Page 2 of Spawn

This felt more like he had an idea of what social skills were supposed to be through observation than through practice. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and answer his question.

"The ground appears to be plant matter, and there is a lot of it," I said. "I'm wondering if it is edible enough for bulk processing into a basic material for cooking."

He reached down to his side and unclipped a small device. He pointed it at the ground, but didn't look at it, just kept staring at me. Then he gave a short nod.

"It is," he said. "I withdraw my question of incompetence. It is clear your mental processes are highly functional."

"I found an edible fruit!" Saoirse called out through the comms installed in our helmets. I looked down the hill where the other women and aliens had gone, and she stood there, hefting a crimson pod in the air as she waved a small device like the one the alien next to me held.

"It will be easier to obtain large amounts of calories from cutting and rolling up this turf than picking individual fruits," he said, making my own point for me.

Paired with his comments about me being incompetent, having him take my idea and declare it as his own was enough to push me past my held-back politeness straight into feeling a bit snippy.

"No shit, Sherlock," I said.

"Sherlock?" he asked.

I sighed, feeling bad for losing my temper like that. Normally I was phenomenal under pressure, but I had spent too much time in a career with men who tried to use my talents as a stepping stool for their own success. I couldn't compare this alien male to human men; it wasn't fair. He didn't have the slightest control over his own life until Sara operated on him.

"Sherlock is a fictional character, an early human example of what we call an OP character, an overpowered one. He was clever, able to understand nuances of situations by noticing the small details of the environment around him, which led to him being exceptional at solving mysteries," I said.

"That is a good name," he said, giving a firm nod. "I will be Sherlock."

"Oh, ok," I said. I hadn't meant to name him. The other alien males had taken on names the women had given them, including one going by Big Guy because Andrea was not the sharpest cookie in the jar.

Though that thought was unfair, especially because of how quickly and efficiently Big Guy made her every whim manifest into reality. She was smart enough to grab onto someone who was delighted to handle everything she didn't want to deal with in life, so I couldn't begrudge her that. Intelligence wasn't a static element measurable by a single test. The only true marker of genuine intelligence was how a person handled what life put before them.

"You know, this moss reminds me of the episode where Garlithian goes to-" Sherlock began, clearly about to go full tilt into another monologue about his favorite show.

"I'd love to hear about your show in a moment," I interrupted. The one thing I learned about working with men a lot was you had to interrupt them if they lacked social skills. Being patient and gentle and waiting for them to notice they were being boorish wouldn't work at all. Worst of all, they wouldn't respect you for it either.

"For right now, let's focus on cutting a strip of this turf to take to the ship," I finished. I hesitated, realizing I hadn't brought any tools with me, not even a bag like Saoirse's, stuffed full of random vegetation and fruit. "I don't suppose…"

"I have the right tool for that," he said, following where my thoughts were leading another time. He reached down to his belt and grabbed a small cylindrical device.

"Oh, good," I said, and sat back on my heels as he clicked the device and a small laser shot down into the turf, cutting a clean line in the ground. "While you work on that, I'll scan more things with the tricorder."

I held out my hand.

"What's a tricorder?" he asked as he paused his cutting to the small scanner in my hand. "This one doesn't have a screen; it transmits data directly."

"Directly to what?" I asked, not wanting to explain what a tricorder was as I might trigger another launch into a Garlithian story.

He stared at it for a long moment, completely silent. Right when I was about to speak up to ask what he was doing, he dropped it into my hand.

"I've recalibrated it to give a summary to the implant you have," he said. "I can have it read off the full reports if you want, but I assumed you would rather have a quick yes or no on what to take back to the ship."

That was thoughtful.

My mental image of him readjusted at the demonstration of this moment of thoughtfulness. He wasn't asking what needed to be done or just watching as I worked on my task without asking to help; he just identified it and did it. That's what I looked for when I hired for my restaurant: people who see what needs to be done and do it.

"You mean the translator implant?" I asked. Not every woman that was in the cage when I woke up spoke English, but I could understand everything they said. That and the exercise machinery in that room yelled at me if I didn't work out enough. Lyssa said it still did that when she went back into that hellhole for her leg days.

I preferred to take long walks through the maze rather than go anywhere near that room ever again.

"Translation is the most basic of its functions," Sherlock said. "But you can call it that if you want."

I rose to my feet.