From the outside Home Zone looked and felt very much like the Hildrun and I assumed the Haidea, the third of three asteroid ships in the fleet. But on closer inspection, especially inside the different shops and businesses, the modifications for this lifestyle became much more apparent.
Automation and robotics were everywhere. The Hildrun had plenty of that, but there were limits on how advanced they could become. Dependency on machines was monitored closely so humanity wouldn’t be completely helpless on a primitive world in however many generations it took to find one. The Galaxion, however, didn’t have those restrictions. Anything developed here would not be allowed to make it out.
The higher end shops around the city were staffed predominantly with uncannily life-like robots. Entire markets – cosmetics, ice cream, fresh produce, alcohol, and more – had been completely converted to vending machine operation. There were still plenty of shopkeepers and staff to support those businesses, but it was more behind-the-scenes and much less personal.
Shopkeep in particular was a much more demanding job on the Galaxion. Security was absolutely paramount. And in a world where people could shoot fire from their hands, or throw a bus a full city block, the measures they took were… extensive. When I went to buy a new jumpsuit and ballcap, the attendant was housed in a small cubicle with several layers of reinforced pyroglass and 4 different weapons were on standby suspended from the ceiling. There were also several rolled up metal shields they could deploy as needed.
We also had access to things here that we didn’t back home. Body mods were restricted to cosmetic changes or medically necessary alterations on the Hildrun. Not here. You want a few extra arms grafted to your body? If you’ve got the rev, you’ve got the gun show. Want to mount a cannon to your chest? That’ll cost ya, but you can do it. I’m pretty sure I saw someone leaving a bodega with bulbous compound eyes like a dragonfly and no one gave them a second look.
That was especially true for the sex industry. While still big business on the sister ships, the Galaxion had really upped their game. It felt like there was a brothel on every block here. The truly horrific things were still outlawed, but every reasonable, consensual kink could be catered to. There were also very few limits and an astounding amount of innovation for more … solo enterprises. It was a major selling point, in fact, for the Galaxion and it was well know that the absurdly wealthy on the Hildrun would often vacation here just to enjoy the freedom.
That was something I’d have to get used to. Moving around the city still felt familiar and comforting, but the makeup was different. Like someone had built a perfectly shaped model of my city, but used the wrong color parts. Not in a bad way. It just opened up a lot of possibilities I’d never had to consider before. It was exciting.
Directly underneath the hostel I found The Adventurer’s Boutique. From the outside it almost looked like a gift shop, but I had to remind myself that those things weren’t novelties and toys, many of them had very real power. It was definitely worth perusing.
“Smoothie section’s in the back,” a husky fellow called from his shopkeep cubicle.
“Pardon?”
“What part of that was confusing to you?” he asked. He appeared in his mid-forties, wore a plain salmon button-up, and seemed desperate to get back to whatever art project he was doodling behind his screen.
“Smoothie?” was all I answered.
“Touch your head. Touch your face. What do you feel?”
This guy was a real piece of shit, but I wasn’t in the mood to get sprayed with whatever was in those auto-cannons. “Ohhhhh. Thanks for clearing that up! If you have any other ‘smoothie’ tips, please, I’d be happy to hear them!” He didn’t answer. Apparently being helpful wasn’t on his to-do list for the day.
Regardless, I went to where he had gestured to check out the stuff that might be helpful for beginning adventurers. Making heads or tails of it all seemed too daunting at first. There were rows of tiny glass vials with different colored liquids, medieval weaponry, amulets and rings that looked like a child made them. There were also more advanced tech-based items which were even more indecipherable by appearance alone. I picked a vial off the shelf and used my Horizon to look at it.
POTION OF REGENERATION – RECOVER UP TO 50 HEALTH CAUSE BY MINOR INJURIES. WILL NOT REPAIR MAJOR INJURIES SUCH AS BROKEN OR SEVERED LIMBS.
UNCOMMON – TINY – SINGLE USE – COOLDOWN
YOU DO NOT OWN THIS ITEM. PRICE – 800 REV
Wowsers! I suppose it wasn’t bad when you think about it. 800 rev to recover more health than I currently had, but still. I replaced the vial and checked out some of the other things in this section.
RING OF STRENGTH – GRANTS PERMANENT 10% BONUS TO RAW STRENGTH SCORE.
NORMAL CROSS-BONUS TO OTHER STATS WILL NOT APPLY.
UNCOMMON – TINY – EQUIPMENT – ATTUNEMENT
YOU DO NOT OWN THIS ITEM. PRICE – 3500 REV
CUTPURSE DAGGER – ATTACKS WITH THIS WEAPON HAVE A 10% CHANCE TO RELIEVE THE VICTIM OF SOME OF THEIR REV HOLDINGS.
UNCOMMON – SMALL – WEAPON
YOU DO NOT OWN THIS ITEM. PRICE – 2250 REV
LOOKING GLASS V1.0.1 - PROVIDES LIMITED INFORMATION ON SIGHTED TARGET.
MAY BE FOOLED BY PROFESSION SPECIALTIES.
UNCOMMON – PROGRAM
YOU DO NOT OWN THIS PROGRAM. PRICE - 5000 REV
HORIZON SHIELDING V1.6 – PROTECTS THE USER FROM SOME SKIMMING DEVICES.
MAY BE BYPASSED BY PROFESSION SPECIALTIES OR SKILLS.
COMMON – PROGRAM
YOU DO NOT OWN THIS PROGRAM. PRICE – 500 REV
These items were for new people?! How could anyone afford this stuff? About the only thing I could consider was the shielding program, but I wasn’t sure what that did.
“Excuse me, sir, what are skimming devices?” The attendant just stared back at me like I’d asked him which hole food goes in.
I tried again. “Which part of that was confusing to you?”
That did it. “It’s thief hardware, smartass. Thieves can rob you just by standing near you for long enough. If you don’t have shielding, you’re even dumber than I thought.”
“Oh ok, thanks! Good to know!” I said with the biggest smile my face was capable of creating.
I went back to the ‘smoothie section’ and pick up the software license. I also barely had enough rev to grab a regeneration potion, but that’d leave me with next to nothing, and I didn’t supposed I’d need it anytime soon anyway. I grabbed 10 of them. Also 10 of the ones next to those. I also picked up the looking glass and ring and made my way to the front counter.
I piled my purchases in the safety hatch, much to the astonishment of the shopkeep. “Out of curiosity, if you’re a shopkeep in a place like this is it because you own it? Or do you just get like a commission or something? Do you like your job?” I asked while he started ringing me up.
“I own it. We’re open 5 days a week from 10 to 4,” he told me, suddenly much more helpful. “If you need anything special ordered, I can do that as well.”
“No that’s ok. Actually one sec. I just realized I’m broke as hell. Just the shielding please. Sorry about that! Guess I got a bit overwhelmed.”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Get the fuck out of my store.”
Worth it.
I did make a point of finding another shop that could sell me the shielding, though. And surprise surprise, I could get V2.0 for the same price from a software depot. Sadly, that left me with just over 900 rev to last for who knows how long. I could make it maybe a week on that if I really pushed. I’d have to suck it up and start working. But then I remembered…
Hey Oryx,
Hope you made it in ok. I think we forgot to get those
spidaur shoes from you before we parted ways.
Wanna meet up?
Roane
ALLIANCE CANCELLED BY ORYX
Oh, you’ve got to be joking. She also blocked my contact when I tried to message her again. What could I do though? I had no idea where she was, and she was clearly unstable. Who knows how much rev she just stole from me. Half of me – the spiteful, petty half - wanted to post her name on every wall in the city with “has 6 pairs of spidaur boots, only level 5”, but the other half that needed to just let it go won out. God help her if I ran in to her again, though.
Attempt #2 at my fresh start wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped. I realized that the only bright spots – clean clothes, a shower, the music in my head – had all come from Kade. I made a mental note to reach out tomorrow so I could thank him with a drink or something. Beyond that, it was best to quit while I was behind. Tomorrow could be fresh start take #3.
First thing in the morning I messaged my mentor.
Mr. Voss,
I’ll be by first thing tomorrow morning to get started.
I lost my jumpsuit in the accident. I bought another
just without the tags. Hope that’s alright. Let me know if
I need to bring anything else.
Roane
Roane!
Glad to hear it! Just make sure you have the ACS portal on
your Horizon. I’ll send you the code. We have extra jumpsuits here as well.
Maybe donuts?
Javic
I had a good feeling about this guy. I installed the ACS portal immediately with the intent to familiarize myself with it, but that proved more daunting than I anticipated. The main page tracked my current and past jobs, as well as earnings and any client comments, so that was simple. The jobs page, though, was just miles of noise. At that exact moment there appeared to be hundreds of Animal Control call-outs. Worse, they were organized by date, so contracts on the opposite side of the ship in the less populated zones clogged up the top of the queue.
SLIME NEST – MARS/Q516/JJG – MACGILL – 15000
VAMPIRIC RACCOONS – OLD WEST/NNExW/113 JAGER ST – HOSKINS – 11000
OPOSSUM – NEW HAPPELIA/ND13/2NDx15THx4THx2 – HANAMAN – 10000
ROACHES – SUBURBIA/PASADENA/1102 BILLINGS ST. - TYRANT69 – 4000
At first glance it looked like just a mess of letters sandwiched between the creature and the pay, but I quickly caught on that the middle parts were locations and who likely had made the request. Payouts were far larger than I expected, so that was nice. It was still too disorganized though, so I spent some time applying some custom filters to the list.
OPOSSUM – NEW HAPPELIA/ND13/2NDx15THx4THx2 – HANAMAN – 10000
RAT QUEEN – NEW HAPPELIA/ND17/2NDx87THx1STx1 – CARBSLAYER – 6000
FOX BATS – NEW HAPPELIA/ND01/6THx1STx7THx1 – JEMMA2 – 2500
The list had been filtered down to about 80 items organized by proximity to my current location. I hadn’t quite figured out my address, and I still needed to get some mapping software, but it was a promising start. Opening up the individual jobs usually had some extra information and sometimes a blurry capture of the creature, but there was definitely a correlation between pay rate and available information. The opossum job had just the title to go off of which seemed concerning given the high pay rate.
I also noticed some of the jobs further down had fluctuations in the pay. Or rather, every few minutes some of them would increase by 100 rev or so. Maybe the longer they sat in the queue the higher the pay? Perhaps Animal Control was more like a gig job. I decided to message Mr. Voss about it.
Mr. Voss,
I installed the portal and started to familiarize myself with it.
I noticed some jobs increase over time. Others seem to be paying
way more than I would expect. Do I get all of that rev or is it split?
Roane
Hi Roane,
We’ll go over it in depth tomorrow. You’re a contractor.
You can choose the jobs you want to take. If no one takes
them, they increase the pay up to a certain amount. 80% of the pay
is yours, the rest goes to buying supplies. I assume you mean the opossum job?
Yeah, don’t take that one. I’ll see you in the morning.
Javic
Ok so it was definitely gig style. Also, Javic didn’t expressly tell me not to take any job, just not the opossum one. The rat queen was obviously the next best option as it paid the most and was the closest to me. If a rat queen was anything like a rat king – when so many rats are in a pile that their tails get all knotted together – then I could probably handle it with gear I already had.
That niggling feeling at the base of my skull started creeping up when I thought about it. Being trapped in a place surrounded by things that wanted to eat me. Were they genetically engineered super rats? Why couldn’t this Carbslayer person just buy some glue traps and do it themselves? I caught my mind before it completely derailed and threw on a local music station and decided organizing and preparing would help keep the fear and stress out of it.
I checked my inventory to see I still had the two box traps, two grenades, a perfect match, and a peace candle. I had my clothes and food and basic gear, but that wasn’t really applicable. My gloves were still in good shape, though so that was good. I also had 940 rev for anything extra I might need, minus however much I needed to buy Kade a beer on the off chance I goobered this up. Which reminded me:
Kade,
Make it out ok? If you’re around, I’d
like to buy you a beer for helping me out.
Gonna work a job but shouldn’t take long.
Roane
He got back to me right away:
Roane,
Still waiting on discharge. But yeah,
let me know when you’re done.
Kade
The plan was in motion. It didn’t take long to figure out how to accept a job in the portal. It was just mentally acknowledging the commitment. Once confirmed, it prompted me to contact the client. I noticed it was in a special messages panel reserved for work and included a form letter and signature for me. It also automatically cc’ed the ACS hub, likely for quality control.
Good Morning Carbslayer,
I have accepted your contract for removal of your
[RATQUEEN] problem. I will be at the specified
address at 1230 if you are available. Please respond to confirm
and/or to provide further details.
Roane – Animal Control Specialist – 100073
Roane,
1230 works fine. See you then.
Thanks,
Carbslayer
Alright, I thought, all my ducks are in a row. I just needed to stop off and grab a bucket, some peanut butter, a map, and maybe some glue traps just to be safe, and a flashlight. I was able to get everything in two stops. Even better, the map software showed the place was only a few blocks away, leaving me plenty of time to stop for ramen. All in I was out 280 rev, which I’d hoped ACS would reimburse me for.
2ND x 87TH x 1ST x 1
The numbering system for units was a bit odd as everything seemed to have a corner address, but once it clicked it wasn’t so bad. Find the intersection, look at the sunward rotational block, then the third number is which floor of the structure and the final was the unit number, clockwise from the intersection. For Carbslayer I was luck as he was the first unit on the first floor. It was a ground level bakery called ‘Live, Laugh, Loaf’.
Carbslayer was more or less who I imagined once I knew he ran a bakery. The kind of heavy-set guy that was perpetually sweaty but in a way you knew half of it was because he worked hard. He was middle-aged and wore a ginormous baker hat that was the only article of clothing not dusted with flour or colored icing.
“Carbslayer,” I called with a wave. “I’m Roane, how are you.” I opted not to say where I was from, as he probably didn’t want his handful of customers hearing he had a rat problem.
“Roane, hello! I’m glad you could make it.” He rounded the display case and extended a meaty hand for me to shake.
“Sure thing. Beautiful place. It smells amazing in here, by the way. Do you make all of these yourself?”
“I have an apprentice three days a week, but yes all of the finals product and finishing goes through me before it sees the case,” He beamed.
“Pretty fortunate for me! I needed to stop for donuts anyway,” I exaggerated a friendly laugh. “But we can figure that out later. Why don’t you show me where the leak is.”
He took a beat before realizing I wasn’t a confused plumber, but snapped out of it and lead me to the back room. For all the joy the front of a bakery brings, the back brings such a conflicting warmth. The smell of fresh baked bread and pastry was mesmerizing. I tried to put that out of my head while he led me deeper in to the bakery passed dozens of roller racks and massive mixing machines. We passed a large metal walk-in refrigerator door and a wall of proofing ovens, eventually making our way to a door leading to a root cellar.
“It’s right down there. Best guess there’s about 20 rats and the rat queen. They’ve gone to town on my dry stores, and I can’t order more until they’re out of there.” He wore his frustration on his sleeve. “There’s a back door for deliveries around this corner so please use that to bring the rest of your gear in. There’s also a medium printer right next door if you need anything else. I’ll be up front.”
“Alrighty, thank you very much. I’ll take it from here!” I told him with a massive pile of false confidence. He’d made it sound like I needed a small army. The high pay combined with his presentation made me think I had bitten off more than I could chew. No turning back now.
I used the back door and printer to collect my supplies and headed back in. Armed with my flashlight and a bucket, I cracked the door and slipped inside. The lights automatically turned on and I heard the unmistakable scurry of dozens of rats looking for a hiding place.
But that isn’t what I ended up seeing. Instead, by the time I reached the landing and turned left to go down the last few steps the rats had organized. Sitting up on their back legs in two perfectly straight lines, they had formed a pathway on the stone floor from the stairs to the back wall. I inched forward step by step, ducked my head under a beam to reach the cellar, and saw how I’d fucked up.
“Whomst doth wish for an audience with the Queeeeeen?” The words came in a high squeal from a massive rat at the end of the hall. It would have stood waist height if it weren’t lazing comfortably in a throne made of sticks and garbage. The Rat Queen’s glory was complimented by a golden bejeweled crown, lush purple robe, and a 3 foot tall golden scepter topped with a huge blue orb.
“Come forth, lowly petitioner, so mine eyes might meet your own!”
