Through the other side, there's an empty hotel lobby in a twining red rose pattern, all gleaming mahogany and polished fixtures. A letter is sitting on the front desk.

She strides swiftly up with a curious swish, reaching out to pluck the letter from the elegant countertop and read it.

Dear Sable Douglas, 

Welcome to the Rose Bowers. You have room number nine. The wards are keyed to your presence, so no key is necessary. Enjoy your stay. 

She nods to herself, that's simple enough. Hallway-ward she goes, eyes flitting across everything she passes, until here's room nine. She's really doing this. She takes a steadying breath, puts her hand on the doorknob, and then in she goes.

A good-sized hotel room lies on the other side of the door, with a king-sized bed, a couch and a television, and a small table in the center of the room stylized to look like an unfolded rose. Atop the table is another sealed letter, a small box of chocolates, a hairbrush, a tablet showing the Bowers' rose logo, and a large booklet open to an double-page advertisement for a "Club Coze" with a small inset for "Club Farseek". An advertisement for an escort is tucked in; it shows a pink, semitranslucent woman with a big smile and a gooey consistency.

Sable steps slowly inside, taking everything in, and closes the door behind her. She sets her backpack down on the floor, puts her drink and purse on the table, and sits heavily down onto the couch.

Her mind flits instinctively to work. Do the changes she made to the fate scanner's code work for the new batch of refugees? Is everyone getting placed in neighborhoods where they'll feel safe and grow? Can James handle the hiccups in testing and integrating her upgrades to the Graph's inference engine? Will everything be alright for that one family of —

No. Stop.

Everything is going to be fine. Chief promised that the team would be okay for two weeks and no refugees would fall through the cracks. James can damn near run the interpersonal-logic parts of the Graph on her own brain, so she'll be able to handle triple-checking and then live-testing Sable's upgrades. For the next two weeks she's off-duty.

She's... done. There is absolutely nothing she needed to fix, no crisis left in reach. Her breath catches in her throat.

All those late nights coding, all those frantic calls tracking down someone to add another hab last minute, all the interviews with families to make sure the systems could handle their particular edge cases (case coverage takes on a whole new meaning when the edge cases are people's lives), the nerve-wracking meeting pitching the Graph to the Chief's boss, it's all done for now. She can stop. There's no work for her to do.

Why are her eyes so blurry? She blinks, and something wet rolls down her cheek. Is... is she crying? Her breath hitches again, and a sob spills from her lips.

Oh.

She sniffles, clutches one of her tails to her chest, buries her face in the soft fur, and wraps the other two tails tightly around herself. Her shoulders start to shake, and a sob-wracked whine builds in her throat.

She has no idea how to be done. How to trust that things will be okay without her constantly making sure.

She scoots back into the corner of the big couch and tucks her knees in close to her chest, rocking with the sparking electric rush across her nerves, tears pouring down her cheeks, shaking with sobs and hiccups.

Her thoughts curl inward and turn sharp — she's not needed, she's not helping, there's no work to do, no fires to put out. She can't fix anything, can't save anyone, can't work can't serve can't be enough. She's useless here.

She clenches her fist and pounds it against her thigh, muffling a frustrated scream through gritted teeth. Why can't she be good enough not to need a break? Pounds her fist again. Why can't she keep going? Pound. Why can't she be good?

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Sobbing and sniffling, she rocks in place, little screams wringing out of her with ever swing forward. She's a wreck. She had to be ordered to take a break and she can't even let go. She's just going to keep going and going until she falls over and has to be put back together by professionals who have better things to do with their time than waste it on her.

She squeezes herself smaller, screams worn down to whines. Her nails dig into her palms. She rocks, and rocks, and rocks, and sobs. Her heart pounds in her ears and her skin stings and burns.

Why? Why!? Why-why-wHy-why-why-WhY-whyy!?

Why can't there just be a simple action? Simple "next right thing"? She doesn't know how to have a vacation! What the fuck was Chief thinking, telling her to take a break?

Her skin is thrumming. She's practically vibrating. Every nerve feels like it's full of static, and every muscle feels like it's being dragged through tar.

What if they miss someone? What if someone gets placed in the wrong community, or misses out on an opportunity that would've fulfilled them? Missing even just one would be awful. Every single refugee counts. How many times has she said it? "You count too." Every single one is desperately important, every single life is a story of its own.

The thrumming energy tightens in her jaw and her arms.

She knows she's told them all about this. They all get it; it's why they're all in Refugee Services in the first place. James definitely knows. She can recall sitting across from her over lunch, explaining why she says it. That the worlds are all so broken and keep teaching people they don't matter. Remembers the way her face lit up, the way she understood it so easily. Remembers what she said nex—

Oh.

"Someone needs to tell you that," James had said.

She freezes. The thrumming electric tension rises to a taut peak across her body.

This is because they do get it, isn't it? They're trying to preserve her while they've still got her, keep her from burning out entirely. Something might get missed while she's gone, but... they'll lose more if she pushes too hard and starts fucking it up.

Oh this is going to suck.

She sniffles hard, tries to unclench, hiccups into another round of sobbing. She's gotta accept that losses while she's gone are the cost of preventing losses from not leaving.

Ow. That's... That really feels like it's her fault. That just wrenches to admit. Feels like a cold hollow torn open in her gut.

She tries to unclench again, has some success.

The thrumming across her skin fades a bit.

She can hear sounds other than the rushing of her own blood, other than the crackling screams in her throat. There's a soundscape playing: waves washing up against a seaside cliff, and heavy rain.

Well, she'd better actually consider her options if she's going to try to do this "vacation" thing...

She takes a long, ragged, rattling sigh, and gradually evens her breathing out, forcing each breath to be a little slower than the last.

She sits up, slowly, and grabs a tissue from the box that apparently showed up on the table while she was bawling. Wipes off her face, blows her nose, grabs a fresh tissue and dries her eyes.

And she spots the booklet, and the included advertisement, and blushes.

She sighs, shakes her head at herself, and reaches for the letter, carefully unsealing it.

Dear Sable Ellen Douglas, 

It's not often I write to someone who I knew of before their file crossed my desk. 

Let's set aside, for the moment, everything you've done for the teeming multitudes of people from Skanthivus and worse. Let's talk about this place. The Bowers. Near and dear to my heart. 

Your code is running here, too. It's not a total replacement for what we had before, but your brilliant mind has improved the partner matching and the logistical routing and a dozen other smaller things besides. In small ways, perhaps, but a small number times seventy five billion people per year is beyond the capacity of most people to dream. Don't worry about QA: I personally vetted the modifications.

Because some things are important.

You, Sable Ellen Douglas, are important.

Let's do that fermi estimate, shall we? Let's conservatively assume one minute's efficiency per visitor per year. Times seventy five billion visitors. Divide by sixty for hours. Divide by twenty-four for days. Divide by three hundred and sixty five for years. The answer comes out at 142,694 years saved per year. 

Now you may ask me, "Sunaira, what are you doing with your 142,694 years saved per year?" Well, that's a bit complex. I'm already holding the Bowers as closely as I can without breaking it, so you won't see much effect on the guests. The added efficiency is tiny in percentage terms - less than a thousandth of a percent - so you could be forgiven for thinking that it doesn't really matter. How it comes out is in resource uses. 

What this actually means is that eighty-three of my oldest traffic controller machines - which are still very sound hardware, just not the newest shiniest thing - were retired from active duty on the computer cluster yesterday. Each of them used to run a single instance of the Rosethorn Hotel. 

Those eighty-three traffic controllers went to a number of places. The worst-aged of the lot - fifteen of them - were sent to refugee worlds that are already well established, to serve light duty as teleportation controllers for growing cities. Most of them - 58 - were sent for heavier duty in temporary refugee routing and housing areas, taking the load of stabilizing mass gates between universes. The ten best were assigned to a refugee extraction team yesterday morning and have already been used to evacuate 257,000 people directly from crisis situations. I could say "we got a city the size of Earth's Reno out from under Tyranid infestation that we otherwise wouldn't have", but of course it's messier than that, pieces and fractions of many smaller locations on a particular planet in the hot zone. 

The work goes on, as it always does. 

You have to ask yourself: Why, then, the Rose Bowers at all? Why is all this equipment tied up making a paradise when it could be actively saving people? 

And the answer is people like you, who are worth 257,000 people saved each day (I laughably underestimate) plus efficiencies, forever and ever until the OTC dies or we win for good. Why on earth do you think you have an immortality policy, darling? 

The Bowers exists so that people like you don't forget what they're fighting for. Because we need to be responsible enough to strive for what we should do, and not for what we merely can manage. A world where people are allowed to rest, and be themselves, and - not to put too fine a point on it - fuck every once in a while. 

I hereby entrust to you the sacred and heavy responsibility of having the best time you can possibly have while you're here. Not to worry, we've got a whole team on this. Just like all the people you helped. 

Odd, isn't it, to have the shoe on the other foot?

- Sunaira

P.S. Don't forget to eat.

She doesn't move at all, for a long moment.

What did she just read? Did the Goddess Sunaira write her a personal letter? Did her boss³, the multiversal director of OTC humanitarian outreach, personally explain her impact and value?

The tears have started up again, she feels them rolling down her cheeks. She reaches up to wipe them away, and realizes that her mouth is hanging open in shock.

When she closes it, she finds herself smiling — a vulnerable, hopeful smile that comes with a warmth in her chest and more of these gentle tears.

She rereads the letter, taking deep breaths and letting it sink in. She's done well. She did a lot of good. Sunaira said so.

She did some good. She's good.

Wow.

Sunaira assigned her to have fun, eh? Told her to have "the best time [she] possibly can" here.

She starts to grin a little. Okay then.

Then her eyes catch the postscript, and she chokes on a gasp, a brilliant violet blush coloring her pale cheeks.

Um.

And then she collapses into teary, blushy giggles. Guess she should've expected Sunaira to be able to land a triple-entendre on her in a compassionate personal letter...

She shakes her head, the giggles slowly subsiding, and carefully folds the letter back up, tucking it into the envelope, and then carefully into a pocket inside her notebook to keep it safe, and then puts that back in her backpack.

She plucks her Latias plushie from the backpack, while she's in there, and hugs it tightly, taking a few deep breaths and grinning. Then she shifts the plush into just her left arm, and returns her attention to the table.

First she picks up the tablet, taps the power one-handed, and sets it on her lap. It opens to a selection of different teas, with an elegant filter to narrow what she was looking for — calming, motivating, citrus...

The first suggestion is a blood orange and ginger tea, lightly caffeinated, and spiked with aphrodia essence. Sable grins blushily, sighs, and orders it, along with some crunchy pretzels covered in dark chocolate from the snack menu.

Her order appears smoothly on the table in the space between moments, the tea steaming faintly in a gold-glazed ceramic mug, and the pretzels in a reclosable bag. She sets aside the tablet and picks up the tea, taking a deep breath of the aroma — citrusy, tangy, with subtle scents she's not familiar with yet. That's probably the aphrodia.

She breathes slowly there for a few beats, savoring the warmth and the smell, before taking a cautious sip.

It's just the right temperature, not quite hot enough to hurt her lips or tongue, and has a faint spicy tang — not the usual black tea she's had before, it seems — and a peaceful warmth flows through her body as she sips. Her shoulders loosen a bit, over several swallows, and the raw feeling in her throat from crying eases. An eager peace settles in her limbs, spreading from a deep warmth in her throat, her gut, and pooling in her cunt.

She blushes, and squirms just a bit. That'll take some getting used to, but she thinks she likes it.

Another few sips, and she leans over to take a look at the booklet.

The double-page spread advertises Club Coze as "a laid-back space to meet other Bowersgoers in a cozy, fun environment." There's a schedule of events for the day that lists candlelight dinners, open tabletop gaming, public cuddlepiles, and other such soft pursuits.

The inset for Club Farseek advertises it as "The novelty-seeker's club where you could meet the love or your life or just someone - or a couple someones - for the night! Live music, arcade corner, full bar, always bustling." No table of events - maybe there's not space for it in the inset. 

The tucked-in escort avertisement is mostly taken up by the large, glossy photo of a pink slimegirl. She's only not baring everything because her body currently has barbie doll anatomy. "Mayu Nuru", the advertisement says. "Selected just for you from the Bower Escorts! Connect now on the Bowers Contact App! (See your phone or room tablet.)"

Sable swallows hard, looking Mayu Nuru's picture up and down, then looks back at the Club Coze schedule with a renewed blush, biting her lip and grinning lopsidedly. She absently makes sure the Bowers app is on her phone while she reads.

Rotating 24-hour schedule, subject to change; all event themes available on demand, speak to a staff member for specific bookings. 

The schedule lists light trance music in the mornings, followed by pet therapy, then a smooth jazz lunch, book club, open gaming time, candlelit dinners, then a series of evening cuddlepiles, one of which is called out specifically as a trans and intersex cuddlepile. Much of the schedule is left as simply "open use."

Those look like some nice options, she thinks. What's "pet therapy", though? Play with pets, or get petted? Play with petgirls? She blushes a bit more. Probably people variously distributing petting other people and being petted, based on who's gonna benefit most from which.

She sets the tea down and runs a hand over one of her ears, sighing warmly and smiling a bit wider. It's been a long while since anyone scritched her. Be pretty great if that's what the pet therapy turned out to be.

A glance at her phone tells her there's a good while left before pet therapy. She sighs softly. This has been a very raw start to her stay, but an important one probably. She probably needs to rest after all this. She pushes the booklet aside, picks back up her tea, and leans back, squeezing her plushie and sighing.

There are plenty of worse things than being an emotional mess of a foxgirl, she supposes. And this tea is pretty good. She takes another sip and smiles, wriggling a bit contentedly.

She reaches out and grabs the bag of pretzels, a soft smile playing across her face, and opens it. The smell of dark chocolate fills the air, and shoe pops one into her mouth. Crunch. Her eyes flutter closed; a gentle sigh slips out as she savors the contrast between salty pretzel and rich chocolate.

Yum. She eats another, salty-savory crunch of the pretzel washing through her mouth on the solid support of the intense chocolate. Then another. Her world simplifies: tangy tea and rich chocolate and salty pretzel and crashing waves. She sighs again, a soft, satisfied, slightly moaning sigh, as she gradually finishes both tea and pretzels over the next few minutes.

She stretches cutely, squeaking a bit, then kicks off her shoes and stands up. Her tails swish behind her as she considers what to do next. Best freshen up if she's going out, she figures. She tugs her blouse over her head, burgundy fabric pooling on the couch when she tosses it aside. The light and airy black skirt swiftly follows, once she unhooks the bit that hooks around the base of her tails. Basic black bra and panties follow after that, leaving her naked save for the hourglass pendant around her neck, which winds up on the table.

She pads daintily into the bathroom, looking around curiously.

There's a large jacuzzi bath on one side, with a showerhead above, and a counter with a sink and another spread flower, this one with lavender shampoo and soap and conditioner. There's a broad brush with stiff bristles and a smaller brush with soft, wide-set bristles and a small bottle of deep violet nail polish with a built-in applicator in the neck.

Her eyes widen as she takes in the array of care products. She's heard that the Bowers can do product recommendations and cover anything you might need, but it's another thing to see it in action. That's even the uncommon wide-bristled brush she uses for her curls, she realizes, marveling at the smaller one. And what a perfect color for her nails! She just sighs contentedly at the lavender aroma from the soap and hair products.

A quick twist to the faucet starts the water running, piping hot from the first drop, and she adjusts it for a moment until the temperature is just a little bit short of painful, then switches it to the showerhead. The spray is strong, just the way she likes it, and every drop seems to fall faster the closer it gets to the edge of the tub, not a bit of water escaping. That handled, she fetches a washcloth from a shelf and then steps in.

The rush of steam inside the shower wards softens and soothes her lungs immediately, clearing up the lingering rawness from her sniffling and crying earlier. She stands there for a long moment, savoring the bracing spray on her face and chest, and then starts scrubbing. Face, neck, shoulders, arms, chest, and on she goes, slowly and peacefully washing every inch of her body, taking a little extra time on her breasts, and the folds of her sex.

Her body clean, she wrings out the washcloth and drapes it over the faucet before picking up the shampoo. She squirts a generous helping into her palm and starts tenderly massaging it into her tails, one at a time. She carefully scrubs all nearly-four feet of soft fur, and then gently rinses. Then she does the same with the conditioner, slowly working it into every bit of her fur, and leaves it in for now. Another handful of shampoo — that lavender scent really is a nice touch — and she starts washing her hair and the soft fur of her ears, carefully working through the whole length of her pink curls, and brushing them with the soft-bristled tangle brush. Rinse, then conditioner slowly and tenderly goes in with another brushing and stays in.

Finally, she rinses the conditioner out of her tails and switches the water flow from the showerhead back down to the main faucet, and stoppers the tub. She sits down in the tub and leans back, hot water gradually rising up her body, and eventually stretches out to turn off the water with a foot once the water's up to her neck.

She reaches out a hand and turns on the jets of the jacuzzi, sags against the wall of the tub, and sighs contentedly, her eyelids drifting closed as she savors the peaceful soak.

The jets of the tub gradually massage out the tension in her muscles, stress melting away in the hot water. She soaks and rests, her tails floating gently at the surface of the water, the lavender scent soothing her mind.

Eventually, though the jets seem to be continually warming the water back up, she nods to herself and scoots forward a bit, dunking her head below the surface and rinsing the conditioner out of her hair and fur. She rises into a crouch and then stands up, flicking a tail forward to unstopper the tub as she goes, a peaceful smile on her face. She reaches out to pluck a sinfully soft towel from the shelf, and gently dries herself off, taking care to get every bit of dampness out of the inside of her ears, softly scrunching and blotting her curls, and slowly wringing down the length of her tails, as well as drying every bit of skin. Finally she steps out, drying each foot as she does so, and then hangs up the towel.

She sits down on a little stool near the sink and starts carefully painting her nails, marveling at how the polish dries instantly, and taking care to get everything neat and smooth. First her toes, then her fingernails, slowly and patiently. On her right ring finger, though, she fumbles it a bit and gets a bit of the edge of her finger, just past her nail. To her delighted surprise, the mistake evaporates over the next second or so, leaving her skin neat and clean.

Then she bounces to her feet and steps back out into the main room to get dressed, picking up the tablet to take a look at her options.

The Bowers flashes up an outfit recommendation for her on the screen, showing her all dressed up. It's simple and casual, if a bit daring; a thigh-length black skirt, a midriff-baring black tee that hugs her breasts tight (with a picture of vampire fangs on it) and heavy black combat boots with big snappy buckles and tall black-and-purple striped thighhighs. She's also got a couple black rings on her fox ears, and her bare midriff exposes a tattoo on her lower belly, of a violet heart with a trail of black ink dripping down beneath her skirt.

Above her image are three buttons, labelled "edit clothing", "edit lingerie", and "edit bodyart". To the right, there's a menu displaying a number of other graphic tops in thumbnail - mesh arms, entirely mesh, with the Bowers' blackberry logo, etc. Tabs on the top offer "bottoms" and "footwear" and "accessories", along with a few other categories; along the bottom there's a header with the legend "Describe your ideal outfit" and a text box to type in.

Nnwhat?! That is a lot more daring than she planned on. She's got the body for it, now, at least, but... wow. This is the Rose Bowers, though. If she's not going to wear daring outfits here, will she ever?

A blush colors her pale cheeks. If she's going to be risking flashing her panties from twirling too hard then she'd better make sure they're cute, at least. She taps the lingerie tab to see what the tablet is suggesting there.

Her fascimilie's clothing melts away, revealing a strappy black-and-violet bra and a matching pair of side-tie panties with little bows at the hip. With this view it's very apparent that the heart-and-ink tattoo makes a trail down from beneath her navel directly to her sex. The right-hand panel shows various other panties on the same theme - something strappier that matches the top a little more closely, a simple striped one that matches her thighhighs better, a more practical pair of black boxer briefs...

She swallows hard, briefly tempted to pick the boxer briefs, but shakes her head, her expression blushy but firm. If she gives in to the urge to be secretly boring now, how long before she gives up on something else? Will she start dyeing the pink curls her True Persona gave her basic black? Plus, she's looks so hot in the picture. If she hadn't seen some of the code herself at work, she'd wonder if the tablet was enhancing her looks. The Bowers are above such lies, too.

If she abstracts the question away from being her, what looks cutest? What looks right? She tries out the various options — and gradually relaxes into thinking of the picture as being of her again — eventually deciding that the little bows on the first set just make her feel cute to imagine.

She gulps again and orders the whole outfit.

The outfit appears on her bed, all neatly laid out; top and skirt to the left, bra and panties (bows already all done up) and stockings to the right. The boots appear on the floor beneath, clasps open to recieve her feet. 

There's also a little pulse of warmth against her ear and below her navel. Bodyart Applied, flashes the tablet. Would you like a mirror? Yes/No

What, already? Those little flashes of warmth? She should've tried modern bodyart magitech sooner! Yes, she taps. Yes, she would like a mirror. Getting dressed can wait; she needs to see this.

A full-length mirror appears a few strides away from the bed, showing her in all her nudity. It's the spitting image of her from the tablet; the black rings gleam dully in her ears, and the inky heart perches neatly above her sex.

Sable gasps, blushes, and grins. Her tails swish back and forth behind her as she checks herself out. She reaches up to run her fingers along the edges of her ears, giggling as the rings tug at her sensitive ears. Wow, those are actually pierced! She slides her hands down her body, stopping to give her perky tits a squeeze, violet nipples crinkling up with the cool air and the attention. She slides her hands lower, tracing across the ink now coloring her bone-pale skin. It's perfectly smooth, no inflammation at all, and every color is vivid, every line crisp.

She grins wider. Modern magitech is so great.

Why did she wait so long to try this? Sure it's not *free* outside the Bowers, but she gets paid pretty damned well. Probably nerves and self-esteem issues. She shakes her head a bit at that, smile turning a little sad for a moment.

This art though! It's so great! Are there other options? What is she thinking, this is the Rose Bowers, of course there are other options.

She grabs the tablet again and takes a look.

The tablet opens to the bodyart catalog, currently selecting "pelvis". The violet heart and ink tattoo is shown, with a little dropdown menu of variations - dragon wings curled around the heart, overflowing violets surrounding it, a cage of a circuitboard pattern that apparently glows purple, additional scattered hearts in a diffuse cloud, inkdrops that are themselves heartshaped, a purple rose holding the heart with a ring of thorns, elaborate inkswoops and flourishes surrounding it... 

All of them seem to follow a general pattern of the central violet heart with elaborations, generally in a particular winglike form that, once you see a dozen variations of it, is clearly reflecting the shape of a uterus and ovaries. There's a list of selected tags to the right: "Stylized Womb", "Color: Violet", "Color: Black", "Enclosed Heart", each with a little x next to it to remove it, and an empty space to write in new tags. 

"Meep!" She blushes bright violet. Um. She squirms in place for a few beats, tails lashing with embarrassment. She takes a deep breath, then nods. No, skipping out on turning her heart tattoo into a stylized womb is not going to turn her boring. She switches the view to recommendations for arm designs.