Guest Night on Union Station by E. M. Foner Page A

reservation.”
    “You see!” Daniel exclaimed, pointing as a ghostly image of his own hand blocked out a three-day section on the human calendar interface for the convention center’s reservation system and hit the “Book it now” button.
    “And here’s the second transaction, which took place just a few minutes after the first,” Libby said. This time, they watched Daniel’s fingers squeezing a 3D representation of the Galaxy room until it transformed from a full amphitheatre to a half. Then the fingers moved to the calendar and tried shrinking a day down to a half a day, but it kept springing back. Eventually, he gave up and selected “Book it now.”
    “Maybe I did take it for a full day and forgot,” Daniel admitted. “I remember I intended to reserve just the morning.”
    “And here’s the third transaction, from right after your last pre-conference meeting,” Libby informed them. This time the ghostly hand seemed to wander through the reservation system menus, searching for the right option. The three-day reservation for the Nebulae room finally appeared, and the fingers tried stretching it to cover the previous day without success. Daniel’s other hand entered the hologram, and he appeared to be trying to hold the end date of the reservation pinched with the fingers of one hand, while pulling the start date with the fingers of the other. Instead, the reservation period lengthened in the wrong direction. Next the fingers pushed the two ends back together, squeezing the date range down to nothing as he prepared to start from scratch. The hologram seemed to glitch, and suddenly the calendar showed a one-day reservation.
    “Freeze,” Donna said. “Did you see that? I think you must have accidentally brought up the other reservation by gesturing with your left hand. It’s dangerous to use both hands at the same time in these holo-systems. Continue.”
    Daniel watched in horror as he stretched the Galaxy room reservation to cover four days, and then poked the “Confirm changes,” button, apparently not taking the time to read a block of small print that popped up.
    “Freeze,” Donna said again. “Libby? Can you zoom in on the small print?”
    “Reservations for one half of the Galaxy room may not be extended beyond three human days,” Daniel read out loud. “The date range you have selected will result in your order being changed to a reservation for the whole room.”
    “I’m afraid the Dollnick was right,” Donna said.
    Daniel pulled out his tab and scrolled rapidly through his correspondence until he saw the unopened change confirmation from the Empire Convention Center. He’d been so confident in his actions that he hadn’t bothered reading the later confirmation when it arrived. Opening it now, he saw that the reservation was exactly as the holo-record had shown.
    “I can’t believe I messed this up and it’s nobody’s fault but my own,” Daniel said angrily. “I remember now that you asked me if I had confirmations for the reservations and I told you I did. I should have just let you handle it from the start.”
    “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Donna told him. “It was your first time using their reservation system. I’ve been booking rooms at the Empire for over thirty years and I still ask Libby to double-check that I get it right. It could have turned out worse, you know. You’ll just have to do everything in the Galaxy room.”
    “The central stage isn’t big enough for all the booths, and half of the delegations to this thing only come for a chance to market their products. More than half.”
    “So you’ll have to use the floor space under the seating tiers where there’s plenty of room. The delegates will probably compliment you for keeping down costs and saving them some walking.”
    “There’s meeting space under the seating? I thought it would all be taken up by stone arches.”
    “The Verlocks are the only species that uses real stone for anything on