The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens

the
x
‘s, and the
boing
sound the dash represented, a sound humans weren’t really physically capable of producing anyway. And don’t let them catch you calling them Greys—they were very touchy about that sort of thing. But try to say to them, I’d very much
like
to refer to you and your people by your real name, but it’s just not anatomically possible for me to pronounce Qx”-x-’–’, and they’d still get peevish. Best to rely on the auto-translators, no matter how error prone they were.
    He sipped his coffee and took a bite of his breakfast. Looking out the window he could see about half the planet, the glass automatically darkening as the sun rose above the horizon. In another few minutes his window would be facing the other direction, out into space, as Success!Sat One continued its endless axial rotations to create the artificial gravity. As corporate seminar satellites went, it was one of the biggest: four rings connected by a central pillar, with living quarters for more than five thousand, two gyms, a recreation area, seven large auditoriums, four banquet halls, and a number of smaller classrooms.
    A big spindle orbiting in space around the most boring planet in the galaxy, thought Charlie. Which was why orbital rents were still so cheap—who’d want to set up there? Vericom, that’s who.
    Cheap, and unregulated. An important point when you were introducing a product that had unfairly acquired a bad reputation.
    He’d been up here about six weeks now, conducting training seminars for three thousand members of the Vericom sales force, as well as a contingent of about five hundred officers from the Unified Forces who were interested in military applications of the V2.
    As he slurped at his coffee he flipped idly through the latest brochure that the marketing staff had sent him, a glossy folding thing with moving images on a constant loop: people running through fields or playing energetically with their laughing kids or just absolutely kicking ass at business meetings, all demonstrating how much the V2 could enhance your life.
    Right now Charlie was looking at the business meeting ass-kicking example: some cocky young hotshot pausing in midsentence to say, “Hold on, let me check on that,” then glancing off into the middle distance for a brief moment. Then he says, “That’d be an increase of seventy-two percent over the past three quarters, sir,” to admiring looks from his colleagues and an approving nod from his tough-to-please, crusty boss—well done, son, you’ll go far.
    Charlie flipped to the last page of the brochure. “Learn how Vericom’s V2 can improve
your
life,” said an attractive woman. “The V2 interfaces with extremely well-researched and understood neural pathways. The V2 has been thoroughly tested and approved, with a perfect safety record.”
    Even so, you had people protesting it. Charlie couldn’t stand those sorts, their knee-jerk resistance to any technological innovation. Remember Qualtek 3, they’d say. As if anyone would forget.
    There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” said Charlie.
    The door opened. It was Fred. At least that’s what Charlie called him, and Fred didn’t seem to mind.
    Fred said something in Grey, and Charlie’s auto-translator kicked in: “Good morning, Charles. I hope you had a lot of singing chipmunks mustard root-plant last night.”
    Charlie had gotten used to this. The Grey language was very evocative and full of idiomatic expressions that were beyond the scope of the auto-translator to competently render in New English. He’d hear things like “rotating hoar-frost bean request marshland,” and he’d later find out that it was a common expression meaning “okay, sounds good.”
    “I slept very well, thanks,” said Charlie.
    He generally liked Fred—he was polite and serious and hardworking, unlike the other Greys on board the Success!Sat, a bunch of shiftless bastards. There were a few dozen of them, lazing around and