“You must manage these messages. These are acquaintances, and they require gifts to be sent or ‘thank you’ messages to be written. Your cultural program will teach you what to give and what to write. Today you have two messages to reply to. I expect these tasks to be completed before evening. Understand?”

“I understand,” I say. I’m almost overwhelmed with the responsibility. I look at the computer and watch him leave in my peripheral vision; I’m so focused. Once he’s gone, I can’t help but wonder if I can access anything else on the computer, as other crew members can and do. I know Silvers have books and a kind of television entertainment from the Home Planet. I’d love to relax with anything like that, but at the moment, all I do is work and study. But after a minute of contemplating whether I dare to search for entertainment, I decide not to try, not on my first day anyway.

As the Commander instructed me, I can also access my language and cultural program from this computer. I study the messages he wants replying to. One should be a ‘thank you’ message for a gift sent to him. Judging by the message he received with the gift, I don’t think he knows these people well; the message seems very cold—possibly a company. The second message is a reply to a birth announcement. Again, I don’t think he knows these people well, as the message contains nothing more than the announcement of their son’s birth. There’s a picture, and I’m curious because it’s of a little Silver, but his hair is black. I thought they all would have white, blonde hair from birth, but who knew?

I access my cultural program and decide to work on the birth announcement first. I learn that the Silver culture is a patriarchal one. I almost laugh, as if I hadn’t figured that one out already, and that firstborn males are highly prized, not only to carry on the family name but it’s seen as good luck. I roll my eyes as my cultural program continues discussing the importance of male children in Silver families. None of it is that different than human society, and I wonder if there’s any life form in the galaxy that values females equally. My cultural program lists a variety of gifts that can be given for a birth announcement based on rank. This becomes particularly interesting to me because I still don’t know too much about Silver society as a whole. I assume my Commander has a very high rank to be commanding this nice ship with what I think is a small fleet. He’s definitely doing better than the farmers slash pimps I was with before. However, what I don’t know is if there’s a whole society of movers and shakers somewhere in a big cosmopolitan city on the Home Planet that are miles more important than he is. So now I have to access the cultural program about class.