The Lextrazsahia-thing froze and pivoted. Djaer stood cloaked in his warrior’s nightgown and clutching two dripping severed fingers, as he tried to make sense of the situation.

He arrived at his conclusion: “An intruder. Half-dead.”

The Lextrazsahia-thing seemed to nod. Naomi opened her mouth to give an explanation.

“Silence.” He growled. “You have failed in your sole responsibility. I AM AWAKE.”

She rolled her eyes the moment Djaer returned his gaze to the intruder. It had no face or obvious mouth, but he thought he could make out some sequins among nerve tissue. Was it supposed to look like this?

“Can you speak, intruder? Is this a ‘look’, or are you in pain?”

The Lextrazsahia-thing shook vehemently, but didn’t emit any noise beyond the clicking of tooth and bone. Naomi couldn’t help herself; she let out a huge laugh and let her fingertips sizzle out. She could handle this whole matter with a lot less sweat now.

“Permission to explain, sir.” She said it with a smirk.

Djaer rounded on her and roared. “I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING FROM YOUR HEAD WHILE IT REMAINS ATTACHED TO A BODY AND NOT A COCKTAIL STICK.”

He lowered his tone, “Take the intruder to Hold 22. I will be down to perform a Meitagenan Interrogation after updating myself on my ship’s status.”

“Hold 22 has very recently been compromised and remains aflame, we’ll go to 32 for your torture exercise instead.” Naomi chippily announced.

Djaer looked as if he was going to kill her there and then, but she was already bounding down the gangway to shepherd what remained of her old friend to the hold.

“The Meitagenan Interrogation is for both the intruder and for you.” He roared after her.

The response floated back with a touch of reverb: “Yep, I know. See you in a sec.”

Djaer snarled, yawned, and withdrew to the main console to review what the hell had been going on.

*********

Hold 32 was now kitted out with the standard Meitagenan Interrogation set-up. It was not a flashy affair. The lighting was low and grey and there were a few chairs and restraints. You’d think it didn’t deserve the capital M and I, were it not for the centrepiece: a rather long table stretching into the distance with a rather large number of rather large sealed boxes, the contents of each generated at random and would be used improvisationally to extract the required answers from the subject. Neither the interrogator nor the subject knows the contents of any particular box, nor the options from which the boxes have been populated which in practice are near infinite. The Meitagenans believe it makes both the interrogator and the subject work harder and faster to get to, if not the truth, at least a satisfying conclusion to proceedings.

As Djaer entered the space and contemplated his task, he felt the heat of his blood rising. Insubordination, and from the only employee he had ever had too. That didn’t reflect well on him. He looked down at the fingers in his hand. Ma always looked out for him.

At least the interrogation would be thorough and enjoyable. And so he began with the traditional opening address: “Let’s get on with it.”

“Half of my things are missing and the other half has been messed with, including the ship’s functions. In Cargo Hold 1, instead of a burgeoning civilisation of thawed humans to playfully torment, there are 17 fewer than when I went to sleep, and one is an insane proto-zombie who has made his way inexplicably into Cargo Hold 2.”

“You’re welcome.” Naomi couldn’t help herself. But Djaer couldn’t be riled so easily now he had commenced the role as interrogator. He relished it and spoke in the manner of the hot-shot lawyer he had watched on Pursuant to Claws VI, a low budget Meitagenan soap opera…

“I had expected to sleep for a normal amount of time, a few hundred years, a thousand perhaps. It has not even been a quarter of a century and yet so much seems to be happening in the middle of nowhere. We come across a second ship which then explodes, this thing comes aboard and together you destroy a good chunk of Cargo Hold 22.”

“Yeah, we’ll go through all this quick. That thing’s name is Lexazstrahia, and she’s somehow survived having her head blown up –”

Djaer wasn’t listening. The floor was his. “But more important than all of this, the ship’s system has identified a possible leak in Cargo Hold 78 –”

For the first time, Naomi looked something a little like concerned. Noticing this, Lexazstrahia gave her bones a subtle rattle which she interpreted as “I thought you said you weren’t scared of Meitagenans.”

“– now I may not know what I am transporting, but I do know that it was not meant to leak. I take your presence here, intruder, to be related to this. Is this some sort of heist? Possibly with an inside woman? Or do we believe in random coincidence as a preferred explanation?”

He walked over to the box nearest to him and began to open it.

“I wonder what we have here? Once I see it, I have to use it, so maybe speak first.”

It’ll be wormmmssss I reckon.

Just lots of wormmssssss.

More worms than greek letters to label ‘em.

Djaer carried on, blocking out the intrusive voices in his head and pulling back the polycarbonate interlocking lid, gazing into the dark inside.

“Whose fingers are those?” Naomi was interrupting.

“Subjects do not ask questions in Meitagenan Interrogation.”

Naomi held up her hand, with its own missing digits: “They kind of look like mine. Don’t you think?”

He reached into the box, smiling. You can’t stall for time in a Meitagenan Interrogation.

“I do not think.”

The randomness of the boxes’ contents can be seen as more beneficial to either interrogator or to the subject depending on the specific case, but the key appeal of the method is the void of meaning that begs to be filled. Anything – no matter how bizarre or punishing, innocuous or deadly or irrelevant – is irresistibly interpreted by both parties as their personal truth manifest. In such a high stakes scenario, the quietly inferred meaning of a rubber duck can break a man as easily as a blow from the 12-Toothed Cerebral Mace of DoRui could, had such a weapon been drawn instead. This effect always guarantees a conclusion to proceedings, given enough boxes are eventually opened for the subject and interrogator to paint a full picture of subjective meaning.

However there is one case that has never happened in Meitagenan Interrogation. It is theoretically possible that out of all the possible objects in the universe that could be pulled from a box, the box could contain a relevant item to the interrogation. Perhaps the suspect’s actual murder weapon still warm with blood, or a forged document penned by the subject’s hand. Needless to say, this eventuality is extremely, extremely unlikely and no thing that is evidently and objectively pertinent to any interrogation has ever been pulled from a box in a Meitagenan Interrogation.

Djaer set down the first object of interrogation in front of his subjects and began to describe it as he did so.

“A small gold-laced picture frame containing a portrait. The photograph depicts myself, captain of this vessel and conductor of this interrogation, the Meitagenan named Djaer, on his homeworld Meitageneous IV with the Ascentor known as –”

“Laila?” Naomi whispered.

“Laila? I just knew her as Ma.”