Eric Cortez-Johnson watched as the clock ticked over to three P.M. At least when he and his family had relocated out of the Sol system they'd picked a planet which, coincidentally, had a twenty-four hour day/night cycle. It had made settling into a rhythm that much easier. Also, it helped that he had some regular events to look forward to.
He leaned back in his gel padded chair, sliding backwards about a foot from his desk. It brought him just in line with the hallway outside his office. He made the pretense of stretching, leaning back in his chair and glancing to his left down the hall.
Right on schedule, Teska Davrini appeared from the hallway that was perpendicular to the water cooler. She was a quarral, one of the Federation races. Blue skin, thin figures, pointy elf ears with golden eyes. Teska kept her silver hair cut short, almost a buzz cut. Two spherical earrings swayed under her pointed ears, and she wore typical quarral work garb, which Eric often had difficulty divorcing from his image of what ladies of the evening wore. Teska always wore blouses with sweaters and skirts, but the skirts ended at mid-thigh. Under them snaked several bits of fabric that connected to some stockings on her legs that she'd explained to Eric were standard quarral attire. To him and his humane perspective they looked like lingerie.
Teska used a refillable water bottle, which she refilled five times a day: once when she walked in, once at mid-morning, once at lunch, once at three in the afternoon and one final time as she left for the day. The three PM filling was the only time that Eric was in his office to watch. He only knew about her water times because they'd been working on the same set of spreadsheets for the last couple weeks and had gotten to talking. She had no idea how he stared at her.
As she did every day, Teska bent over to reach the water dispenser, and just like always, her skirt was drawn taut over her ass as she did so. Eric could see the outline of the quarral not-lingerie beneath the skirt, including the triangle of fabric that rose out of the cleft of her ass. Today he couldn't tell what color it was - sometimes the skirts were just the right color that when the light hit them Eric could tell the color of Teska's unmentionables. However, today he just enjoyed the view, feeling a profound sense of loss as the quarral straightened up.
Unlike most days, however, today Teska decided to turn around rather than just heading back to her desk. She blinked as she saw him leaning out his office doorway, obviously staring in her direction.
Eric quickly threw his arms up, making a big show like he was just taking five and stretching. He even faked a yawn for good measure. When he looked back down at the water cooler, Teska was still looking at him. She didn't look mad - in fact her expression was surprisingly neutral. Eric quickly scooted himself back into his office, sitting upright at his computer and cursing himself. He should've seen that coming. One day she was bound to see him staring. It wasn't like he went to great lengths to conceal himself. He didn't exactly know what constituted sexual harassment this far out in the galaxy. As he'd found out many times in the year since leaving Earth, human standards were
very
different than what a lot of the galaxy did. You could go between two different planets populated by the same dominant species and both planets would have a different set of customs regarding the same thing. Then again it wasn't as though they'd completely divorced themselves from human standards. If Angie found out about him ogling another woman - an alien woman at that - there'd be hell to pay.
"Eric?"
He nearly jumped out of his skin as Teska's light voice came from the entrance to his office. He quickly composed himself and spun around in his chair. "Teska! Hi. What's up?"
The quarral leaned against his door. She still had her water bottle in her hand, slender fingers wrapped around the plastic. "What were you doing just now?" she asked, a silver eyebrow arched. Every time she moved a facial muscle her earrings moved.
"I was just stretching," Eric lied, sticking to his story. "I've been sitting here all day and I was starting to cramp up."
"Some stretch," Teska said. She tipped her water bottle back to her lips, and Eric was distracted by the undulations of her Adam's apple. Teska finished her sip and recapped the bottle.
"Well, you know. Been number crunching for a few hours on those spreadsheets for Shaira."
Teska nodded. "Most of those are completely redundant. They'll be outdated information in a few months. I honestly wonder why we even bother with them."
"Why were you guys so behind again?" Eric asked.
Teska made a dismissive motion with her hand. "Large restructuring that took a couple months longer than anyone anticipated. We lost a lot of people in the move."
Eric smirked. "Even out here in space corporate bullshit is still corporate bullshit."
Teska nodded. Just then Eric's computer dinged, at the same time as Teska's wrist computer bipped. Both of them checked their messages. It was a message from their boss Shaira addressed to both of them, containing another two hundred spreadsheets to go through.
Teska grimaced for a fraction of a second before she smoothed her face out. "Really." It seemed like it should have been phrased as a question, but her voice was flat and emotionless.
"Can she do that?" Eric asked. "Just drop all that on us?"
"Yes," Teska said. She sighed, though it just sounded like a quick inhale and exhale of breath. "I'll go talk to her and see if I can't offload this to someone else, or at least delegate a bit to someone else. This is too much for just the both of us."
She turned and left Eric's office, and he spun back around in his chair. Despite that fact that much more work had just been dropped on him, he was secretly relieved. Teska seemed to have bought his story about just stretching, lame as it had been. The quarral was dry and reserved, but she was damn good with numbers. Shaira had put them together on a simple project when he'd first taken the job at Exkawray, and they'd gotten things done quickly enough that they kept getting put together. Given their recent deluge of spreadsheets to pick through, it seemed as though that had been a double edged sword. He didn't mind spending time with Teska though. Or looking at her ass. It wasn't like he had a chance to look at many nowadays - real-life ones at least, instead of the ones on the extranet. He could barely remember the last time Angie had been even close to naked around him.
The rest of the day faded into the fuzz of numbers and busywork, his thoughts occasionally wandering back to Teska's rear. When the day was done, he got up and took the elevator downstairs to the lobby, packed into the elevator surrounded by members of the core Federation races - the avian tasheps, the four-armed oraks, and blue-skinned quarrals. Teska was one of them.
As he left and made his way to one of the automated public vehicles that would take him home his communicator bipped. He pulled the small device out of his pocket, and saw an audio message from Teska. He opened the file and put the device up to his ear. "Eric, Teska here. I could not convince Shaira to redistribute any of the workload. I know you've left for the day, so come by my office tomorrow so we can make a plan."
Short, sweet, to the point. Teska in a nutshell. Eric hopped into one of the automated taxis and tapped his address into the computer. He leaned back as the vehicle began to move, taking him home. And as always, the dread started creeping in.
Dinner in his household was a reserved affair. With both of his children transferred to the planet's Federation University campus, it was just him and his wife of twenty years Angelica for dinner. It was routine, domestic and safe.
He dreaded it every night.
It wasn't that he didn't love Angie any more. Well, that was a lie. There was some love lost between the two of them. It had faded away over time, bit by bit. That Day had dealt it a severe blow, and Eric's insistence that they move away from the horrifying sight of what Earth had become. He was beginning to suspect that Angie had only agreed because, even six months after, she was still numb with shock. Every human being had been. But to move from Sol, humanity's home system, to the core of Federation space, surrounded by billions of aliens, likely was starting to wear on Angie.
"I keep telling those oraks next door that they need to turn down the bass on whatever they're piping their music through," Angie said, plating the vegetables she'd sauteed. "I keep feeling the foundations of the house vibrate."
