Book One - Chapter Fifteen: Of Mice and Men

The door's distinctive beep-swoosh combo announced another visitor. I was quickly learning to associate that sound with my life getting incrementally weirder.

At least this time it wasn't fluffy, adorable cats that entered.

No, this time it was four-foot-tall mice. In robes.

Sweet mother of—

I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. Considered the possibility that the air recycling system was pumping hallucinogens instead of oxygen. But no. The mice remained, staring at me with beady little eyes.

They had the pristine look of lab rats who’d graduated from test subject to tenured professor, complete with scholarly robes. One was whitish with cream undertones, the other storm-cloud grey. Both twitched with the nervous energy of someone who’d just remembered they left the stove on.

“Hello, sir,” the white one squeaked. And I mean literally squeaked, like someone taught a door hinge to talk. “We are the Neutral Representatives of the Intergalactic Peace and Harmonic Species Council, Galactic Sector Seven, Division of First Contact Protocols, Subsection 42.7.3. Seventy-Third Official Species of the Cerulian Empire.”

He rattled it off like an excited student reciting their ABCs.

It took him several breaths to get through it all.

“Catchy,” I said. “Bet that looks great on a business card.”

The grey one’s whiskers twitched in tight, irritable tics.

The white one continued quickly, producing a translucent tablet that shimmered with floating glyphs and spinning holograms. “You may address us as Apprentice Representative Squeak—” he gave a stiff, jazz-hands sort of flourish, “—and Senior Representative Meylin.” He dipped his head toward his darker companion. “We serve as aides to the Royal Cerulians and will be here to assist you during your stay.”

“Do you… get along with the Mewsari?” I asked, genuinely curious.

I caught a flicker of contempt in the grey one’s eyes; there and gone so fast, I almost convinced myself I imagined it.

“Of course!” Squeak’s voice jumped a full octave, practically singing. “Why wouldn’t we? They are an Allied World to the Cerulians.”

“Right, no reason,” I said quickly, eager to change the subject. He blinked like he’d just rebooted.

Then: “Are you really a Uman? I’ve heard stories, but never met a real one before. I thought you’d be taller.”

“That’s quite enough,” Meylin cut in. His voice was sharp, precise, like someone dipped a scalpel in etiquette lessons. “Apologies. Apprentice Squeak is still acclimating to live interaction. The training pods do wonders for diction. Less so for scent tolerance.”

He inhaled discreetly.

“The… olfactory presence of a Human is somewhat more vivid in person. I’m afraid it’s throwing off his manners.”

He offered a gentle half-bow, eyes never leaving mine.

“Squeak, please stick to the script. If you can’t, I’ll be forced to fail you.”

The silence that followed stretched just a little too long. Squeak’s whiskers twitched, rapid, frantic.

“We have been assigned,” Meylin said at last, his tone dropping into something painfully rehearsed, “to ensure your comfort aboard the Paw’s Pride. You will be escorted to your designated quarters and assisted within the bounds of Protocol. Your room has been adjusted specifically for your species.”

“Perfect,” I said. “So no hamster wheel? Little tubes to run through? Maybe a water bottle I can bat at with my nose?”

Squeak froze. “That wasn’t… in your biological profile. This is terrible! Your profile...” He began frantically swiping through his tablet, eyes scanning.

“Forget it,” I said, raising a hand. “Bad joke.”

Meylin did not forget it.

He froze, fully statuesque. Even his tail went rigid. I was beginning to suspect that, among their species, body language consisted entirely of different flavors of not moving.

Then he laughed. Slowly. Mechanically.

“Oh, quite the joke, Representative. I must ask, when confronted with the unfamiliar,” he said, each word lacquered and lethal, “do your people often default to… pet-store humor?”

He stepped closer. Not threatening. Just… deliberate.

“This must be ever so strange for you. A little human, in a very big universe. Out of your depths. You see a Cerulian of our species and think: rodent. How charmingly terrestrial.”

He bowed again. Just barely.

“No offense intended, of course.”

“None taken,” I said, choking back a dozen pet jokes and at least one Ratatouille reference.

Great. Day one in galactic diplomacy and I’d already offended an R.O.U.S. This day just kept leveling up.

I made a mental note to dial back the animal jokes. Probably best not to start another war if I could help it.

After a beat, his tone snapped from polite frost to forced sunshine. “Please,” Meylin said at last, flashing a smile so strained it could’ve pulled something, “follow us to your quarters.”

The ship was a bizarre fusion of space-tech and a luxury cat hotel. Every corridor, every room, combined otherworldly technology with distinctly feline aesthetics.

Cat trees grew from the walls. Not your typical carpet-covered cardboard, but gleaming structures that seemed to be made from metal and fur. They defied conventional physics, branches extending at impossible angles with floating platforms.

In one hallway, there were dozens of holographic sunbeams. They drifted lazily through the corridors, creating perfect sunny spots on the ground. I noticed the two giant mice walking carefully around them. As I stepped into one, I immediately felt a wave of contentment wash over me. It was intense and overwhelming. I felt like I could just curl up right then and there, and forget about all my petty little problems.

“Careful, Uman,” Squeak warned, nudging me out of the beam. “Best to stay out of the naplights unless you don’t have anywhere to be for a while.”

“Noted,” I said, and immediately felt a longing sensation to go back to it.

A few halls later, I stopped at a reinforced viewing window. It was thick, double-paned, and rimmed with warning labels in three languages and pawprint-shaped hazard symbols. Beyond the glass stretched a vast spherical chamber, a zero-gravity training arena. Platforms drifted in loose orbits, slowly rotating. Laser lines etched across invisible grid sectors.

Inside, cats trained for war.

Not metaphorically. These weren’t house pets. These were felines in modular armor, color-coded by rank, moving in coordinated clusters through floating formations. One launched from a magnetic panel, did a twist-spin in midair, kicked off another platform, and pounced onto a rapidly descending yarn drone. The drone sparked on impact, spinning out, and the cat rebounded, landing with feline grace on nothing at all.

Then it saw me.

The cat turned mid-float, still upside down, its ears flicking with curiosity. Its eyes locked onto mine through the glass; slitted gold pupils narrowing slightly, as if assessing threat level. It didn’t meow. Didn’t move. Just floated there in practiced stillness, tail drifting like a slow metronome, gaze steady and unsettlingly aware.

“Planet Representative Jerry,” one of the mice said behind me, their voice high and reverent. “This way, please.”

The corridor ahead was busy. Wide, sleek, humming with quiet energy. People moved everywhere; tall insectoids, short fuzzballs, something that looked like a puddle in cargo pants. Most wore uniforms. Different cuts, different colors, all official. One passed with a stack of tablets balanced on four arms, muttering to himself in what sounded like angry flute music. Another adjusted a headset that was clearly grafted into his skull.

I heard a feminine giggle behind me.

I turned just enough to catch a glimpse. Her orange uniform looked standard-issue. Smooth violet skin, short-cropped black hair, and gold eyes that flicked over me with amusement.

She vanished around a corner.

I glanced down.

Right. Still in the hospital gown and at least a third of my ass was on display.

[ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: MOON-MOON]

You exposed your ass to alien diplomats in under 12 hours. New personal best.

Reward: Eternal shame. And the sinking certainty that one of them stared way too long, and it wasn’t the one you’d have picked.

Optional Title Unlocked: “AmbASSador”

I yanked the back closed as best I could and picked up the pace.

“So,” I said, trying to focus, “were there other envoys on Earth besides the Mewsari? How many people are actually on this ship? And how many races are there between the Allied Planets? What’s with this Protocol everyone keeps mentioning? And, just out of curiosity, are there inter-species dating apps?”

They didn’t answer. Just kept walking.

Squeak opened his mouth.

Meylin elbowed him.

The senior fielded my questions like a seasoned diplomat, offering polished silences and evasive smiles. But Squeak was clearly fraying at the edges. His natural helpfulness kept slipping through, even as Meylin's elbow kept finding its way into his ribs.

“So, you’re not allowed to answer my questions?”

Meylin answered. “We are happy to assist where Protocol Permits.”

“How do I know you aren’t lying?”

“Protocol forbids it!” Squeak protested. “The thing about Galactic Protocol,” Squeak said, tail twitching with excitement, “is that it's absolutely vital to—”

“—To be followed,” Meylin cut in crisply, his tone a warning. “It prohibits unvetted disclosures to non-Allied Worlds. As Squeak has been reminded. Often.”

Squeak gave me a sheepish look, ears slightly flattened. He clearly wanted to help. Maybe he even thought I deserved answers. But the timing of every interruption, the exact language used, said more than any data dump could. Whatever this Protocol was, it wasn’t just bureaucracy. It was a ritual.

I was starting to piece things together. If Protocol was as sacred as these mice made it out to be, then Whiskers had basically committed the galactic equivalent of streaking through the Vatican by trying to help me.

We passed through a wide recreational deck where Mewsari and dozens of other races lounged in zero-g hammocks, batted at hovering yarn drones, and played 3D chess with unnerving focus. Other cats practiced fencing with laser-tipped tails or took grooming breaks beneath heat lamps shaped like miniature suns.

“Everything’s about Protocol here, huh?” I asked.

“Everything everywhere is about Protocol,” Squeak declared, practically singing it until another well-placed elbow cut him off mid-syllable.

“Like your version of the DMV?” I offered.

“The... what?”

“Department of Motor Vehicles. Our local temple of bureaucratic suffering. You need forms to request the right forms to ask for permission to access the actual forms.”

Both mice perked up.

“Your species has developed complex administrative structures?” Squeak asked, eyes gleaming with academic reverence.

“Oh, we’re masters,” I said. “We’ve got departments that oversee departments that were created to monitor departments formed to regulate the original departments. Entire agencies exist just to argue about what other agencies are allowed to do.”

They both nodded with recognition and a hint of respect.

“Perhaps,” Meylin said slowly, “Earth is more advanced than initial reports suggested.”

Finally, we arrived at my quarters.

The door slid open with an expensive-sounding beep-woosh.

Holy shit.

The room was palatial, elegant curves sweeping through the architecture. Mirror-polished surfaces gleamed under soft, ambient lighting. A panoramic window stretched across the far wall, revealing the cosmos in all its glory: nebulae blooming like cosmic flowers, distant stars glittering, whole galaxies spinning lazily in the void.

But the feline influences were impossible to miss.

Scratch posts doubled as structural beams. Climbing walls snaked up the sides of support columns, vanishing into shadowed ceiling alcoves. Strategically placed lamps cast perfect sunbeam puddles on lounge cushions that looked just big enough for a curled-up catnap.

“The Council spares no expense for diplomatic guests,” Squeak said proudly. “You’ve been assigned the VIP suite.”

I moved deeper into the suite, each room more extravagant than the last. The bathroom was something out of a five-star resort brochure. The kind I only saw in movies. Sleek surfaces, ambient lighting, not a corner out of place. The kitchen was filled with gleaming, unfamiliar equipment. Then I found the library.

Books. Thousands of them. In English.

“Standard reading materials,” Meylin muttered, suddenly fidgeting with the edge of his tunic.

Dune. Atlas Shrugged. The Hitchhiker’s Guide. An entire shelf dedicated to Pratchett.

I moved along the shelves, fingers brushing spines. The genre plaques were etched into the shelving in silver script—Historical Fiction, Romance, Modern Earth Fiction. Beneath that, a subcategory: GameLit, followed by another, more specific still—LitRPG.

The selection read like someone had scraped the Royal Road trending page for the past ten years. He Who Fights With Monsters, Primal Hunter, Awaken Online, Solo Leveling, Rise of the Infernal Paladin, Declan Dark, Induction, Mostly Dead, Nova Terra... and one I’d never heard of: Terra Mythica.

Right at eye level sat The Complete Idiot’s Guide to First Contact.

“Purely decorative,” Meylin said, a bit too quickly. “It is Protocol to offer all Planetary Representatives a selection of culturally relevant literature. And a few standard manuscripts.”

Then I saw it. One book that stood out like a brick in a basket of kittens.

Nearly a foot thick, bound in blood-red leather, no title on the spine. It was tucked away near the bottom next to the Encyclopedia Britannica and several old dictionaries.

I stepped toward it.

Both mice stiffened. Meylin’s whiskers drew back like antennae in a storm. Even Squeak had gone utterly silent.

I picked it up. Embossed on the front in silver glyphs: Manual One: An Introduction to Galactic Protocols.

The weight was real, dense, intimidating, important. Neither of them breathed. Not a twitch.

I slid it back onto the shelf and feigned indifference. They exhaled as one, visibly relaxing as if I’d just put down a live grenade.

Yeah. Getting warmer.

I smiled, tucked the moment into a mental folder marked suspicious, and made a note to take Whiskers advice and read the manual, quietly, and when no one was looking.

“So,” I said, turning to face them. “You two are my... what, exactly? Handlers? Guides? Guards?”

“In so many words, yes,” Meylin replied. “Once you have settled, we will take you to the Physical Rehabilitation Chamber, as per our instructions. When you wish to leave your quarters, we will escort you and ensure you arrive at your designated zone without delay or incident, as Protocol dictates.”

Perfect. Living rulebooks, gift-wrapped in fur.

“Speaking of Protocol, that medical robot was a real charmer. Wouldn't even get me proper clothes. Does this place come with a closet?”

Both mice winced in unison.

“BX-789… its core personality drive was taken from an old M-4RV1N,” Squeak sighed. “Older model, overworked, hasn't been updated in cycles. It’s a bit… odd. Mostly harmless. But clothing provision is absolutely within Protocol!”

He bounced with excitement, gesturing to a wall that opened to reveal a closet the size of my apartment.

“We studied your combat attire extensively,” Squeak continued, pride evident. “Our fashion analysts worked overtime to create the perfect wardrobe for every conceivable situation!”

I approached with genuine excitement. Finally, real clothes.

A soft whoosh accompanied by what sounded suspiciously like a harp. Light poured out as though the universe itself was saying, “Behold, mortal!”

Inside hung garments that were… surprisingly nice. Tons of shirts and jackets in all different styles.

Some refined, some flashy. Rows and rows of outfits. Athletic wear that looked sleek and efficient, clearly built for function. The formal outfits were sharply cut, suits tailored with care.

For the bottoms, it was much the same. Nothing ostentatious. All of strong craftsmanship.

The only problem?

Every. Single. One. Was. An. Apron.

Not reminiscent of an apron. Not inspired by the concept of an apron. Not apron-adjacent or in the apron family.

Just. Fucking. Aprons.

Dozens upon dozens of variations spread before me like some deranged Project Runway challenge where the designer had suffered a psychotic break. Tactical aprons with more pockets than a magician's convention. Ceremony aprons, high-collared business aprons, athleisure aprons. All of them modeled after my $12.99 barista uniform.

And not one, NOT A SINGLE ONE, had pants.

No slacks. No shorts. No leggings, joggers, jeans, or khakis. Not even a ceremonial kilt or loincloth. Just apron fronts that stopped precisely at mid-thigh.

“They're... comprehensive,” I managed, holding up evening wear with yellow stars woven into the fabric.

“We're thrilled you approve!”

“Not to be greedy, but what about pants?”

Both mice tilted their heads in perfect synchronization.

“Pants?”

“The things that cover your legs.”

“Your personal garment didn't include leg coverings?” Squeak's tablet was working overtime.

“It's a barista apron! It goes over normal clothes!”

The silence was deafening.

“This is unprecedented,” Meylin murmured. “All warrior cultures have their Planet Representative wear complete battle dress. Your battle uniform was clearly…”

“It's not a battle uniform! It's to keep coffee stains off my jeans!”

“Jeans? Coffee stains?” Squeak looked thoroughly bewildered.

“You've never spilled coffee?”

“We don't drink coffee. Our biology processes caffeine differently.”

I grabbed the most athletic-looking apron. “Look, I'm about to do physical therapy. In space. In what's essentially a very expensive bib.”

The mice exchanged panicked whisker twitches. I got the feeling that Meylin was secretly enjoying this, and was somehow behind it. Or maybe I was just being paranoid.

“We can submit a modification request,” Meylin offered. “Standard processing is forty-seven cycles...”

“How long's a cycle?”

“Thirty-seven hours, twelve minutes Terran standard.”

I did the math. “That's almost two months.”

“Give or take administrative review time.”

“I've got three days to save humanity and you're telling me it'll take two months to get pants?”

They shuffled their feet, an oddly human gesture that made them look even more unsettling.

“Emergency requests can be expedited to twelve cycles...”

“Never mind. Just… never mind.”

I was starting to understand the game. Everything ran on Protocol. Every request needed forms. Every exception required paperwork that spawned more paperwork.

But every bureaucracy has loopholes.

“Anything else I should know?”

“The entertainment system has extensive Earth content,” Squeak offered. “Nutrition synthesizer's programmed for human compatibility. Gravity adjustable to preference.”

“And if you need us,” Meylin added, “just tell the room you want our attendance.”

“Great. Thanks, guys. You've been... helpful."

They bowed and left, robes swishing as the door closed behind them.

Alone, I explored the rest of the room, eventually lying down on the massive bed. The mattress was cloudlike.

Three days to prepare. Why not.

A prompt lit up in my HUD.

[QUEST ACCEPTED: “Three Days to Save Humanity”]

No pressure. Totally fine. Just, you know... the fate of your species.

System Confidence Level: Please stop asking.

[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: Galactic Bullshit-dar™]

You know that feeling when the room goes quiet the second you walk in? Yeah. They were absolutely talking about you.

And no, it wasn’t good.

Effect:

+10% chance to detect when someone’s bullshitting you

+5% chance to overhear if they’ve been trash-talking you behind your back

+100% chance you'll fake a smile while dying inside

Note: This ability does not reveal what the lie is, just that it reeks. Enjoy the paranoia.

Side Effect: Chronic eyebrow-lifting. May cause smugness, eye twitches, or poorly timed “uh-huhs.” Use responsibly.

I nearly jumped out of my skin as my earpiece crackled to life, for the first time in what felt like forever, followed by a voice I knew too well. It was nasally and breathless.

“Jerry?”

Fucking Todd.

“Todd! Where the hell have yu been?”

“No time. Listen, I just snuck back into my office. I only have a few seconds.” His voice tight with panic. “Jerry, we're screwed. I mean, extinction-level, everyone-you-love-dies fucking screwed! And worse, I’m going to get so demoted!”

“Calm down. What’s happening?”

“They are here. They are onto us. The Watchers. We are so completely fucked.”