Title: Outstanding Customer Service
Author: Peter S. Drang
Genre: Science Fiction/Humor
Length: 980 words (Flash)
Reading time: About 5 minutes

Gracey reluctantly finished her smoke and walked back into the customer support room, seamlessly blending in with the rows of her fellow techs speaking frenetically into their wormhole-coms. The wormhole-coms looked suspiciously like hundred-gallon fish tanks, only instead of clear water, colorful betas, and bubbling treasure chests, these contained a glowing blue liquid that would light up to show any of a dozen types of alien species her office served.

“Hustle, Gracey, you’re late,” her boss Derick grumbled.

“Oopsies.”

His eyes narrowed. “And you’ve got incoming, it’s a Xircian.”

Gracey stopped cold. She hated handling Xircians, their alleged faces looked like a bowl of raw hamburger with a thousand jumbo maggots squirming out. But that wasn’t the biggest problem.

“Remember, Gracey, we do not judge their moral code. We provide outstanding customer service, no matter what. That’s the contract.”

“Sure.”

He frowned. “I don’t want to see a bad rating on the customer survey this time, or I’ll dock you. Understand?”

She nodded and scurried off, trying to remind herself how much she needed her paycheck.

Gracey got back to her worm-com just as it sparkled to life.

“I am trouble!” a very large Xircian roared. His image was nauseatingly clear even from a thousand light-years away.

Gracey read from her script. “My name is Zzaaarcplg and I’m here to offer you outstanding customer service.” It had taken her a month to learn how to pronounce her Xircian customer support name. Why couldn’t the auto-translator do that for her? These alien gadgets didn’t make much sense.

“My name is Zzaaarcplg and I’m here to offer you outstanding customer service.”

“My Corblaxis Death-Thrower produces not sufficient suffering! Garbage!”

Awfully rude language, as the auto-translator always inserted the word ‘garbage’ for any harsh alien expletive.

“One moment, please.”

She put meat-face on hold and used her side screen to look up the product:
Corblaxis Corporation Death-Thrower Model 2000. She keyed in the customer complaint:

INSUFFICENT SUFFERING

Up popped a flow chart listing questions she should ask, followed by possible solutions. It was never that easy with aliens, though.

“Sir, is your Death-Thrower killing your enemies, or just wounding them?”

“Killing, but too fast! Not sufficient suffer!” He turned his support cam and showed a row of smoldering bodies. They looked like giant turtles but with eight legs instead of four. Their wildly colorful shells reminded her of a kaleidoscope, ignoring the scorches.

Gracey composed herself. Maybe he was attacked by them?  “I’m so sorry you’re unsatisfied, sir. Could you please check the TORMENT dial and make sure it’s set to at least six?”

Meat-face turned the weapon, which looked like a confusing array of tubes, and checked the setting. “Already garbage six!”

She checked the next bubble in the flowchart. “Have you tried rebooting? Press the OBLATE button and the lubrication lever while holding down the gamma discharge toggle, all at the same time.”

“Not enough garbage fingers!” He turned the cam to show an appendage, it had two fingers, not enough to push three buttons at once.

This wasn’t in the flowchart, so time to improvise. “Please put the Death-Thrower on the ground and use both hands.”

Meat-face smacked himself in the head for not thinking of it, throwing a dozen squirming mega-maggots through the air. He went offscreen for a moment, then returned. “Okay, rebooted.”

“Great. Can you test it?”

“Yes.” Meat-face turned his cam to show where he was walking. He climbed over the dead turtle-spiders, the landscape ahead was adorned with beautiful sculptures: some gleaming twisted metal structures that moved in the wind, others made from a rich, dark wood-like material. He ran rapidly toward one large sculpture, some movement visible through its lacey frame.

The Death-Thrower came into the picture, making Gracey feel like she was playing a first-person shooter game, only this wasn’t a game.

Meat-face rounded the sculpture and caught two turtle-spiders off guard. They held primative-looking weapons. The turtle-spiders threw down their weapons and knelt, putting four of their appendages in the air, surrendering.

A bright yellow beam filled the worm-cam screen, and the turtle-spiders lay dead and smoking.

“Kill too garbage fast again! No suffering!”

Gracey paused for a moment, disgusted by the scene. “Sir, may I ask … why are you killing them?”

“Kill them for sport. They do nothing but sing and dance and make garbage sculptures. Useless garbage creatures. I came far to their home world to make suffer. You help me make suffer!”

Gracey looked to her left and to her right, down the long rows of wormhole-cam screens her colleagues worked. Some were helping long, snakelike beings, some creatures with furry faces, others assisted jelly blobs. Maggie, to her left, actually helped a turtle-spider to get a baby feeding device working. The baby was so cute, cuddling its mom. These were intelligent, loving, artistic beings.

But rules were rules. Gracey couldn’t judge the Xircian’s ‘moral code.’ She had to provide outstanding customer service. And she couldn’t get another bad review. She knew what she had to do.

She scanned the flowchart looking for something useful. There it was. “Sir, we need to upgrade the firmware.”

“Will make suffer?”

“Oh, yes, very much so.”

Gracey read off some instructions, and meat-face followed them fastidiously.

“Okay, sir, try a test.”

Meat-face ran down a hill, then slunk around a beautiful, fluidly rounded sculpture. He jumped out and surprised three turtle-spiders, who turned in shock. He aimed, fired …. nothing happened.

“Garbage, garbage, garbage!” he cried, as the turtle-spiders realized his weapon had faltered. All three raised their crude but deadly-looking weapons—the screen went blank in a burst of static.

“Oopsies,” she said to the blank screen.

“Gracey,” Derick said, coming up behind her. “What happened!?”

“I provided outstanding customer service. For our clients the turtle-spiders. And I fully embraced the Xircian’s moral code, which allows killing useless creatures.”

“Gracey—”

“And don’t worry, the Xircian won’t be giving me a bad rating.”

[END]

Copyright © 2019 Vorpal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

For information about licensing this story for video, audio, or print send email to petersdrang AT gmail.com