Space Criminal and Chillboi

At least with Nova around, the next two weeks wouldn't be so bad. She didn't seem to care who he was, so maybe she wouldn't judge him too hard on what he was planning on doing to get out of his wedding. They wandered the various decks and snacked on her candy until they both started to have stomachaches and needed to slow down.

"You know, I offered you a little cotton candy but I didn't say your grubby fingers could keep reaching into my candy bag," Nova told him.

"Well it's a little late for that," he said, flicking a jelly bean at her.

It bounced off her forehead and she caught it, flicking it back at him.

"So, did you get caught last night?" she asked. "By the scary cousins?"

"Don't think so," he said. "Honestly, I don't really care if they catch me doing something I'm not supposed to. I'm just avoiding the lecture."

"Why do they even care what you do?"

"It's a long story," he shrugged. "I do a lot of things I'm not supposed to do. This time in particular, my parents don't feel up to covering it up."

She paused and nibbled on another jellybean for a few moments, then stopped and seemed to be doing some sort of math in her head.

"Taylor Spaulding is your cousin," she said. "And the other guy is..."

"Michael Spaulding," he answered for her.

"His brother," Nova said. "And the Spaulding brothers are your cousins who care greatly about what you're up to and your image. And you're hiding from these parties because everyone wants to talk to you. And Jay is a nickname."

"It sure is."

"You're James Whitley," she concluded, seemingly a little stunned. "I knew you looked familiar. I've seen you on television."

"Have you?" he grimaced.

"Kinda," she said. "I mean, I saw your father on television, unveiling some new super-factory. Your great-grandfather invented the service droid, right?"

"Great, great-grandfather," Jay corrected. "He worked hard, but the rest of us are just parasites."

Nova had stopped walking and was staring at him intensely. Jay sighed and stopped as well, holding his hands behind his back and staring back at her with a sort of exhausted look on his face. Here came the lectures about how he should be more respectful of his family or more grateful for all the money he secretly didn't have.

"But... you're not, like.... snobby," she finally said.

"Well, I appreciate you saying that," he said with a chuckle.

"It's just confusing."

"My mother says the same thing."

She still looked a little wary of him, but he didn't know what he could say to her to make her feel more at ease. He sighed and awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

"I'd really rather not talk about it right now," he said. "I was hoping to just to go grab a bite to eat, maybe stop by the library. You can come with me if you want, but I'm not trying to trick you or pretend to be something I'm not. I'm just trying to get through this trip."

"You don't care about being seen with me?"

"If I cared, I would have kicked you to the curb hours ago."

This seemed to ease her a little bit, so she tucked the bag of candy back into her purse and returned to walk beside him. They stopped by a little dining area with snacks rolling by on a conveyor belt, piling an assortment of appetizers on a tray before taking it to the nearby library and settling on some floor cushions in a corner.

She picked out a few different books she was interested in while he just settled on one to flip through while he snacked. It was one of the few things he was able to do for peace in his tiny apartment, so it was a nice way to pass the time here as well.

"So do you work with droids, too?" Nova asked suddenly.

"Huh?"

"That's your family business, isn't it?" she asked. "Service droids. Like the ones on this ship. I noticed your hands look a little rough, so I was wondering if you work with them."

He looked down at his hands, which were scarred and calloused. He did work with droids, but not as part of his family business. As a mechanic in a factory that his father was forced to sell.

"Yeah, I do," he said. "I don't work for my father's business, but I do know my way around a droid. As a hobby."

It wasn't totally a lie. He was always interested in droids, even when he was a kid. It was luck that he had a skill he could use when his family became buried by debt.

"It does mean that I know some things other people don't," he said, changing the subject from his family. "Want to see something cool?"

She closed her book with a grin and nodded. He pushed a button to summon the librarian droid, who hovered over to them just a few moments later.

"Librarian droids are actually data entry droids," he explained to her. "Their official name is V-D0. We also call them Veedo. They're used in libraries since they can store all the information on the books and their location in the library, but they're also used in places like banks, spaceports, government buildings... that sort of thing."

"You said you were going to show me something cool," Nova told him. "Not give me a Veedo lesson."

"Okay, smartass," Jay said. "I was trying to be nice. Anyways, when Veedo was being designed, the engineers got a little bored with programming data entry so they programmed this, too."

Jay stood up and approached Veedo, opening a panel on the side of the droid and pushing a couple buttons in a specific sequence. He made sure they were indeed alone in the library before closing the panel and taking a step back.

Veedo shut down for a moment, then flickered back to life. This time its face flickered in a bright green color rather than the classic black, and it began to move its limbs like it was stiffly dancing. Then it began to sing a song so dirty that it would even make a sailor blush.

Nova burst out laughing at the sight of such a serious data droid suddenly breaking out into song and dance, and even Jay was grinning despite having seen it a million times. They heard someone walk into the library and Jay quickly hit a button to shut the droid down again. He was sure that no one else was going to think that vulgar song was funny. But Nova did, and that was nice to see.