Statkus didn't like this. It made him feel strange. If Aldaris had asked him to do something involving computers, or higher math, or even writing, Statkus could have done it - the fact that the Protoss would have no need for any of those things aside. Instead, Aldaris had asked for something that Statkus didn't realize was so entirely difficult. He knew from email that Toby had already given his meaningful item to the 'Toss, so that left Statkus as the only one who hadn't decided on his.

What does Aldaris need an important item from us for, anyway? I don't understand how that helps a machine locate us.

But Statkus had seen the items from the other people. Aldaris had no need for a tiny donut doll and a plastic flower from a shoe. Clearly it wasn't some way Aldaris had of taking advantage of the humans' ignorance of Protoss ways. Which is why he figured it should be way easier to find something than this.

Statkus' apartment usually had all the stunning appearance of a magazine. At the moment, it didn't. Not even after he'd pulled everything off of his bookcase in the hopes that making a mess of his living room might reveal something he cared about. Alas, it was all computer books, a few assorted novels, and some science books. He liked his Christopher Hitchens book, but that didn't mean anything to him personally. And besides, he might want to read it again. Nothing else on the shelf meant much to him either - he'd been meaning to get rid of some of his novels, anyway. There wasn't even anything important hidden in the pages, like a note or a photo.

The young man went through all the rooms in his house, wandering around for something meaningful. Except not the kitchen. The things in there, from his brand new knifes and his Modera dining set. were expensive and impersonal. The guest room? That was his office, and it was near early always empty of anything not work related. Statkus only chuckled to himself about getting Aldaris anything from the bathroom.

And then there was his bedroom. The only place in his meticulous home that allowed for miscellaneous personal whatnots. Even that was mostly clean, marred only by the laundry on his bed, still waiting to be folded. Statkus pulled the storage bins from the bedroom closet. One was a wash, just containing his winter clothes.

"Why do I even have that?" he muttered, pushing the box back on the shelf above his hanging rack. "It's almost never that cold in California."

The other bin proved more fruitful. It was his old memory bin, full of photos, medical records, and tax papers from a decade ago. Statkus shuffled through it, pulling out some old ticket stubs from his and Tanya's trip to a concert in the past year. She was the one who put them there, with the hope of putting it into a scrapbook. Or so she claimed; it had been a year.

"Tanya..." he whispered. "Maybe..."

Pictures of her were in the bin too, from their trips and earliest dates. Had it really been three years? Statkus found a picture of the two of them, from only last summer. They were arm in arm, soggy and smiling into his camera after a long day of surfing. Statkus clutched the picture and lay back on his bed, shoving aside enough laundry to do so. It was a nice picture with great memories, and she was super hot in that neon pink bikini. John waited for feelings to come; surely a picture of his girlfriend would do the trick. This was his woman, part of his life...

And nothing. No matter how much he tried, Statkus couldn't make sentiment out of air. Sure, Tanya was exciting and fun to mess around with, but love? Statkus didn't know. The more he thought about it, the more he did know: she was just a good time. Admitting it brought a sour pain to his gut. It wasn't really her fault. Love always seemed like some sort of nonsensical emotion in the movies. Like being swept away because someone was so beautiful, or whatever. Statkus clearly fell on the "whatever" side. Nothing magical stirred in his heart when he saw her. Certainly in his pants, but nowhere else.

Statkus sighed and dropped the picture back into the bin. He then rubbed his hands up and down his face, wondering if the relationship was right. Dating a girl he didn't love wasn't technically wrong, was it? Then again, this wasn't even about Tanya. Statkus couldn't remember a time when he felt any intense emotion, not past high school. Life was life, and this was the "girlfriend" stage of life. Next up was the "marriage" stage, and if Tanya stuck around, he'd always figured he'd marry her. Why not? She was as good as the next girl. Perhaps even a little better, because she wasn't a big spender.

The pain in his stomach grew. Now that he laid out all these considerations on the forefront of his mind, it sounded pretty messed up. Or was it? How would he know? Tanya was a willing participant in the relationship. She had never mentioned love either. Maybe that was alright, then; their relationship was just different from other people's. It worked for them, it just didn't result in any mystical, electric emotions. It was just life, with gears going forward into a dull, inevitable future.

Aldaris had asked the impossible. Not a thing in that apartment had any sentimental value. Ultimately, it was all just stuff, and could all be replaced. Even Tanya could be replaced, if Statkus really wanted to. Putting feelings into lifeless items just didn't make sense.

I guess that means the next time I get randomly teleported to China, I have to find a way out on my own. With a groan, Statkus sat up. If I don't think of something, Charlie will think it's on purpose.

Statkus only briefly considered knocking his bin onto the floor for some stray item. It wasn't going to work, he knew. But what would? Statkus thought hard. If he'd been more emotional in high school, what did he get all emotional about? And then he realized that his past revelation wasn't quite true. He did have a strong emotion lately: hate. Hate that out of all the characters of fiction, it was Aldaris who had to pop into reality. Why him? He was a judgemental, relentless, religious grump, the enemy of his favorite character in Starcraft. Why couldn't it have been one of Ayn Rand's characters? Or, if it had to have been Starcraft, why not Zeratul? Zeratul was an amazing, independent hero, not like the stuck up Judicator. Just thinking about it irritated Statkus.

Starcraft. Statkus' eyes widened, and he sat up even straighter in his bed. How could I have forgotten that? That's only been the biggest event of my life!

He certainly remembered now. It all came back in a flood: seeing the game on a friend's computer, the excitement of playing the single player campaign for the first time, taking over the school's computer lab with his friends, late nights of Terran victories in various LAN parties...he had been a good player then, hadn't he? Maybe not Korean level, but definitely up on a western competitive level.

Statkus was up and searching about for about three seconds before realizing he didn't have Starcraft anymore. It too was a thing, and replaceable. Not to mention that his old friends had drifted away from the game over time. He, too, had grown up. All the same, it was an emotion, a memory of things past, and something Statkus knew he could hold onto.

It took several impassioned minutes of searching before Statkus found any blank paper. In the end he had to dig out a couple of sheets from the printer. Along with his memories of school came his doodling habits, and with a spare black pen retrieved from its hiding spot under the bed, he started sketching. It wasn't going to be pretty, but it was going to be Starcraft.

-t-

I like my job alright. It's pretty nice being a book shelver at a used bookstore. There's a little more slack about the shelves, unlike a direct retail store. We get to have clearance items, which is nice. The disadvantage is that we can't order in new books that we don't have in stock. We just have what people sell to us.

The more intangible benefits of the job are what appeal to me more, though. Because I don't have a car, the bus gets me here a bit early, so I can spend about an hour or so reading or studying korean in the back before I have to clock in. Right now I'm in the middle of my...third? Fourth? Er, some number of reading The Gulag Archipelago. Y'know, the book that is a massive testimonial about life in Soviet prison camps.

.

"Here is a rewarding and inexhaustible direction for your thoughts: Reconsider all your previous life. Remember everything you did that was bad and shameful and take thought - can't you possibly correct it now? Yes, you have been imprisoned for nothing. You have nothing to repent of before the state and its laws. But...before your own conscience? But...in relation to other individuals?"

.

I love this book (or books - it's got three volumes). Is it wrong to be obsessed with books where people are prisoners of war, or arrested for false reasons? Well, some people are obsessed with true crime novels, and I have a sordid genre preference of my own. If nobody's willing to look at the ugly parts of life, we will never know the truth about life and humanity. The only difference between present people and barbarians of the past is technology - moral evolution does not exist. Actually, I don't believe in regular evolution either, but it's a fallacy to lump the two together, as though people are getting more moral over time. Pretty sure there's no scientific or historical evidence for that. History says quite the contrary, and science probably says nothing at all, because it's not about moral judgements.

Back to the book. I'm on volume 2, in the section where Solzhenitsyn is talking about the influence of prison, and how it failed to corrupt everyone. It even helped some people morally ascend. It's a complicated concept, which is pretty well summed up by the way he ends a chapter:

.

"'Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!'

(And from beyond the grave come replies: It is very well for you to say that-when you came out of it alive!)"

.

I stopped reading a second. Was someone standing near me? I looked around, but only saw the usual - the four grey, cushioned chairs, all but mine empty. No one stood before the fridge, microwave, or sink ahead of me. The rest of the room, taken up by all the extra candies and merchandising stands we had to store back here, was all silent. I peeked behind the wall of soda shelves to see if anyone was grabbing stuff back there. Nope. Well, whatever. I went back to reading.

.

"Take some Aunt Dusya Chmil, a round-faced, calm and quite illiterate old woman. The convoy guards called out to her: 'Chmil! What is your article?'

And she gently, good naturedly replied: 'Why are you asking, my boy? It's all written down there. I can't remember them all.' (She had a bouquet of sections under Article 58.)

'Your term!'

Aunt Dusya sighed. She wasn't giving such contradictory answers in order to annoy the convoy. In her own simplehearted way she pondered this question: Her term? Did they really think it was given to human beings to know their terms?

'What term! ...Till God forgives my sins - till then I'll be serving time.'

'You are a silly, you! A silly!' the convoy guards laughed. 'Fifteen years you've got, and you'll serve them all, and maybe some more besides.'

But after two and a half years of her term had passed, even though she had sent no petitions - all of a sudden a piece of paper came: release!"

.

Something still seemed off. I stopped reading and put out my mental feelers. Yeah, there was something going on that I didn't notice before.

"Charlie?" Again, I was thinking in my head, but I don't want to use italics. Those are annoying to put up with for too long. "What are you doing?"

"You were reading, and I was attempting to glean what I could of the written language. Though I am far less impressed with this Solzhenitsyn. He speaks of things he could not possibly understand."

That was a pretty weird thing for Aldaris to say. It's not like he knows anything about Soviet prison camps. Eh, maybe he thinks Solzhenitsyn was too "young" or something like that. Not like I wanted to start an argument about it.

"Oh. Warn me next time before you're about to do that."

"I shall. May I continue?"

"Sure, but uh," I pulled my phone out of my purse. "I've got to go to work in like ten minutes."

"So I had assumed."

Suddenly it clicked in my head. "You're bored, aren't you? Do you want me to find you some books to read?"

"If you would. I must at some point learn to read your language, and I do not know the optimal way to begin."

"Okay. So were you planning on reading for yourself, or reading with me like you were just doing a minute ago?"

"Both if possible."

"Mm'kay. So how good are you at reading? Do you know how to pronounce all the letters?"

"My reading is poor. I have not mastered the subtleties of the pronunciation."

I thought about some of the books for younger readers. There goes getting him to read Watership Down. Generally the Intermediate Reader stuff was all silliness, but I figured that there might be a nonfiction book on space in there. Huh, what about those worksheet books in Kid's Ed?

"It's going to be hard to find something for you that's easy enough and not insulting to your intelligence. I'll see what I can do, though. Ooh, I could get you The Nutcracker. There's bound to be a kid's version of that."

"...What is a nutcracker?"

I imagined a the fancy wooden soldier in my head. "It's a little statue-like thing what cracks nuts. We don't use them anymore. There's simple metal ones now. The story itself is an adorable tale of a girl who gets a magical nutcracker from her godfather at Christmas and then goes on a fanciful adventure because of it, one that's either a dream or real depending on what version is being told."

"How thrilling," Aldaris retorted. "Is there not something more adult available?"

"Not anything I won't have to read to you, I don't think. Do you prefer nonfiction or fiction?"

"What is the difference?"

"Stuff that really happened, or stuff that didn't?"

Aldaris stopped, and I could tell he was struggling to decide one way or the other. Heh, he must be really bored to want to read human literature - I can't imagine he's actually interested in the stuff for fun. On the other hand, if he wants me to read him history...I don't know, is that a bad thing? Should I be reading to him about human history? I don't think it'll hurt anything, but you never know. I guess I shouldn't pick anything on nuclear history, then. Not that classified secrets will be in published books, but still.

"You realize this now?" Aldaris said. "Very good. I had expected this revelation to occur to you much later."

I facepalmed and sighed. "Fiction it is, then. Hm, I guess I could get Lord of the Rings. Yeah, that's a good trilogy. It's about-"

"I am familiar enough with its general premise. The books have been known to the Protoss and translated many times."

"Aw, that's so sweet!" I exclaimed (in my head, remember). "Tolkien was always afraid no one would read his word, and now people from a far away planet are reading it? Aw, that's so great!"

"Do not acquire those books. They are highly overrated," Aldaris said. "Though others stated its testiment to the potential of human literature, I could not bring myself to finish the first."

"Oh? Lemme guess. You stopped at the Tom Bombadil part, didn't you?"

"If my stopping place is so easily guessed, surely the lack of quality in the story is evident."

"I always skip that part when I read it. But it's only that one part." I chuckled. "After that it gets better. A lot better, actually. Best part of it is, I won't even have to spend your money on it. I've got them at the house. Don't worry, I know what parts to skip."

"Hey Bethy, what are you giggling about?"

A coworker broke me out of my trance, and I looked up. It was Terry, a goateed goofy guy in a Star Wars T-shirt. Terry's hilarious. During an overnight shift he created an elaborate fantasy of how another one of our coworkers was part of an elaborate conspiratory group, and was going to emotionlessly kill us all to the sound of Smashmouth playing on the intercom. ...Okay, fine, it was hilarious to people staying up all night and moving shelves.

"Oh, I'm just thinking weird stuff again," I answered.

"Like what?" Terry said as he reached into the fridge for something.

"Like what book I should get for an alien. So if you're this alien and you're stuck on Earth and really bored, what kind of books would be the best to read?"

"Uh..." Terry thought about it, pulling back from the fridge and absentmindedly letting out all the cold air as he did. "You should get a book of fairy tales. Aliens don't know anything about Earth, and so much of fiction is based on fairy tales these days."

"That's a really good idea."

"You're not hiding an alien from me, are you?"

"Heh, I don't have anywhere to hide one. My house is way too small, and I don't like having roommates. That would make a great sitcom, though. Like, someone has an alien roommate or whatever."

Terry finally removed his lunch bag from the fridge and shut the door. "Bethany, you always come up with the strangest ideas."

"Says the person who claims a baseball player saved the world by throwing a ball into a robot pigeon."

"Hey, that really happened." Terry shook a finger at me as he plopped down on a cushioned chair nearby. "The world would be a much different place if McCann hadn't stopped it from delivering its coded messages. He's a hero. He saved us all. But seriously, if you know an alien, tell me about it. We'll and get pizza, and go bowling."

"Ha. I'm not sure that little green men like pizza. They might shoot me with their space lasers if I told you about them, anyway."

"A hostage situation, eh?" Terry unzipped his lunch bag and pulled out a plastic bin. "Don't worry, I'll save you with my secret space ship that I keep around for emergencies and bribe the aliens with bowling. Aliens love bowling."

"Oh they do, do they?"

"Sure they do. They invited me to the Interstellar Bowling Tournament on Saturn last summer."

I snorted. Terry is all the time saying that kind of nonsense. That's why we all love him. I reached into my purse for my phone again; it was time to go clock in. Dang. I stood up from my chair and stretched.

"Well, I'll take your word for it, Mr. Expert. I gotta get on the clock, now."

"Okay. Say hi to your alien for me."

"I will."

Aldaris was still in my head, and I sensed doubt from him as I walked away. Eh, I guess I better use italics again, for clarity's sake.

"I am reminded of something you once said of Kerrigan."

Oh, what was that?

"'The greatest liars never lie'."

Charlie, do you want me to rat on you or not? I pushed past the double doors of receiving. Anyway, I'll go look around work and see what I can find for you. If you don't like something I pick, I can always sell it back to the store and get credit for something else.

"Very well."

Oh, and Aldaris?

"Yes?"

Terry says 'hi.'

Aldaris gave off the same emotion as one does when one rolls one's eyes, and left my head without answering.

\\\\\\\\

Author's Notes New:

- I no longer work at the used bookstore. One of the interesting things I found out was that we had signed a deal to take on toys from retailers to sell - this was going on right as the Star Wars sequels were coming out, and you know all those videos online of dying Toys R Us stores with still plenty of Star Wars toys leftover? That was us too, except somewhat cheaper. It turns out that companies like us that sell toys do so on a contract basis, so that we end up obligated to put things on our shelves that don't sell at other places. I'm convinced that a major reason that Toys R Us' brick and mortar stores went under is because they were forced to sell things that nobody actually wanted.

I was at the bookstore for the sequel films, and those movies hurt merchandise for the original films, too. Since we're used, people would sell us their Star Wars collectibles on top of all the stuff that we were sent by Disney merchandisers. Believe you me, it occupied way too many shelves in our store.

- Forgive me if the formatting of this chapter is a little weird. Fanfiction dot net changed the way they handle bold text, so that it's barely visible. Let me know if you have trouble telling which parts are segments of The Gulag Archipelago and which are not.