for the consumer. She must have been a teenager when advertisers cut out the middleman and began appealing directly to consumers for their information. Users could get samplers, month subscriptions, lute boxes, nearly anything for the price of a survey. The wild success made it a universal practice. Soon banks became literal memory banks, stashing information users knew could be useful enough to win them fancy earbuds or movie tickets for films they inspired. The world was hungry for everything, diaries to cold hard facts in order to quantify the unpredictability of human wants and desires and capitalize it. And honestly, it was efficient, a favorite word of Miu’s.

“Because, Yoki, it lacks efficiency. If everyone were to add their own decorations to every phrase they utter, the world would fall into stagnation. The pieces of information that are the most useful are the ones cut clean of any unnecessary detail so that companies and people can integrate them easily into the preexisting frameworks. When you add extra detail you twist the original intent and make it more difficult to understand objectively.” Miu stared calmly at the criminal finding no way they could refute this point, “A good world is one that runs smoothly.”

Yoki sighed looking almost disappointed as she stared at the Commander. She shook her head, “Yah just don’t get it do you…” She had the audacity to be disappointed? Disappointed in Miu? This prompted the Commander to sit up straighter placing an authoritative hand on the table, “Yoki this must be the first time you’ve told the truth in months because I don’t get it. I don’t get why you thought it was a good idea touring the country with a mouth full of loaded words. Sure you didn’t use a gun so to speak but you manipulated people. You lied to their face and took what they had. You used descriptions as your weapon, erasing the clear line between usable information and your own selfish wants. You are a liar, a manipulator, and for what? Some cash prize? Is that what people’s trust means to you, a couple of gaudy rings and a car to help you compensate for your lack of morals. So why don’t you help me understand. Why did you do it Yoki?” Her words cut the air like knives. Sure her icy tone made it harder to express to coworker when she was sarcastic or trying to joke. But in here, in this empty little room, her voice was her greatest asset.

It seemed to work like a charm. Yoki’s smug grin clattered to the floor. With every phrase she shrunk away from the commander as if trying to make way for the weight of her statements. For a moment all she could do was sit like a shrinking violet, wilting at the confrontation. A minute passed and another threatened to keep the two in silence. But the submission turned to confusion then to anger. “You are not allowed tah tell me who I am and who I am not.” Yoki sat up, leaning forward to leer at the stony woman across from her. “Yah don’t even have my last name and here you are trying to label me in some bullshit way to make you feel like the hero here huh? Like you rescued allllll those people who had the misfortune of meeting me. Well I got news for you Commander Hard Ass, you didn’t do jack shit! Those people wanted to give me what I asked for. They -”

“Because you manipulated them”

“GOD! There you are again with that word! Yah keep confusing manipulation with emotion! Just cause someone feels something doesn’t mean they’re being forced intah action. Tell me commander, when’s the last time you felt something, like really felt something”

Miu let out a short sigh and rolled her eyes “Yoki really, your questioning is inane”

Yoki grinned a toothy smile “Yah avoiding the question there Miu…”

“ I am merely pointing out how flawed your logic is. Believe it or not, I am not an android. I am a human capable of a variety of thoughts and feelings. I feel things constantly, like how this chair is hard, that my coffee was warm that-”

The flamboyant woman cut her off with a frustrated groan. “God you sound just like one. I mean emotion. When’s the last time you recognized an emotion in yahelf”

After a beat Miu answered matter of factly “Right now I feel a tad annoyed you are wasting my time.”

This only prompted Yoki to nearly leap out of her chair, arms tugged down hard by the handcuffs effectively curbing some of her enthusiasm “THAT’S THE PROBLEM! IF A LITTLE ANNOYED IS THE FEELING THAT STICKS OUT TO YAH THEN THERE’S A PROBLEM! All this shit about making information ‘parcelable’ cut into neat little packets to be turned intah wealth makes yah forget the humanness behind our stories. You’re forgettin how to be human Miu! And that’s because the world wants tah make you a statistic, something predictable, something they can market to. But yah more than that, we’re all more than that. Just because sayin ‘i love dogs because their playful innocence reminds me of my brother’ is more loaded than ‘i like dogs’ doesn’t mean it should have less value!”

Miu’s could hear the whirring of a familiar processor from one room over, “It’s alright Beeb she’s just being fervent, you do not need to push the panic button.”

Yoki only threw up her hands, huffing back into her seat, “Unbelievable, yah dismiss me cause I’m actually making sense. Tell me do you miss it?”

Miu snapped her gaze back to Yoki, “Miss what?”

“Miss feeling things, letting yourself have emotions, not analyzing every opinion you have trying to make bank off of it? It's no wonder there aren’t stories anymore. Does anyone even reminisce?” It was as if, Yoki mourned some kind of loss. The way her shoulders slumped, how her golden eyes now looked tired. It nearly caught Miu off guard.

“People have moved beyond letting petty, fickle things control their lives. They can now live more efficiently and quickly, governed by something that won’t change at the drop of a hat. Fighting that only makes you wind up in a place like this.” Despite her remarks supposedly being comforting, Yoki remained unamused.