My first attempt to post fiction to the list, so I hope I please someone out there. And before anyone gets the chance to pick on the most obvious fault – the continuous changes in tense are a deliberate part of the way this particular vevaphon thinks. Hopefully this will become clearer if I ever manage to write any more of it.
As I swept my gaze around my surroundings, I took time to note each of my friends in order with a memory-hierarchy pattern I’ve been working on. It was based in part on a subjective apporximation of the amount of time People spent asking him questions, weighed against how long they spent listening to my enquiry fields. But although this basic criteria had been the initial basis for my judgement of the value of each person, I’d slowly learned to colour these decisions with other more subtle tones. The type of attention they paid had become a vital factor. Some would ask very specific questions of me, normally related to my abilities, but although I find these questions simple and informative in respect to others’ perceptions of me – y’know, stuff like: can you do this? would you do that? – it was the other type of question which had come to colour my assessment of others the most. And to make matters even more confusing , these questions were of an entirely banal nature, with no understandable relevance to operational details. Do you want to come to the shop with me? Are you coming out with us tonight? Want to pass the salt? ... this type of question, Id eventually realised, was of a different order to most other questions, but as yet I hadn’t managed to place the distinction. It was made more complicated still when my honest replies to such queries – that no, I didn’t really want to pass the salt – were generally received as humour, at least until I realised that it was intended not so much as a question, but more of a request.
Somehow these people, who seemed to show the least interest in his qualities as an operative, but conversely spent the most time in his company, were slowly becoming the people whom he valued most highly.
Angela, his Acclimatisation Officer, had indicated that this was merely a sign that I was beginning to form opinions based on my developing emotional reactions. My confusion over these areas were merely a matter of the way our learning pattern places higher relevance on material which can be related directly to operational requirements. We were designed with a specific intent, so the specifications required certain learning prinicples. This basis was now being confused by the fact that I had been assigned accommodation in an apartment with five other young operatives, rather than the single experienced integration op normally selected as an initial contact supervisor for vevaphons. A level of social interaction considerably above the norm for my race had resulted in more mental capacity being needed to sort out social information and my confusion therein stemmed from the ongoing adjustment in learning patterns. Angela had arranged clearance for me to watch a couple of old movie-slugs to help me relate social information to operational training.
He’d watched the slugs with Urkie and Shona. Technically, neither of them had clearance to watch them, but I figure that observing typical social reaction to a situation can be every bit as informative as the situation itself. The movies – spy flicks, Urkie called them – didn’t really seem to be very good films, as I understand the concept, but my companions found them entertaining. They did show me how humans can use social skills to operational ends, though.Those humans are just so bloody sneaky!
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