Have you ever wondered how running a hotel has changed over the span of human civilization? I suppose you might if you actually ran a hotel. I’ve done it for most of my adult life. Maybe that’s why I think of such things. These thoughts arise while I’m preparing for a big event or dealing with a guest complaint. One should always keep one’s mind engaged.
If you think about it, cultures and technologies continually evolve. Human life, on the other hand, largely remains the same. Travel to the stars hasn’t changed how we put on our trousers. We no longer sleep on the ground, but that hasn’t changed sleep itself. We eat more synthetics than we used to, but the jaw still grinds down both protein and fiber. The same can be said for hygiene. On this ice moon, for example, bath water may be recycled, but that doesn’t keep us from bathing. We also still argue over politics and religion, even if most of us can’t tell the difference between the two.
My obsession with the topic of hotels and people may reflect a bit of disappointment on my part. Like most, I once romanticized space travel. I wasn’t satisfied with strolls along the Rive Gauche or striking mountain vistas. I wanted to see celestial events and great gas giants. In fact, it was a photograph of Jupiter that inspired me to take my first position here. Who wouldn’t want to dine within sight of The Great Red Spot? I found reality to be considerably less glamorous and rewarding. If I knew then what I know now, I might have held out for the resort on Ganymede. It may be further from the planet, but I hear the Lobster Bisque is better there.
Before I arrived, I also thought of lower gravity as a perk. I quickly learned otherwise. You wouldn’t believe how many early morning emergency calls I receive. Most of these come from people who launched themselves from bed. Few of them reach the ceiling, but more head injuries occur in the first two meters than the last. Of course, if you were born on a small moon like this, our standard ceiling might not be enough for you. We’ve already had to accommodate humans exceeding three meters in height. Don’t ask me how they manage a stasis pod.
These are among the things that make my job challenging. Not impossible, mind you, but difficult at times. We’re no five star establishment, but we rate a fair assessment, and that’s thanks in no small part to my staff.
Unfortunately, the original owners chose to name this place the Europa Arms. The name may have sounded welcoming on a dusty highway in Kansas where being quaint was a selling point. In space, the name implies less luxury and more practicality, less Ritz Carlton and more Motel 6.
I began my career here as a bellhop. That title applied to a long history of responding to bells. I haven’t heard a bell on Europa. Not one. Now, artificial intelligence predicts the needs of customers. In this way, bellhops are set in motion before a request is even made. They hop before the bell, so to speak. This is why guests have come to expect their every need anticipated in advance.
I didn’t stay a bellhop for long. It was more perseverance than anything else. Few tolerate this cold, barren moon of Jupiter for an extended period of time. I was senior bellhop within a fortnight, and assistant manager in a matter of months. Earth months, of course. At that time, I was still early in my first Jupiter year. I’ve never figured out how to calculate Europa time. I’m still not certain there is such a thing.
One peculiarity of the Europa Arms is that we continue to use carpeting on the floors. This adds to the ambiance but does little for some of our more exotic visitors. That’s where this story begins, with the hallway carpet on the sixth floor.
On that day, I was watching an exchange between a mother and daughter. The bellhop was unloading their luggage into room 623 while they spoke. The mother had just compared our establishment with those on Earth.
“What’s a Motel 6?” The little girl asked. Her hair was in pigtails. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen pigtails.
“Motel 6 was the place poor people stayed on Earth, dear,” her mother said.
“Madam, use of the term ‘poor’ is still frowned upon.” Having grown up impoverished, I had a particular perspective on that subject. When they began calling us disadvantaged, it somehow didn’t change how hungry I was. However, this wasn’t a vendetta for me. Rather, I made such observations to inspire guilt. The tactic often increased the size of the gratuity given to my staff.
The woman looked at me with an uncertain stare. She was likely calculating whether my comment amounted to insolence. “The gentleman’s right, dear. The ‘less advantaged’ used to stay at Motel 6.”
Patting the young girl directly between her pigtails, I smiled. “We might also call them frugal, young lady.”
Near the elevator, I spotted an unpleasant smear. To use the term ‘unpleasant’ is to understate things considerably. It was a mixture of colors and scents that challenged the best anti-nausea treatment. I would come to learn this was something genetic. Some of our guests are more prone to ooze than others. In case you’re wondering, we reserve the rooms closest to the elevators for this reason. Since these guests usually lack a skeletal structure, they find the location convenient. The benefits for our housekeeping staff need no further elaboration.
The discovery triggered my call to housekeeping. “I don’t know when it first appeared. I’ve been on the floor for several minutes, but no guests have been in the hall. Please send someone quickly and determine why the AI did not anticipate the need for cleanup.”
This was ultimately why I accepted the management position. Identifying problems is easy. Solving them remains so when you can leverage the skill of delegation.
“I’ll send someone up right away,” said Taimi Bistra, the new head of housekeeping. Like my own experience, Ms Bistra had only been with us for a short time before being promoted. I did not have a firm understanding of her abilities – or lack thereof – at that point.
When the elevator doors opened, I discovered the source of the slime. Within the elevator was a being of unknown origin. Unfortunately, the guest was no longer breathing. This observation is based on my assumption that they would breathe if they were still alive. That may not be the case. Regardless, their lifeless body was wedged – or had drooped – into the back corner of the car.
“Mister Galen?” the head of housekeeping called through my comm. “System AI indicates there was no guest activity on that floor within the last hour. That is, of course, other than your visit.”
“Ms Bistra, I’ve discovered the source of our unsavory deposit. It appears we have a dead guest. The species is as yet undetermined.” The new head of housekeeping may have gasped. Whether she did or not, my statement was otherwise met with silence. “Ms Bistra?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You will need to send someone to clean up… remove… attend to the mess.”
“Yes sir. Right away, sir.”
This event occurred as I approached the end of my inaugural Jupiter year. To that point, my time at the Europa Arms had been largely without incident. The only exception being periodic – if jarring – exposure to alien copulation. Life clung stubbornly to the inhospitable wasteland that was Europa.
This is not to say that I’d seen no death during my time in low gravity. I’d had occasion to attend a funeral or two. None of them had been guests, but there was no reason to expect immortality from anyone. In fact, living in vacuum made death far more of a regular occurrence, at least for humans. The difference here was being in charge of arrangements. This poor creature required someone to look after it. That responsibility rested with me. As a result, I felt compelled to act, if not from compassion, then from a sense of decorum.
Without thinking, I attempted to lift the body from its resting place. Gathering up the amorphous shape in my arms, I stood. Goo dripped from the lifeless form. This should have dissuaded me from proceeding further. I failed to heed that warning.
Nothing could prepare me for the sudden, nauseating collapse of the lifeless body. The audible volume of the splash was remarkable. This was only exceeded by the extent to which the body erupted across the floor of the car. Parts of my guest were now sprayed in all four corners of the elevator. Except for the ceiling, no area of the car escaped the splatter.
“You really should have left things undisturbed,” Officer Akimasa had said upon arriving. “Not sure if we can rule out foul play now.”
I’d come to the same conclusion myself an hour prior. That would have been less than a minute after I’d allowed my guest to dribble through my arms. “Is there any way to use camera footage?”
“Sure, but we’re not gonna get as much information that way.”
Ms Bistra tugged on the sleeve of my jacket. “Foul play?”
I looked at her young, innocent face. Seniority being what it was on this icy moon, she was not yet management material. That said, she still needed to know what was going on. “He means perhaps our guest was murdered.”
“You really should have waited to tell her that,” said Officer Akimasa as he caught the young woman. He was right, of course. This was the third time she’d fainted since arriving on the sixth floor. The first two were the result of seeing the remnants of the deceased.
My day did not improve from there. We discovered that neither the camera nor the AI recorded our dead guest’s activities. Having no evidence of either departure or arrival, we could not be sure if this being was coming or going. For that matter, the AI had no record of them whatsoever.
At this point, it occurred to me that I rode up in this very elevator shortly before discovery of our guest. Had the smear been on the carpet then, I could not say. As for the elevator, only the bellhop and I accompanied the people from room 623.
“You really have a head scratcher here,” said the officer.
The woman and her child from room 623 approached. “I’m sorry, madam,” I said, trying to avoid implying that my next statement was painfully obvious. “The elevator is out of service at the moment. You will have to use the stairs.”
Ms Bistra had begun to recover from her most recent swoon. Rising to her feet, she lifted her hand as though asking her teacher for permission to speak. “I can take her downstairs. I’ll send someone to clean up…” Stopping short, her hand flew to her mouth.
“Maybe you can return after you’ve had a chance to collect yourself,” I offered.
Nodding, she grabbed the hand of the woman from room 623. They made their way down the hall to the stairwell, the young girl’s pigtails dancing along behind them.
Cleaning the elevator proved even more difficult than I expected. As the officer repeatedly reminded me, “Genetic material is evidence. We’ll need to keep that.” This mantra accompanied several hours of scrubbing and scraping. I was no closer to completing my other daily tasks, and we had yet to broach the subject of the investigation. When we’d gotten the elevator into a satisfactory state, I rode it down with the officer. Loading what material we’d accumulated into his evidence crate, he went on his way.
The woman from room 623 was waiting for me at the desk. “I really don’t think we can stay at the hotel of a murderer.”
“Madam, we do not yet know if this was a crime or an untimely expiration.”
“Whatever you call it, I’m packing my bags.”
“As you wish.” Having managed to avoid any other guests being exposed to the events of the morning, I counted this as a win.
The life of a hotel is an all consuming thing. Few people appreciate the work necessary to ensure their stay is comfortable. A guest’s exposure to the staff is often limited to visiting the front desk. At those moments, the staff might appear underutilized, even slothful. I can assure you they are not.
As with other professions, the perception within the role is completely different. For me, a day maintaining the hotel often passes almost without notice. Moving from one task to the next, the clock seems to advance at an unrelenting pace. At the end of the day, it is difficult to appreciate all that was accomplished.
Such were the days that followed the discovery of our amorphous, deceased guest. I had hardly thought of the incident myself as I righted the ship that is the Europa Arms. Ms Bistra recovered from her fainting spells as well as might be expected. The woman from room 623 left an unfortunate review of our hotel which I had framed and hung in my office. Three days had passed before we heard anything from Officer Akimasa. Even that was only to remind us that he was on the case. By then, I had already lapsed into indifference. It may have been a mystery, but I had little time for such things.
My attitude changed when we discovered another splash of genetic material. This we found while I directed the cleaning of the main lobby. My staff had gone through this area several times by that point, yet there it was. How it escaped our notice was beyond me. For that matter, it escaped the notice of the hotel’s artificial intelligence as well. Once again, we were unable to rely on technology to help us.
I had kept my distance from the young housekeeping manager in the hopes of saving her from more trauma. Hope – as they say – is not a great strategy. Time did not help her come to terms with our previous incident. “Ms Bistra, I must risk bringing up more unpleasantness. I’m afraid we need someone from your staff to address another genetic deposit in the main lobby.”
“Mr. Galen, you can’t expect me to handle another murder.”
“Ms Bistra, what you witnessed was a dead creature of uncertain origin. There is no proof that a murder occurred.” At the time, I did not know how accurate that statement was. Later I would learn that Officer Akimasa had yet to identify the guest’s species. In fact, he had not even discovered the form of the guest prior to its death. His investigation so far found very little. Neither our cameras nor AI had recorded any creature remotely resembling the deceased. Despite my encroaching indifference, I would have preferred to know these things earlier.
“Mr. Galen, my doctor told me I have to stay away from stressful situations.”
Ms Bistra had not yet grasped the fact that her position was inherently stressful. Managing the affairs of others can hardly be anything but that. I felt tempted to reveal this to her, but decided against it. There would be plenty of time for that later. “I can appreciate your doctor’s concern, Ms Bistra. Please send the most capable member of your staff. I will work with them.”
Within minutes, I met the person who would eventually replace Ms Bistra. This was one Rhona Duibhne, the most ill-tempered and fastidious person I have ever met. Had I been involved in her hiring, I would not have offered her a position. I might not even have accepted her as a guest. This is not to say Madam Duibhne wasn’t capable. On the contrary, I doubt very much that anyone was more competent, including myself. This quality alone redeemed the older woman.
“I can be quick or I can be thorough, sir.” The only thing missing from her sneer was a wart near the crease of her cheek. I imagined it with several hairs protruding as she went about collecting the genetic goo. “At least this time it didn’t come with a dead body, sir.”
That last comment was likely inspired by Ms Bistra. Having joined us within the week, Madam Duibhne had little exposure to that first event. I intended to have a word with Ms Bistra about this, though her brief tenure would not allow it.
In fact, several members of the staff would depart in response to this latest discovery. Ms Bistra was the first of these, tendering her resignation before I could return to my desk. Two others departed before Officer Akimasa took possession of our newest discovery. This left Madam Duibhne to inherit the entire workload of housekeeping.
While I first found this problematic, it had the most remarkable of results. In my estimation, Madam Duibhne alone completed all the work superior to the lot of them. I even briefly questioned the hiring of additional staff. Our human resources representative convinced me that this would not be advisable.
As the lone member of housekeeping, Madam Duibhne inherited the lead position. Not able to both manage and attend to the needs of the hotel, it fell to me to find adequate support. This was when I first encountered her unbending will. She reluctantly met with the few applicants I reviewed. I don’t recall ever seeing such palpable disdain. Each candidate departed in tears. Madam Duibhne would only consider people she had worked with in the past. In the end, I acquiesced. I had a hotel to run.
While my housekeeping challenges began to settle, our mystery remained. Officer Akimasa was remarkably unhelpful in this regard. Two weeks removed from the first discovery and he had yet to identify the species of the deceased. “Back on Earth, things moved a lot quicker,” he told me frequently. I began to doubt that the officer had ever moved with much haste.
What he could confirm didn’t make things clearer. There was a genetic relationship between the material in both the hallway and the lobby. These, in turn, were a match with the deceased. How a being’s genetic material was found days after their death was yet a new riddle.
With regard to his point about Earth, he was not wrong. Life in the vicinity of the outer planets tended to slow down considerably. It was the distance between destinations. Hotel guests often required weeks or months of travel to spend a few days dining in the vicinity of Jupiter.
It did not appear, however, that this distance curbed the spread of rumors. In the coming weeks, the hotel would see a sizable increase in curiosity seekers. In short order, we had acquired the nickname “murder house,” this without any evidence of a murder. The growing fervor led to several early departures of long-term guests. Within the next month, we were booking fewer young couples and elder sightseers. The arrival of sensationalism peddlers made up for some of the decline, but not enough.
While this was troubling, what vexed me more was the absence of any progress on the case. Officer Akimasa offered nothing but a nameless puddle of genetic material. This was a death without narrative despite the growing myth surrounding it. That would be the case until the cancellation of a large wedding event. No longer able to contain my impatience, I summoned the officer and his superiors.
“The Chief never gets involved in cases like this,” said Officer Akimasa when I questioned why he was alone.
“He never gets involved in murder investigations?”
“There’s no evidence of a murder, Mr. Galen.”
“If only that would deter people from calling this ‘murder house.’”
“Yep, an unfortunate name, alright.”
“It is a moniker we might shed, officer, if you can provide some closure to your investigation.”
“Well, sir, it’s a real head scratcher.”
“Yes, we’ve established that much. What about the second incident, the one in the lobby?”
“As I said before, same genetic material. Might have been from the same… person.”
“I think it’s safe to say it was not a human person, at least.”
“Yeah, true. Safe to say. Might have been the same being. Should we call it a being?”
“But how would that be possible? The two events occurred days apart. The second was discovered long after the death of the… being.”
“That’s a good question. I hadn’t thought of that?”
“What – if anything – have you thought of?”
“Well, like I said, it’s a real head scratcher.”
This was where Madam Duibhne proved most useful. Like a whirlwind, she darted about the hotel from one end to the other, cleaning and inspecting. Despite being over a month removed from the incident, she found something new. It was a most remarkable discovery in the hallway of the sixth floor. Even having observed it myself, I remain at a loss to describe it.
What Madam Duibhne detected appears to be a tear in the fabric of space and time. This is not a summary I arrive at without hesitation. When I say it was almost imperceptible, I am grossly understating that point. Having found it, Madam Duibhne had to resort to a magnifier to prove its existence to me. I doubted it until the moment I saw it, and my credulity remains weak regardless of the experience.
More importantly, Madam Duibhne found similar tears in the elevator and the lobby. I feel compelled to repeat that. She found similar tears near the other instances of genetic material. A point of clarity is necessary. When I mention that a tear appeared in the elevator, this was only true while it sat on the sixth floor. On any other floor, this was not the case.
Madam Duibhne set her staff to inspect every corner of the establishment. They found no other instances of the anomaly. Armed with this information, we invited Officer Akimasa back.
“I don’t know what you think this proves,” he said.
“Surely there is some connection to our dead guest.”
“I can’t even see those things without a microscope.”
“So you’re saying they aren’t there?”
“No, I’m saying that’s not evidence of anything.” This was a moment of great clarity for me. It was the point where I realized Officer Akimasa was not being forthcoming with us.
I would later discover that the notoriety of the Europa Arms wasn’t mere coincidence. In fact, much of it had been generated by our police liaison. Officer Akimasa was stonewalling the case to feed off of the prestige associated with it. He’d even convinced his superiors to give him a leave of absence so that he could promote his book on the subject. At that time, I didn’t think people read books any longer, much less wrote them.
I now near the end of my second Jupiter year at the Europa Arms. On Earth, that would be more than two decades. Both the mystery and the phenomena remain, unsolved and undisturbed. Guests walk by the tears in space-time without incident. Madam Duibhne periodically performs an inspection of the premises. She has yet to discover any new instances. Coincidentally, we’ve had no more mysterious deaths since that time.
In retrospect, I should amend my earlier observation. Humans have evolved, if only slightly. I offer this despite how many of the characters in this tale have proven my case. For instance, Officer Akimasa demonstrates that people are still driven by base urges. Ms Bistra shows how fear and anxiety continue to limit human growth. Madam Duibhne is evidence that it’s still best not to judge individual books by their cover. Yet each of these belie a subtle evolution in humanity. It is particularly noticeable where we have occasion to mingle with alien races.
The next time you walk past a tear in space time, or converse with a cephalopod, take time to reflect. You may discover changes in humanity that have long been underway.
This story previously appeared in Inkitt.
Edited by E. S. Foster.
C.A. Wynn is the pen name of Rich Brents, a lover of any well written literature from Shakespeare and Faulkner to Tolkien and Cormac McCarthy. When he writes, however, he usually focuses on science fiction, like his novel Outcasts of Gideon and his short story collection Far Off.