The vending machines were all perfectly stocked. It was a marvel.
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy stood staring at the rows of sterilely-lit junk food while the machine cheerfully spouted audio advertisements at her, and tried to remember if Shepard liked the green ones. She hadn't been able to see him this morning and had decided on the way up that she should make it up for him somehow, but there weren't a lot of things to buy in a hospital. There was a gift shop, but Shepard already had plenty of books and he was even worse at keeping flowers alive than he was with fish. That left the rows of calorie bloat she was staring at right now.
Surely they couldn't be bothering to ship all of this in from off-world. Maybe the Reapers hadn't bothered destroying the centers of production for candy and potato chips. Or maybe all the jokes she heard humans make about their junk food were accurate and all of it had simply survived the attack.
She broke eye contact with the cartoon sun on a packet of chips. This was going nowhere; she really couldn't make an informed decision considering she had no idea what any human food tasted like. And sadly, there was no N7 Cola. Best to just head back to the gift shop. Maybe it would surprise her.
She was not prepared for how much of a surprise she got.
Tali stormed into Shepard's hospital room. She was not in a blind rage. "Blind" would imply she was likely to miss something she aimed at.
She glanced around, looking for targets.
"Hey, Tali," Shepard said. Tali blinked, and realized that he wasn't laying in his hospital bed, but sitting upright in a chair over by the window, holding something from the crate of documents Hackett had brought in. Oh, good for him, she thought briefly, until the desire to hit something with a stick returned.
"Lawyer!" she exclaimed.
"Here," Jerro said, from the corner where he had parked his desk.
Tali walked over him and thrust the tablet she was holding in front of his face. The volus took hold of it gingerly in his pincer-like hand.
"Oh dear," he said evenly. "They got that one to market rather quickly, didn't they?"
The volus was staring intently at the screen, which showed the cover of the book Tali had just bought:
STRANGERS IN THE ARTIFICIAL NIGHT
Commander Shepard's Tale of Love Found, Lost, and Regained
The rest of the cover was dominated by an image of a muscular male human in Alliance uniform with his arms around the waist of a female quarian who, her forehead being obstructed by her helmet, was pressing the back of one hand across her faceplate. The scene seemed to be taking place in the cockpit of a spaceship, which was inexplicably looking over a field of green grass.
"What is it?" Shepard said, craning around in his seat.
"You don't want to know," Tali said gravely.
"Oh come on, I certainly do now," Shepard said.
"I was worried about this," Jerro said, staring deeply into the glazed expression of the human model. "I've been thinking, and I'm pretty sure Admiral Hackett did you more harm than good by waiting so long to tell you about all of this. Even so, I never expected this one to be out so quickly. They must have written it in under a month."
"Written what?" Shepard said.
Tali sighed, grabbed the tablet out of Jerro's hand, walked over, and dropped it into Shepard's lap. He picked it up and burst into laughter.
"You think it's funny?" Tali said.
"Kind of, yeah," said Shepard, wiping a tear from one eye. "Embarrassing, sure, but also funny. Maybe it's all the painkillers." He started scrolling though the pages. "Besides, you laughed at the soda."
"The soda was silly," Tali said. "And they hadn't sneaked that out to stores without telling you."
"Yeah, a month for writing and publishing... 250 pages. I have to admit that is impressive. They must stamp these things out on a template," Shepard said. "Maybe it's a VI."
"I thought you were renegotiating!" Tali said, turning back to Jerro. "You said he could cancel the contracts he didn't like!"
"Apparently the publisher's legal team didn't send out a memo fast enough," Jerro said. "Or they figured the profits off the book would be worth the legal fees. In legal matters it can be hard to tell the difference between incompetence and cunning."
"'A heart-throbbing tale of love triumphing against prejudice and catastrophe alike'," Shepard said, reciting from the book's summary. "'Commander Shepard was a man nearly broken by pain, by suffering, by the scorn of the galactic public. He thought the only way to survive was to close himself off from everything but his mission. He never wanted to let himself love someone- and never expected to love someone from another species.'"
Shepard glanced up at Tali. "Did I do something to annoy these people?"
"Keep reading," Tali said icily.
Shepard scrolled forward. "'But when he took on a quarian engineer, the quiet but headstrong Tona'Konn nar Blanc'- Wait, who the hell is that?"
"I don't know!" Tali said. "We don't even have a ship called the 'Blanc'! I checked!"
"They were given the rights to Shepard's name and story. Not yours, Miss Zorah," said Jerro patiently. "But it's somewhat common knowledge that he's in a relationship with a quarian, so they apparently decided to take some creative liberties."
"Convincing the galaxy that he's in love with somebody who doesn't exist is a 'creative liberty'?" Tali said.
"Not that it's any consolation, but that's not the only thing they got wrong," Shepard said, nose to the tablet. "Skimming through this, it appears that I'm piloting the Normandy. Also I think this Tona'Konn person is the protagonist."
"If you've ever wondered why even vids based on true events have that 'any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental' disclaimer, this is why," said Jerro.
"So what are we going to do? Can you get this taken off the market?" Shepard said, looking up.
Jerro punched a few keys on his terminal. "Well, the contract was and is still illegal, they definitely knew that by the time this went out, and it's easy to prove both of those things. So a lawsuit would definitely end well for you, and you could probably get the court to have the book pulled from shelves. But..."
"What but?" Tali said.
The lawyer tapped the side of his helmet with one hand. "I have a feeling that news about the heroic Commander Shepard publicly trying to cover something up would get far more eyes on it than a bad romance novel would. People would wonder what the problem was, because that's what people are like. And a book that might have sold fifty thousand legal copies would instead get a million illegal downloads," Jerro said. "It's a phenomenon every volus lawyer is taught in school, called 'Getru Syndrome', named after a businessman who tried to hide his name from the general public. You notice the irony."
"Do you think the publisher knew about this?" Tali asked bitterly.
"I'm guessing they were planning on it," Jerro said.
Tali shook her head. "So if I'm getting this right," she said. "We have the option of either renegotiating the contract like planned and letting them keep selling, or making it so this absolutely everybody reads this damn thing."
"That's about it," Jerro said, clasping his hands together.
There was silence in the hospital room.
Tali tapped one foot uncomfortably. She had realized a way to improve the situation. But it was one she still didn't like, and so she didn't want to vocalize it at once just in case Shepard suddenly shouted "I've got it!". At least if it was somebody else's idea she could blame them.
"The guy on the cover doesn't even look like me. He looks kind of like James," Shepard said.
Tali slowly walked over and picked the tablet out of his hands. "These things are connected to the extranet," she said. "Jerro. Do you know if they can set new editions of the book to automatically update?"
"That's the way most publishers work, as far as I know," Jerro said. "Old versions are archived but almost all readers default to the newest. But I know what you're thinking, and I doubt they'll edit out Commander Shepard's name without a legal battle, and that just leaves us with Getru Syndrome."
"I figured," Tali said. She handed the tablet back to Shepard. "Okay. When you draw up the new contract, I want one of the conditions to be that I get to rewrite the damn book."
Shepard, to Tali's satisfaction, did not laugh, argue, or goggle in disbelief. He just looked up at her. "You really want to do that?" he said.
"Under a pen name," she said quickly. "And believe me, if there were a way to just destroy every copy I'd definitely go for that. But in the meantime, it can at least be a semi-accurate bad romance."
"You're going to add yourself in?" Jerro said. "I mean that's more royalties between the two of you, but you're not dealing with fine art here."
"I don't want the dashing Commander Shepard falling in love with any quarians other than me," Tali said, putting one hand on his shoulder. Shepard reached up and patted it affectionately
"Besides," she said. "If I fill the first fifty pages with completely accurate technical descriptions maybe I can drive off a few readers. It'd be nice to set the record straight on some other things too. Like, why does everyone think the Normandy's stealth systems make the ship invisible to the naked eye?"
"Beats me," Shepard said.
"It'd be important to mention why we can't use the stealth systems while going FTL," Tali said, looking off into the middle distance. "Or why the SR-2 had so many more problems with atmospheric entry. Or why its shields had such an odd power draw ratio. Or why-"
"You should be writing all of this down," Shepard said. "Just ask Hackett before you start leaking military secrets."
Tali nodded, and sat down in a chair beside him. The sounds of her furiously typing on her omnitool filled the evening air.