Thomas worked steadily as the hours melted away until his watch finally beeped for lunch. He made his way up to the room that they had repurposed into a cafeteria on the top level of the logistics center. It was a sprawling, circular room with a large window overlooking the northern half of Point Nemo. Long tables made of some silvery material lined the dining area, with each one hovering a few feet off of the ground. In a bizarre contrast, the seats were glaringly ordinary metal, folding chairs.

Thomas made his way through the food line and filled his plate with a protein bar, mashed potatoes, and broccoli, all courtesy of the local hydroponics farm. The cafeteria was only about a quarter full, so he grabbed a window seat. He recognized a few of the workers on break but decided that he’d rather share a view of town than a strained conversation about the weather.

“OI! Tommy-boy!”.  The voice boomed from across the cafeteria.

Thomas looked up and couldn’t help but smile.

“Edd! You had me thinking I was being stood up.”

Edd set down his tray. It was filled to the brim with broccoli and from the shininess of it, nearly as much butter. Or rather, a butter substitute.

“Well, I was going to, but it was either you or the mountain o’ batteries that Dick has me sortin’.” Edd was a short, stocky Scotsman with a bushy brown beard and weathered face. He was around thirty or so, at least ten years older than Thomas, but it rarely felt like it.

“Is the Atrium wanting batteries, too?” Thomas asked.

“Aye. Batteries, any metal scrap we got, silicon, and a whole mess of other shite. And they must want it real bad if one o’ the Peen’o’tent is willin’ to come out to see it.”

“I guess that explains why Richard is so bent out of shape, but why is it such a big deal if one of them is overseeing it? They come out to check and make sure we haven’t eaten each other or anything every month or so. Why is this one so special?”

Edd squinted at him, “How many of them have you seen?”

“Just the welcoming committee when I first got here and a few others. Why?” Thomas said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes, each bite a sore reminder of the scarcity of salt on Akkaven.

“Yeah, yeah. I remember you mentioning them before, but what’d they look like?”

Thomas shrugged. “Uh…I guess they had a human-like body with two arms and two legs and glowing blue eyes. Oh, and they were chrome with blue stripes.”

“Were they kinda hunched over with a headdress-type thing?”

Thomas stopped eating. “No…the ones I saw stood upright and had fairly normal-looking heads, aside from some symbols inscribed around the faceplate.”

Despite his best efforts, none of what he had seen during the Exodus had faded from his memory. 

Edd scoffed, “Those are just the androids they program for the small stuff. I’m talkin’ about a real, live one. I saw them back at the Atrium when I worked on the trains there.”

Thomas cocked his eyebrow. “A live one?”

“Yeah, an’ you’ll know the difference between them an’ the androids as soon as you see ‘em.”

“What? Like they’re bigger?”

“No, well…some are. But they have…a different vibe to 'em, y’know?”

Thomas chuckled, “Do they give off a real Saggitarius aura?”

Edd recoiled as if he had tasted something foul, “Oh, bugger off, you twat. Let horoscopes burn away, along with the rest.”

“Is it just their general appearance, then?”

“Nah, it’s more in the way they act. Although they do tend to have quite the regalia on, I’ll grant you. More elaborate inscriptions on their metal bodies an’ the like. But with an android, they act, well… robotic. They speak slow and mechanical, like you’d expect because they don’t really think. But the Penitent...they do.”

“What, so they have more advanced programming?”

Edd stared out the window at the forest of black towers that loomed over Point Nemo.

“No. It’s not programming. I can tell ya that much. Something programmed doesn’t stare at you the way they do. When an android looks at you, it feels like you’re just lookin’ into a camera. There’s nothin’ behind those eyes but circuits an’ metal. It’s just their faceplate, not a mask for some…thing else.”

Thomas waited for Edd to explain. He didn’t.

Edd shrugged and shoveled a stalk of broccoli into his mouth. “I heard you were a tad late this mornin’.”

Thomas hunched ever so slightly. “Yeah, by about thirty minutes. I ran into some of those crab-looking aliens, the Korokti, on the way here. I didn’t want to chance anything with them, so I tried to hide until they went away.”

“Tried?”

“Well, I did hide, but I got a little hasty and ran into one. The guy… erm … Korokti was cool about it though. Anyway, the point is that I thought I was gonna get eaten or mugged, and so I was late.”

“Did you tell Dick that?”

“I was going to, but he wouldn’t stop talking about that big order and how I’m not going to be an engineer again if I don’t put my ass in gear. He’s wanting me to step up, I guess.” Thomas stared a hole into his food tray.

“Did he put it in those exact terms?”

Thomas looked down at the table. “No. No, he didn’t.”

“How did he really put it?”

“I mean, that was the basic jist of it.”

Edd raised an eyebrow.

Thomas exhaled, pinched his eyes shut, and told him what Richard had said.

Edd sighed deeply and leaned forward. “Ignore him.”

“Well, I mean…it’s not like he’s wrong. I was late, and the work needed to be done. And he knows I only went to school for like a year.”

Edd shook his head and tried to blink away his confusion. “How is that your takeaway from that conversation?”

“Well…if I’m going to make it anywhere here, I have to make the extra effort to prove myself.”

“Thomas, that wasn’t even constructive criticism; it was just an insult. He pulled this crap when you had to reassemble the walkie-talkies and the other time when ya got lost in the maintenance tunnels.  It’s not fair o’ him to shove that in your face every time ya fall short.”

“Maybe it isn’t, but…if I’m going to advance or succeed, I’m going to have to at least tolerate him.” His throat felt tight, as if a noose had been slipped around it.

“Yes, by IGNORING the arse! He knows he gets to ya.  That’s why he’s been singlin ya out.”

Thomas bit his lip. “Where will that get me though? If I ignore him, I’ll just stay where I’m at forever or get fired.” His voice was shaking. “I need him to at least be able to see that I can do more than just count batteries if I want to have any chance of moving on from here. I don’t want to be… I can’t be doing this for the rest of my life.”

Edd was silent for a long moment. “If you listen to him, the only place you’ll go is where he wants you to.”

Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Edd watched him expectantly and then leaned forward and looked Thomas in the eye.

“Listen, Tommy-boy. There’s nothin’ wrong with wantin’ somethin’ more for yourself. But you’re not gonna find it by doing what someone else tells you to do. There’s only one person who can, and you don’t listen to him nearly enough.”

Thomas tossed his spork onto his tray and shook his head. “He doesn’t know enough to say anything.”

Edd swallowed another stalk of broccoli. “Well, practice makes perfect. And you sure as shit need it.”

Thomas’s watch beeped, alerting him that he had five minutes before Richard would stop by room 422K to check on him. As he got up to leave, he was startled to feel Edd gently grab his arm.

“Promise me that you’ll listen.”

“I’ll…I’ll try, okay? Maybe right now I can’t, but once I have some more experience and things slow down, I will.”

Edd forced a smile and turned back to his mound of broccoli.

“Yeah. Just do it when things slow down.”