on Earth in the late twentieth century. Within this narrow corridor, signals could be projected several thousands times faster than the speed of light. Data in the form of radio signals could be relayed from one array to the next virtually instantaneously. Once the arrays were properly aligned, it was even possible to speak to someone on the opposite end of the galaxy with a lag of only a few tenths of a second.
However, while the extranet’s buoy arrays made communication possible, it still wasn’t exactly feasible for the vast majority. Trillions of people on thousands of worlds were accessing the extranet every second of every day, overloading the finite bandwidth capabilities of the com arrays. To accommodate this, information was sent in carefully measured bursts of data, and space in each burst was parceled out in a highly regulated priority system. Top priority in each burst was given to organizations directly responsible for preserving galactic security. Next came the various official governments and militaries for each and every species in Council space; then the assorted media conglomerates. Anything left over was parceled off and sold to the highest bidder.
Virtually all of the unused space on every burst was purchased by extranet provider corporations, who then divided their allocated space into thousands of tiny packages that were resold to individual subscribers. Depending on the provider and how much an individual was willing to pay, it was possible to get personal updates from hourly, daily, or even weekly bursts.
Not that Anderson had to be concerned about any of that. As an Alliance officer his private extranet account received official bursts every fifteen minutes. Piggybacking personal messages onto the official bursts was one of the perks of his rank.
There was only one message waiting for him in his in-box. He frowned, recognizing the sender’s address. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, but he wasn’t happy to see the file. For a second he considered ignoring it, but he knew he was being childish. Better to just get it over with.
He opened the file, downloading a series of e-docs and a short prerecorded video message from the divorce attorney.
An image of Ib Haman, his lawyer, appeared on the terminal’s screen as the video began to play. Ib was
a portly, balding man in his sixties. He was wearing an expensive-looking suit and was seated behind his desk in an office Anderson had become all too familiar with over the last year.
“Lieutenant. I won’t bother with the formality of asking how you’re doing… I know this hasn’t been easy for you or Cynthia.”
“Damn right,” Anderson muttered under his breath as the message continued.
“I’ve sent you copies of all the documents I had you sign the last time we met. Cynthia’s signed them now, too.”
The man on the screen glanced down and shifted some papers on the desk in front of him, then looked back up at the camera.
“You’ll also see a copy of my fee. I know this isn’t much consolation right now, but just be glad you two didn’t have any children. It could have been a lot worse — and a lot more expensive. When custody becomes an issue the proceedings rarely go this smoothly.”
Anderson snorted. Nothing about this mess had felt “smooth” to him.
“The marriage will be officially absolved on the date indicated in the documents. I suspect that by the time you get this message your divorce will be final.
“If you have any questions please feel free to contact me, Lieutenant. And if you ever need me for — ”
The message terminated abruptly as Anderson deleted it and dragged it into the trash. He didn’t plan on ever talking to Ib Haman again. The man was a good attorney; his prices were reasonable and he’d been fair and unbiased throughout the divorce. In fact, he’d been nothing but the model of efficiency and professionalism. And if he was standing in the apartment right now, Anderson would have punched him in the face.
It was a funny thing, Anderson thought as he shut the terminal down. He’d just participated in two of humanity’s oldest and most enduring customs: marriage and divorce. Now it was time for an even older tradition: he was going to the bar to get drunk.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chora’s Den was the only bar within walking distance of Anderson’s apartment. It wasn’t exactly a dive, though it did have a certain seedy feel to it. That was part of its charm, along with supple dancers and stiff drinks. But what Anderson liked most about it was the clientele.
At any given time the Den could be busy, but it was never packed. There were plenty of more popular clubs in the wards where people could go to be seen… or to be part of the scene. People came here to eat, drink, and relax; average, everyday people who lived and worked in the wards. The common folk, if you could call such an interesting menagerie of aliens common.
Of course, even humans were alien here. Anderson was instantly aware of this as he came through the door. Dozens of eyes turned to look at him, many staring with open curiosity as he paused at the entrance.
It wasn’t that humans were particularly strange-looking. Species like the hanar, translucent beings that resembled three-meter-tall jellyfish, were the exception rather than the rule. Most of the space-faring species in the galaxy were bipeds between one and three meters in height. There were a number of theories to explain this resemblance: some were mundane; others highly bizarre and speculative.
Given that most species at the Citadel had ascended to interstellar flight through the discovery and adaptation of caches of Prothean technology on planets within the same solar system as their respective home worlds, many anthropologists believed the Protheans had played some role in evolution throughout the galaxy.
Anderson, however, subscribed to the most generally accepted theory that there was some evolutionary advantage to the biped form that resulted in its proliferation across the galaxy. The caches of technology were easily explained: it was only natural for the Protheans to study intelligent but primitive races that bore some similarity to themselves. The various species, such as humans, had evolved first, and then the Protheans had arrived to study them, not the other way around. The theory of parallel evolution was further supported by the fact that most life-forms on the Citadel were carbon-based, highly dependant on water, and breathed a mixture of gases similar to those found on Earth.
In fact, virtually all inhabitable planets in the galaxy were fundamentally similar to Earth in several key
characteristics. They tended to exist in systems with suns that fit the type-G classification according to the traditional Morgan-Keenan system still used by the Alliance. Their orbits all fell in the narrow range known as the life-zone: too close to the sun and water would exist only as a gas, too far away and it would be permanently trapped in frozen form. Because of this, the time it took the home world of almost every major species to complete one orbit around its sun varied by only a few weeks. The galactic standard year — an average of the asari, salarian, and turian years — was only 1.09 times longer than Earth’s.
No, Anderson thought as he crossed the floor to an open seat on the bar, it wasn’t their appearance or unusual physical characteristics that made humans stand out. They were simply the newcomers, and they’d made one hell of a first impression.
A pair of turians fixed their avian eyes on him, following his every move like hawks ready to swoop down on an unsuspecting mouse. Turians were roughly the same height as humans, but much thinner. Their bones were slender and their frames were sharp and angular. Their three-fingered hands looked almost like talons, and their heads and faces were covered by a rigid mask of brown-gray cartilage and bone, which they tended to mark with striping and tribal tattoos. It flared out from the top and back of the skull in short, blunted spikes and extended down to cover the forehead, nose, upper lip, and cheeks, making it difficult to distinguish between individual members of the species. Looking at turians always reminded Anderson of the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.