The Admin
MOTE Week 30, 2026
This week on MOTE, I was prompted by Fiona Grey, who provided me with: The unwritten rules of society were the ones she found most dangerous.
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Luna just wanted to fit in.
She wanted to be ignored, to fade into the background, to not have anyone focussing on her. What she most wanted was for no-one to ever realise that she wasn’t from around here.
She had come here as a minor administrator, working in the Colonial Office. She had intended to stay a few years, then get promoted to a role back home.
She had picked the wrong time to work on Hadrian. Within weeks of her arrival, the independence movement ceased to be a peaceful organisation. The Colonial Militia was tasked with dealing with it, but switched sides very quickly. To call what followed a war would be an exaggeration; the Augustan Empire forces on the planet and in orbit were crushed so swiftly that they barely had a chance to fight back.
The victorious Hadrianic forces then proceeded to treat the Colonial Office and any who worked for them as somewhere between criminals and traitors. Those from the homeworld who were caught were summarily executed.
All Luna could do was hide, find another place to stay, find another job, learn to speak with a different accent so that she didn’t reveal where she was from as soon as she opened her mouth, and hope that no-one ever noticed her again.
The real danger were all the unwritten rules of the Hadrianic society. Since she’d grown up on the homeworld, she didn’t know them, she naturally operated to a different set. Yet failure to respect them, even breaking them, might reveal that she wasn’t from here. And there was still a death sentence on those from the homeworld who had worked in the Colonial Office. And since they were unwritten, there was nowhere where they were written down for her to study them. Only by immersing herself in Hadrianic society could she hope to figure them out, but doing so had the potential to lead to the very thing she wished to avoid, her unmasking.
She’d found an admin job in a big local firm, and had tried to keep her head down, doing nothing to draw attention to herself.
It wasn’t easy. Various members of staff kept coming in to speak with the admin team. She did her best to be polite, and not encourage any of them. Allowing any of them to get close ran the risk of that person seeing through her and realising where she was really from.
This evening was a special one in the colonial calendar. The whole company had celebrated by going out for a meal, and now some were dancing. Luna had found a seat in the corner, and sat there, watching, talking with those who passed through, and generally trying to enjoy herself in the background.
Phil de Londres came over to keep her company. It was nice of him, but she was perfectly happy being on her own, watching, absorbing, and not making the sort of mistakes a non-native would never make.
She was polite. She liked him, but even being too close a friend with a local could be terminal. As the conversation continued, she noticed a lot of her colleagues were looking into her corner. She couldn’t help feeling that she was missing something.
“... At this stage, I would normally clear things with your father, but no-one knows where he is, nor how to contact him. So, would you be willing to sign a marital contract?”
Luna was stunned. She hadn’t expected the conversation to veer in this direction, and would have tried to divert it somewhere safer if she had. She needed to clarify the situation. “You are asking me to marry you, to become your wife?”
He smiled. “Of course. There’s nothing I would wish more.”
“There is something you should know first.” She’d lowered a voice, but how on the homeworld was she going to explain that she was under a death sentence without actually sending herself to the gallows? But she had to make the attempt. Phil was too nice a man, she couldn’t accept his proposal without warning him that she might be executed any day.
“Something about where you’re from, no doubt.” He too spoke softly, and smiled again. “We all know you’re from some other solar system. It isn’t too difficult to spot, I’m afraid. I don’t care which one, and once we’re married, no-one else will. There’s an archaic law that really should be changed, but is extremely useful in this situation. It states that any who marries a man from Hadrian is deemed thereafter to be of Hadrian, and no-where else.”
“I can’t marry someone just to make my life safer. It wouldn’t be fair on you.”
“No, and if you were the sort of woman who I thought would do that, I wouldn’t have asked for your signature.”
She couldn’t marry someone to remove the death sentence from around her neck. But the law meant that she could marry a Hadrianite. The question was then, was Phil de Londres the sort of man that she would have married if she were not fearing for her life? Was he the sort of man that she could forward to a happy life with? And the answer was simple. “Yes, I will sign the marital contract.”
Phil moved in and hugged her, and then kissed her on the cheek, a very rare gesture that she had virtually never seen in public on Hadrian. It clearly showed everyone else what her answer had been, for there were plenty of broad smiles on onlookers’ faces.
She was now the centre of attention, and would be for the rest of the evening. Surprisingly, she didn’t care all that much.
She would soon be the centre of attention in her plain white dress, or whatever they used for a bridal gown on Hadrian – she should probably adhere more to local customs than to those of the homeworld, even under the circumstances – but she didn’t seem to care that much about that either.
Suddenly, during the course of one conversation, she had gone from having a sword of Damocles hanging over her head permanently to having a long happy future on the planet where she was now permanently resident.
—
My offering this week went to nother Mike.
Join us over at MOTE, read what everyone else produces over the week, and even join in if you’re that way inclined. I’m looking forwards to reading all the responses.