She poured coffee at a mug. “I could be a morning person if morning happened later.”
“We could move to Mars,” he offered.
“How long are Mars nights?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes longer.”
She shook her head. “Not worth the trip. Venus?”
“Well there you’re looking at a day-night cycle of about a hundred and seventeen Earth days.”
“Now you’re talkin’. Pack your bags!”
“But there’s no colony on-”
She raised her mug in victory as she left the kitchen. “We’re movin’ to Venus!”
In another time and place his attitudes and ideas would have found a receptive audience. But as it was, he was labeled ‘the Squeamish’ and summarily expelled from the Torturers Guild in an embarrassing but physically non-hazardous ceremony which the other apprentices sardonically referred to as dis-membering. Initially disheartened – but also relieved – he went on to found a traveling school which advocated for more humane interrogation techniques always taking great pains on the lecture circuit to stop just short of boring his students to death.