"I give up." he declared, trying to keep the whimper out of his voice. "If I have to read one more celebrity gossip article, I'm going to throw myself out of the airlock. That will be preferable to the brain rot that I can feel setting in from reading this."
This had to be one of the most bizarre tasks Saren had ever set him.
They were en route back to the Citadel, a trip that would take them several days, and since they'd hit deep space, Saren presented him with a list of entertainment magazines and told him to read up on the latest issues.
He hadn't been familiar with any of them, but the titles hadn't been very promising, and the contents had been worse. High society gossip. Celebrity scandals. Wild speculations about the various private lives of well-known politicians. Vids of presumably compromising and embarrassing situations featuring persons of society fame, complete with lurid and inaccurate descriptions and commentary. A touch of completely absurd conspiracy theories.
Useless, all of it. It was beyond him how anyone could read any of this out of their own free will.
What sort of person cared who the latest vid star slept with or what the asari Councillor wore when off-duty? There was no useful information in any of this.
He had endured this for four days now, hoping to at some point finally figure out what Saren wanted him to do there, but he had reached his limit.
A gun to the head was preferable to continuing this. Maybe Saren had just come up with another inventive way of torturing him.
Saren looked up from the nav terminal where he had been looking through star charts. What he was looking for, if anything, Nihlus had no idea.
"What precisely are you complaining about?"
"Why are you making me read this mess of completely drivel?" Nihlus pointed at his own terminal almost accusingly, which currently proudly displayed an article about Councillor Tevos' supposed tastes in clothing meant for private settings. Complete with slightly blurred pictures that just managed not to show the subject's face clearly enough for proper identification, which left just enough room for doubt. That was probably done deliberately to avoid instant legal consequences, he supposed.
Well, he didn't mind the pictures so much, but it was about the principle of the matter.
Saren looked at it, as if he had no idea what Nihlus was talking about. "You safely can ignore this one." he said after briefly scanning the article. "It's not true, and the pictures are fakes."
Nihlus suppressed a groan and resolved not to think about how Saren would know what sort of undergarments Councillor Tevos wore, or how he would be qualified to judge whether the images supplied depicted the asari Council member or not. And he would not ask. He just wouldn't.
It was just a trick, anyway. Saren was just trying to get him off-balance again, and he wasn't going to fall for something that simple.
"Why make me do this?" Nihlus repeated. "It's all lies or at least deliberate misdirection and inaccuracies."
"Precisely." Saren replied calmly. "But it's also what a large portion of the population in this part of space is interested in, and will readily believe. Sometimes it's so much easier to generate a distraction or redirect someone's attention than use brute force. And sometimes the mere mention of a rumour, without even the implication of blackmail, will change someone's mind to become more cooperative." It made a certain sort of sense to Nihlus. "Why would this even matter to anyone? Just goes to show again that this galaxy's mostly populated by complete idiots." he grumbled.
Saren didn't even answer this one. There were some truths the two of them did agree upon.
Nihlus growled and turned back to his terminal, then paused. "I've never seen you read that sort of thing." he said.
Saren snorted. "I should hope not."
"Then how-" Nihlus growled again, as realisation dawned. "You have some sort of VI to go through all this crap."
Saren's look was completely blank. "Do I?"
"That's the only reasonable explanation." Nihlus stated, refusing to back down. "You would never expose your mind to that. It's probably even this ship's VI."
The Spectre considered, then nodded. "Took you long enough to figure out." he said, but with a hint of amusement. "I think we can leave this topic behind, then, and move on to galactic politics. On the whole, that will be a lot worse than this."
Nihlus checked his first impulse to say something very uncomplimentary. He had gotten better at that, at least.
Saren nodded again, vaguely approving. "You have learned more patience." he commented. "You surprised me there. I was expecting you to react like that yesterday, or even the day before."
"Yes, but despite all of that you still like playing me for a fool, don't you?" Nihlus abandoned his pretense of meekness. It didn't fit him, anyway.
Saren shook his head impatiently. "Granted, it's mildly entertaining, but hardly reason enough to go through that trouble. I want you to think, to question."
Nihlus' mandibles dropped in open astonishment. "I thought that was the last thing you wanted."
"Then you still misunderstand. I objected to you being contrary just for sake of being so. I very much approve of you using that mind of yours. You're not a fool, as much as you seem to like pretending to be one." He shrugged, his tone perfectly neutral. "You're still far from what you could be, but you're making progress. It will remain to be seen whether it's enough, in the end."
That wasn't encouraging, but Saren never was, and the honesty of that comment took him by surprise. He covered it with humour, as ever.
"And here I was thinking you wanted me to become another version of you."
Saren snorted. "Of course not. That's neither possible nor desirable to either of us."
Nihlus wondered whether he'd just been insulted, then gave up.
"You still did that to make fun of me, didn't you? Even if you want me to learn."
There was a slight click of mandibles, which in Saren translated to definite amusement. "See? You are learning. And you already know that I rarely do anything for one reason only."
Nihlus shook his head ruefully. "I liked you better when you didn't have any sense of humour." he sighed. He was aware his undertones broadcasted his own amusement quite clearly, especially to someone with Saren's understanding, but he didn't really mind.
Whatever he might call it and whatever sensible explanations he had given, Saren had played a prank on him. The game had changed. And he would need to find a way to get back at Saren, of course.