nose goes
you rubbed the scar on the underside of your columella for the hundredth time that evening and the millionth time in the last three weeks. fucker still itched. some tiny splinter of a dissolvable suture slowly working its way out of your nose, and you'd know no peace until it was ejected. though afterward wasn't looking great either.
———
"hey, newbie," Emerald had said. "we have pretty good health care. get your nose unfucked. i'm tired of looking at it."
"oh," you'd said, dumbfounded, "i can get that fixed? regimental medics said not to bother." it had been bent since you bashed it against the inside of a miniframe with a bad jump booster. they'd said there was a line for operationally necessary care and your nose wasn't messed up enough to even get in it.
the director's raptor of an assistant had cocked her head to the side. you were still learning the specialized biology vocabulary you weren't sure if you'd live long enough to need, but "raptor" seemed right: skinny, sharp features, unclear if she blinked, probably ate lizards.
"military healthcare is shit. don't exceed three gees while healing, don't shove anything up there, don't miss work," she'd said, and flicked a net address to your handheld. a civilian medical appointment.
you should have known that it had been too easy. you'd woken up in a room that hadn't been the one you'd gone to sleep in. more blinking lights and display screens than a frame maintenance bay. and your boss was there. sharp suit, curly hair, looked like she was in a hurry.
"good news, everything went well," she said. "and volunteering saved me a bit of time, so thanks for that. here."
you were still incredibly out of it, but you accepted the vase of mixed flowers. the smell almost put you under again. you'd never smelled anything like this. or maybe you had, but you were suddenly smelling a hundred things on top of it. an incredibly rich roiling blend of scent. grassy, floral, faintly acrid, notes of emergency sealant, hangar moonshine, the smell of the taste of the filler in shipping containers…
"bwuh?" you managed. she'd put something up your damn nose. had to be.
"olfactory and recall augment. it'll adapt with you, to some extent, but it's also pre-biased with hundreds of thousands of Terran and CEZ biochemical presets. one of these flowers doesn't belong. show me."
you'd taken a big sniff, which was stupid and hurt. then you took a few smaller, more careful sniffs. one of the yellow-orange ones was off. not bad. off. like you'd tasted a dozen red Nebula Chews in a row and the last one was supposed to be purple but the factory fucked up the dye.
you plucked the flower from the vase and showed it to her.
"you're probably right," she said. "one of the marigolds is infected with a hybrid xenopathogen. doesn't have a name. something that evolved on one of the CEZ DNA worlds after Terran life was introduced, and that doesn't really get along with our soil bacteria — the CEZ nearly lost that planet. its metabolism produces a volatile compound that'd be useful for detection, except that i can't smell it, nobody else on staff can smell it, and more importantly, our current generation of mass-production biochips can't either. but now you can."
she turned to go, heels clicking on the floor. then she looked back over her shoulder.
"you look a little spooked. you shouldn't be. it's a knockout, can't reproduce without an excess of a dextral amino acid that nothing outside of our labs makes," she said. "keep the flowers."
———
"stop rubbing your fucking nose, newbie," Emerald said from across your restaurant table.
"i have a name," you groused, putting your hands back in your lap, where you could fidget with the edge of the expensive-looking tablecloth instead of decking the barely field-competent backup posing as your dinner date.
"i don't care. people are looking. or they might. so quit it. you find anything yet?"
"not yet." you'd noticed a few unusual scents on the air, but so far they'd all been strictly known compounds and the most noticeable one at this table wasn't exactly mission-related.
the waiter turned up, finally, and presented the next course. you lifted a spoon to your lips. rice. you'd had that plenty of times. several different mushrooms. a rare treat, but just because you couldn't really afford them. and an accent of… cassia, cheap shampoo, hot paint? your new nose wasn't sure what to make of it. but you'd smelled it before.
there was a sample terrarium running Celeq Corporation's proprietary synthetic biology in one of the library labs. Celeq, the Director had said, like many synthetic biologies, was fine. perfectly stable. if your planet didn't have seasons. or weather. or humans. worked fine on her parents' homeworld, because they could never leave the domes.
"i think we're going to want to talk to the chef," you said.
"damn. can i at least finish dinner first?"
"probably. but you can have my risotto. smells like Celeq."
she shrugged and reached over the table to pull your plate over to her side. "not toxic, then, just unsustainably high maintenance. and better you than me with that augment. i already have my nose the way i like it."
"thanks for volunteering me, by the way. all these wonderful things i can never unsmell." you paused, smirked. "you ever read the specs? you know the breadth of the Terran biochem recall?"
"do you have a point."
"yeah. you can relax with the bitch act. i can smell how hot you are for me."
she dropped the fork.
"as if!"
you scratched your nose again. "doesn't lie."
"fuck you," she said. "i'm not hungry any more. let's do this." she stood up and pulled a badge from her slacks, screamed at the waiter: "Directorate of Planetary Ecology! take me to your chef!"
you pulled your pistol. wasn't a frame, but the enzyme pellets were a lot safer inside a hab. "god. you really are out of practice. gun first, threats second…" □
ShouldbeWriting
