Private Luxury, Lies, and Other Technical Failures

[Ana Rix]

Ana stared at him for a moment, trying to determine whether he was warning her or advertising. The answer, she suspected, was both. Her gaze drifted back toward the ballroom where dozens of conversations continued beneath crystal chandeliers and carefully curated appearances; compared to what he was describing, the political maneuvering suddenly seemed almost straightforward.

"I spend enough time around smugglers that people attempting to convince me questionable decisions are perfectly reasonable is not entirely new territory," she said dryly, a faint smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. "Though I admit having them lead with the proposal instead of disguising it behind three months of social maneuvering would probably be a novel experience. Actually, no—the truly novel experience would be people being honest enough for me to know which conversation I was having." There was something oddly appealing about that. Chaotic and exhausting, certainly, but at least it sounded genuine.

Her eyes settled back on him, the datapad resting forgotten against her side as she studied his expression. "You say that like it's a challenge, but after spending an evening surrounded by people who answer simple questions with strategic ambiguity, I can see the appeal. Besides, if someone tells me what they want openly, I can make an informed decision. It's the people who pretend they want one thing while pursuing another that concern me. Which, now that I think about it, may explain why you're more relaxed talking about Zeltros than you are talking about politicians."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"IOn fairness, I know the zeltrons and zeltros happenings... the politicians are new and I don't really know their names. Most of the ones I used to know are dead or gone." He said it for a moment though while he was moving with his arms to the side for a moment. It allowed him more of a chance to really breathe and look things over before he was checking on them. "Though if you want my intentions I was planning largely to talk with you, maybe get you a free complimentary drink using sauve charm. See why of all the ones here you were not looking at them and the power of their political capital but instead were roaming around and looking for something else."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana listened quietly, finding herself oddly relieved by his honesty. There was no carefully constructed political maneuvering or attempt to impress her with grand connections; he simply knew one group of people better than another and wasn't pretending otherwise.

When he laid out his true intentions, her expression shifted ever so slightly. It wasn't a dramatic reaction, but just enough to suggest he had caught her off guard.

"Well," she said, a faint smile finally breaking through as she looked back out over the ballroom. "If your strategy involved suave charm and curiosity, I suppose you've been reasonably successful so far. And I think I will take you up on that free drink."

Below them, the endless dance of aspiring power brokers continued beneath the crystal chandeliers. Hundreds of people competing for influence, all pretending they wanted something else. She had spent most of the evening trying to avoid them entirely.

"The political capital is the least interesting thing in the room," she admitted, her fingers tapping lightly against the edge of her forgotten datapad. "Everyone here wants something badly enough to spend hours disguising it. The titles and influence are just tools. I've always been more interested in what people are actually doing than what they say they're doing."

A faint, genuine laugh escaped her, loosening her professional posture just a fraction.

"Which is probably why I ended up standing alone in an observation alcove tracking suspicious network traffic instead of actual networking. But if I'm being honest, I wasn't expecting the evening's best conversation to come from a blatant bribe of complimentary alcohol. It's a much better motive than most of the ones I've encountered tonight."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

He shrugged with a look on his dace while he walked over to get a drink. Talking with the bartender who was there for a moment as he got two drinks. One in a glass and the other smaller but her could nurse it while he was coming back and offered the white wine. "Wine from Chandrilla's polar regions. They use snowgrapes as I understand." He said it and had his own with a look. "Some of the latest from Denon, their new sweet drinks, engineered for the workers and people on the world to revitalize and keep them alert in the factories but also promote health." He said it while he was holding it out for her to get but was looking around at the others.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana accepted the glass, watching the pale wine catch the light from the ballroom beyond their alcove, reflecting fractured gold and silver across the surface. She wasn't much of a drinker these days, but she couldn't help but remember a threat she'd made to change that earlier in the evening. Taking a cautious sip, she found it was far better than she'd expected—which was perhaps the most dangerous thing about it. "You know," she said, turning the glass slightly as a faint smile touched her lips, "this is becoming a concerning pattern. First, you offer useful investigative insight, and now you're providing complimentary alcohol. At some point, I'm going to have to assume you're exceptionally good at networking."

Her gaze drifted down toward his own drink as she took another, smaller sip. "Engineered beverages designed to improve worker productivity also feel like one of those ideas that sounds either brilliantly practical or vaguely dystopian, depending on how long you think about it." She fell quiet for a moment, standing beside him and looking out over the summit floor below. From the shelter of the alcove, the ambient noise of the crowd felt distant, less overwhelming, and entirely more manageable.

"I suppose this is the point where most people would pretend they're discussing trade policy while actually evaluating each other," she noted, her dry humor masking just how serious she might actually be. "Instead, we've discussed political espionage, cultural attitudes toward clothing, and the economics of predictive intelligence. Honestly, I think we've made better use of the evening than most of the summit." Her eyes shifted back to him, her tone softening into something simple but sincere. "And thank you for the wine. I suspect if I'd spent the entire evening alone with my datapad, I would have convinced myself everyone here was a suspect by now."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"Denon is both in a way. it has slowly been changing, which might be the most dangerous and impressive because instead of competing with each other aand being petty. They are competing against the galaxy to dominate economically." The drink was just one extension of that and a number of other food as they had cut back on importing, increased entertainment revenue from their entertainment district and hired on more Zeltron engineers for that purpose. The clean up was also beautiful he had to admit but he was looking at the woman as she took her drink and he gave an innocent face. "Both, I know how to do both and operate in places like this despite what I'll say has a sort of fun to it when you are used to it. THe other part is yes the people know what each other want so now it is all about if they can trust each other."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana considered his words as she swirled the pale wine gently in her glass, watching the summit floor stretch below them. The room was filled with clusters of people leaning together, smiling at appropriate moments, and trading favors beneath heavy layers of diplomacy. It was a crowd of predictability wrapped in performance, yet she found the wine in her hand was surprisingly good, which seemed entirely unfair given the setting.

"Trust might actually be more difficult," she said after a moment, her gaze drifting across the ballroom. "Motives are usually straightforward. People want influence, money, security, recognition, power, or affection, sometimes all at once. The difficult part is determining whether they'll still want the same thing tomorrow." That was the friction she always ran into; systems were predictable, and code followed rules, but people had a habit of waking up with entirely new priorities.

Taking another sip, she glanced toward him with a trace of dry amusement in her voice. "Though I suppose that's where experience comes in. You seem to spend a great deal of time studying people, while I spend a great deal of time studying systems." She lifted her datapad slightly to emphasize the contrast. "My first instinct when something goes wrong is to check logs, permissions, and traffic patterns. Yours appears to be finding the nearest person and asking why they're lying."

Her attention shifted back toward the crowd below, the systemic side of her mind genuinely engaged by his economic breakdown. "Denon competing against the galaxy instead of itself is interesting, though. Most organizations spend so much energy fighting internally that they never become efficient enough to threaten anyone else. The moment they start competing with everyone else, things get considerably more dangerous...which is probably why you sound almost impressed by it." Standing beside him as the ambient noise faded into the background, she admitted quietly, "I still don't know whether I find all of this fascinating or exhausting, though I suspect the answer is both."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"Well I wouldn't exactly go with why they are lying, everybody lies about something. I would much rather get them to reveal things within a period of time. The best way to do that is to become their friend and be prepared for a lot more." He said it and took a drink though as listening to her. "Denon is for lack of a better example a hub world of companies and manufacturing. Many worlds go there cause they get breaks and more profits... which Denon leverages now to improve and cultivate many more aspects. Zeltros has started important a number of their new foods and they are built within transports for molecular conversion and fabrication so they replenish."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana considered his words over the rim of her wine glass, her attention drifting between him and the crowd below. "That sounds significantly more difficult than my approach," she admitted, lowering her glass with a faint smile. "Computers don't require friendship before they reveal their secrets; usually, they just require persistence and a sufficiently unhealthy amount of caffeine. People, on the other hand, insist on context, trust, emotional investment, and a variety of other complications that I have never been entirely convinced are efficient." Yet, as her gaze followed a group of delegates crossing the ballroom, she conceded that he was right; most people didn't reveal important things because they were cornered, but because they simply stopped feeling the need to hide them.

The mention of Denon's strategy drew her sharp mind back to logistics, the economic implications clicking into place almost immediately. "So instead of simply exporting products, they're exporting dependence," she noted, a genuine note of admiration in her voice for the sheer elegance of the play. "If enough worlds build their manufacturing and food distribution around Denon systems, then every local improvement only strengthens Denon's global position. It's clever. A little terrifying, but clever."

She took another sip of wine, glancing sideways at him with an amused twitch at the corner of her mouth. "You know, most people at this summit would spend twenty minutes passionately explaining why their economic model is superior. You explain it like you're describing weather patterns." It was an observation entirely devoid of judgment; if anything, she found his casual detachment oddly refreshing.

For a moment, she simply stood there beside him, letting the ambient noise of the summit fade into the background as she took in the grand display. "I'm beginning to understand why you enjoy this sort of thing," she admitted quietly, her eyes drifting across the glittering ballroom one last time. "Everyone here is a system. Just a much messier one than I'm used to."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"That is because I have the unique perspective and chance here. Zeltros economy is next to improbable to replicate outside of zeltron colonies. Tourism is easy on worlds like Spira or a number of other ones. Zeltros is unique that you are able to have zeltrons, their pheromones and party atmosphere. The excessive drinking and other hedonistic approaches are something that few can match. So I don't even try to offer it as much as I offer the holographic technologies or the entertainment. Zeltrons in Love is still going strong with its rotating cast from across the galaxy but all on zeltros and all meant to for the last several hundred years to entertain."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana considered that for a moment as she sipped her wine. The explanation made sense; economies built around natural resources could be replicated, manufacturing could be copied, and trade routes could shift, but an entire culture built around a species' unique biology was considerably harder to export. Yet, it was not remotely the part of his explanation that had captured her attention.

"That's actually not the question that occurred to me," she admitted, her gaze drifting back toward the ballroom below before returning to him. "Are Zeltrons even capable of actual love? Not attraction, not desire, and not pheromones. Actual love."

For a moment, she seemed to search for a more precise way to explain what she meant, the wine glass rotating slowly between her fingers. "The kind where you choose someone even when it would be easier not to. The kind that survives arguments, distance, disappointment, age, and all the other things that aren't particularly exciting. Every description I've ever heard of Zeltros focuses on attraction and pleasure as though they're the same thing."

A faint smile appeared, the corner of her mouth twitching as her eyes settled on him again. "Which is odd, because most of the couples I've known who actually lasted were rarely the most exciting people in the room. Maybe that's an unfair assumption on my part, but if your planet has spent centuries producing entertainment about romance, I feel like someone should eventually ask whether the experts believe in it."

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix

"Oh yes they are, in some ways more then others and in some ways different. Their ultimate goal is to be happy and sometimes that means that they will meet that person who does it." He spoke while staying there though and offered her the best chance to look out on everyone there. "Thhough a zeltron in love might be more then some can handle... there is something to be said about a partner who can read your every emotion and that is before their pheromones factor in. Not to diffuse situations that might come up." Jack was looking at more of the things they had here and Ana was skilled no doubt though with her nformation gathering.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana let the datapad lower in her hand, her attention drifting for the first time all evening. The ballroom below shimmered with conversations and ambitions, people weaving around one another in patterns she was only beginning to understand. "That sounds terrifying," she said at last, her voice thoughtful rather than critical. "Not the pheromones. The emotional part." She took a slow sip of her drink, her eyes lingering on him a moment longer than necessary. "Most people spend half their lives deciding what to reveal and what to hide. Some relationships survive entirely on carefully curated misunderstandings." A small smile touched her lips. "Sometimes on purpose."

The idea of someone reading every emotion as easily as reading a datapad was difficult to imagine. Comforting, perhaps. Invasive, certainly. Possibly both. "There would be advantages," she admitted, her gaze drifting toward a nearby cluster of diplomats. "Arguments would be shorter if both people already knew what the other was feeling." She paused, her smile deepening.
"Or considerably worse." Her eyes returned to him, warmer now, as if she were testing how much he could read without any pheromones at all.

"I think that is the part people forget when they talk about romance," she said more quietly. "Being understood sounds wonderful until someone actually understands you." For a moment, she seemed to consider her own words, her expression softening in a way that suggested she was not entirely immune to the idea. She lifted her glass again, the movement slow and deliberate, as though she were giving him time to notice the shift in her mood.

Then the faintest smile returned, warmer than before, touched with something unmistakably playful. "Although I admit it is a more convincing answer than I expected." Her eyes lingered on him, openly curious now. "You talk about it like someone who has actually seen it happen. Not like someone repeating a cultural stereotype." The look she gave him after that was subtle, inviting, and entirely intentional.

Jack Sheltrak

 

[Jack Sheltrak]

Ana Rix


He gave a small nod. "I met my wife on zeltros before she passed on. I experienced one of the most dangerous incidents but it also helped gain respect of a talented force user in Vulpesen hopefully. The zeltrons helped with that in their tertiary way." He said it while he was moving though and now looking around with smaller flicks of his eyes. He was searching for any signs to help her out while listening. "Though when the netherworld tore a hole in the universe Leori like a few jedi passed." He said it and he was sad about it but not drowning in the sorrow. She wouldn't want that and he had years to accept it. "Now come lets find your criminal... among a sea of political criminals."

 

[Ana Rix]

The shift in the conversation caught Ana off guard. Not because of the mention of his wife, as there had always been signs he had loved deeply, but because of the casual way he said she had passed. He spoke of it the same way he spoke of being Chancellor or surviving wars: not cold or detached, but simply accepted. Her fingers tightened slightly around the stem of her wine glass as she offered the only words that felt right. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, her gaze drifting away from the ballroom entirely. "For your wife. And for your friends."

She knew enough history to understand the massive scale of the galactic tragedy he was describing, but hearing it from someone who had actually survived those losses made the scars feel considerably less distant. "You speak about them kindly," she observed thoughtfully, her eyes settling back on him. "Most people either refuse to talk about loss or let it define every conversation afterward. You make it sound like they mattered enough to keep carrying forward, but not enough to stop moving. I think that's probably healthier than most of the alternatives."

A brief, respectful silence settled between them, a quiet pause in the midst of the bustling gala. Eventually, Ana broke the stillness with a small breath, looking down at the device in her hand to anchor herself back to their immediate reality. "Though if we're going to honor the dead, I suppose we should probably catch the living criminal," she noted, a familiar trace of dry humor returning to her voice to cut through the heavy atmosphere.

"Otherwise, I've spent the evening discussing economics, romance, politics, and galactic tragedy while accomplishing remarkably little investigative work." Holding up the datapad slightly to prompt him back into action, the corner of her mouth softened into a slight smile. "Come on then. Let's see if we can identify which political criminal is being more criminal than the others."

Jack Sheltrak