“Would you like to talk?” asks Mark.

A frumpy redhead cocks her eyes up from their resting place inches off a flat screen monitor littered with busy Excel sheets and Instant Message windows.  She groans: “Is this about the SCI report, Mark? Because like just e-mail me if it’s about that. It’ll save us both time.”

Mark’s taken aback. How does he respond? ‘Would you like to talk’ is his standard pickup line; his go to ice breaker with Tali’Zorah, the violet-visored Quarin machinist he’s seduced on a nightly basis the past week, despite warnings from some of the pruder mates aboard his shuttle, Normandy.

Oh Tali. Mark hears the shuttlemen’s complaints about her: icy, dispassionate, detached. He even agrees with some to a fault. But none have had the pleasure of a Quarin in the bedroom. Their smooth lips. Those diamond eyes. The plump alien cheeks that slope outwards like miniature breasts.

He will be gladly tell his cynical crew about it with detail soon as the option’s made available on his dialogue tree.

The redhead. Crap. She’s still looking at him.

“…would…would you like to talk?”

“Oh, you just want to talk.” she says with a quiescent stir of her coffee with a licorice red pinky nail. “Okay, let’s chat.”

This is strange. She wants him to initiate? Usually Tali’Zorah launches the conversation in any number of interesting directions, each more compelling than the one before it: should we fight the Geth? can we trust Cerberus? may I unzip my space blouse?

“Unzip your blouse.”

“Excuse me.”

Fuck. Wrong choice. That’s the trouble with dialogue trees, waxes Mark’s interior monologue. Once you select a line, there’s no taking it back.

“I said, excuse me. Did you just ask me to unzip my blouse? Are you for real?”

Mark pivots on his sneakers with a loud squeak and toddles back to his desk. Maybe he should just buy the busty redhead some gifts. That seems to work in Harvest Moon.