Fang followed along, content to be with her, always managing to stay tucked just inside her shadow. A trace of mist flowed behind the youngster every time it moved.
“We’re done early for the day,” Jordan said.
Fang blurbled and made excited sounds.
“We’ll take another walk later.”
She returned to the cabin. She brought Fang into its room. She led it to the side of an unused bed. Fang nudged up next to her. She ran her fingers along the rough, lumpy skin of Fang’s head. The texture underneath the layer of vapor felt surprisingly dry and warm, like touching freshly baked bread recently out of the oven. Wispy folds and eddies of Fang’s personal fog bank followed the movement of her fingers. She continued to probe about. There. She felt a short, hard spine in the skin. She began to worry it between her thumb and middle finger. It began to come apart, the flaky exterior giving way to a node of moist flesh underneath that laid flat once freed from the shell. Fang murmured a low chirp of contentment. Jordan had preened a dozen similar growths in the past day. The nodes would increase Fang’s size by half in a month if they continued to appear at this rate. She had checked the Galactic Commons species cyclopedia and saw that this was, indeed, normal for a cyclopean, tentacled, toothy floating prune with a vapor cloud.
The article entry also said that the preening wasn’t necessary, as the spiny crust around the new nodules would fall away on its own, but the little creatures found the attention most enjoyable.
“Nap time for you,” Jordan said.
Fang murmured, whistled, and let out a low warble when Jordan discontinued her ministrations.
Jordan pulled the tentacle wrapped around her wrist free and dropped it to the floor. The limb began to tentatively move towards her again. She raised a warning finger.
“No. Nap. Now. We’ll play later this afternoon.”
The tentacle withdrew. Fang settled onto the floor. It wouldn’t actually use the bed or the extra blankets or the pillow but would sit in place until waking. What Jordan found most interesting was that its one eye would stay open while asleep. It reminded her of the creepiest doll she had owned as a child, the one she would have to cover with a blanket at night lest the demonic thing attack her as she slept. But when Fang kept its eye open, she found it adorable.
“See you later.”
She backed out of the bedroom and closed the door.
The window at the end of the hallway was bright with the reflections of daylight. Yet Jordan yawned, stretched, and wished she had gone to bed earlier the night before. She wanted a nap of her own.
One of her apps gave her a ping. She had turned off push notifications that prodded her that there was knowledge to be had, tasks to be managed, and games to be played. Yet here was a message from her current game piped directly into her brain.
“Log in!” the message read. The actual game wouldn’t send anything so rude and abrupt. The message had no user tag to identify who might have sent it. Whoever it was knew a workaround that bypassed her own user settings.
“Shannanon,” Jordan whispered and smiled.
She went into the kitchen. Lunch first.
The machine that printed food wasn’t too different from an Earth coffee machine in appearance and ease of use. A block of raw material went in the top. Down below would come out most anything programmed. The taste would be really good, she supposed, if she were one of three hundred species for whom this model of printer could make food. Human recipes hadn’t been added. But enough creatures ate basic grain, fruit, and vegetable products, and a few of the stews turned out to be good enough that she would have them a second time. She scrolled through an app, looking at the thousands of possible foodstuffs she had yet to try. While she browsed, she began printing something akin to a pear for later.
The machine started to make a bubbling sound like a child blowing air through a straw into a glass of milk. An imperfectly round purple fruit appeared in the receptacle at the bottom of the machine and a soft chime sounded. The machine flashed a red light indicating it was out of matter.
Jordan felt overwhelmed by the many options. Her stomach growled. She stopped and selected the first main entree that wouldn’t make her sick.
Fomalhaut cat chow. She almost kept scrolling until she read the description. It was seven types of nuts, shredded spicy pepper slaw, and some kind of citrus juice, all heated, and served warm. The reviews gave it seven stars across most species. Interestingly, no Fomalhaut cats chimed in. Perhaps the name was idiomatic. It didn’t matter. She would try it. She went into the cupboard and got down a brown cube. She would have to shop soon to restock the cabin’s larder. Whoever had been the prior caretaker hadn’t left enough for a prolonged stay by a hungry human and her adopted ward. She took the fruit from the printer, inserted the cube, and set a bowl into the bottom of the machine, then activated her app. The printer made more sounds as it prepared her lunch.
She sniffed the pear. It had little fragrance. One complaint she’d read about this particular brand of food printer was its inability to properly mimic food aroma. She took a bite. Sweet, but the lack of smell reminded her of much of the produce in an Earth grocery store. There was a reason so many member races of the Commons bothered to import food or grow their own. She set the fruit on the counter and waited for the bowl to fill.
***
Fomalhaut cat chow would no longer be served at court or at Jordan’s ranger cabin in Spice Valley Galactic Commons Park. The taste wasn’t bad, reminding her of corn nuts mixed with coleslaw with a shot of grapefruit juice poured on top. But the crushing case of gas that followed had to be felt to be believed. It was as if the meal had spawned a constrictor snake in her belly, an evil cousin of Kaa that made her wish that she had opted for the crushed grain porridge or something equally bland and harmless.
She found the first aid kit in her ranger gear and popped a sour tummy capsule. She would need to order more of these, as she only had one capsule left of a bottle of fifty. The little nanobots went to work, finishing whatever her aching stomach couldn’t handle. She felt better in moments, never mind the knowledge that soon bad winds would follow.
Adopted alien son put to bed? Check. Violent gastric episode averted? Check.
She sent a message through her game app. “Hey Shannanon. Logging in now.”
Jordan felt warm, well fed, and ready to play. She was pleased to learn, upon logging in, that her Ecto avatar also felt rested and didn’t need to eat, as Jordan had fed it three nodes of mushrooms before logging out the previous night. A full stomach meant she could focus on being a noob-whomping, corpse-camping, one-woman gankfest, the scourge of the zone for both Mesos and Endos alike. She had scored seven kills during her last play session, and six more on the same respawning fool who continued to rez in the same locale.
She wanted to get back to the action, but Shannanon sent her a ping to meet up in the lobby.
Shannanon waited for her at the edge of a crowd of other avatars. She was an extra-tall, triple-thin wisp of an Ecto who packed a pair of pistols, an alien Barbie doll straight out of a spaghetti western. She had a nervous twitch add-on that caused her to randomly pull one pistol from its holster and give it a twirl.
“Took you long enough,” Shannanon said.
“I had work and needed to eat. Besides, it’s the middle of the day. Let’s get out of here and go kill stuff. I don’t have that much time.”
“Maybe later. Hey I wanted to show you something. It’s a new game I stumbled upon that sounds like something we might like. I was going to check it out and I want my best friend there to play with.”
“But I like this game.”
“The new one’s free.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“This one’s going to be big. We’ll be the first to get in. We’ll have a hand in its development. Come on, Jordan. I didn’t know humans had become cowards since the invasion.”
Jordan shot her a gesture of three raised fingers. Shannan
on responded in kind. They both laughed.
“No humans here,” Jordan said. “We’re Ectos, put on this hallowed ground to stomp Endo and Mesos.”
“Yawn. So stale. So yesterday. We can always come back here. This game isn’t going anywhere unless the NEW GAME TURNS OUT TO BE TOTALLY AWESOME AND NO ONE WILL WANT TO PLAY THIS TIRED OLD SIM.”
Half of the avatars in the lobby were staring at them. The other half must have been AFK.
Others started shouting too. Avatars were yelling for people to pipe down and shut up. These, in turn, were told to be quiet and keep it to themselves. Soon the lobby was filled with screaming Endos, Mesos, and Ectos.
Jordan had met Shannanon on her first night staying in the guest dorms. In real life, Shannanon was nothing like her game avatar. She reminded Jordan of an orangutan with four emerald eyes. Jordan had gone out with her numerous times, each outing taking Jordan to a lower level of the city she would never have found on her own. Shannanon seemed to know everyone at the various dives and party lounges. At one particular dark corner of the Galactic Commons, Jordan had engaged in a drinking challenge, which turned out to be a “let’s see how much alcohol the human can consume before it passes out or dies” game. Shannanon had interrupted the competition and spirited Jordan back to her dorm, much to the irritation of the bar patrons placing bets on Jordan’s ability to withstand another flight of fermented beetle juice shots.
Jordan sent Shannanon a private message. “I’ll think about it.”
Shannanon made a pouty face and logged out. Her avatar vanished soon after, dropping through an invisible portal to the game’s backstage area. Jordan left the lobby and went to find a zone with some action.
CHAPTER 7
Oliop tried to concentrate on his work. He fidgeted with his tools and the disassembled elevator parts, moved from one unfinished task to another, and examined the punch list. Nothing had been completed yet. Each task spawned a dozen more. He looked at one of the broken circuit boards smashed on the floor. This was the one he had accidentally flung at his human sidekick.
He added “Recast Circuit Board” to the list of tasks.
He sat at his workbench and stood up a line of plastic fusing bolts. He then knocked them down one at a time with a screwdriver’s handle. He put his head down and tried to take a nap. In spite of having been up all night he wasn’t tired.
He left the shop and took an elevated tram for a long ride. Even the variety of Galactic Commons citizens that got on and off with each stop couldn’t hold his interest. After a while, he got off at a random stop and went shopping.
The walk-in tool kiosk was automated, with scanning eyes fixed in each interior corner and electromagnetic tracking microdots placed on all of its merchandise. The eyes followed Oliop as he ambled through the aisles. The array of hand tools on display was immense, made larger by a conveyor system and printing matrix that could produce any permutation of tool on hand, finely adjusted for grip measurements and job purpose. Tools also could be colored and scented to suit the customer’s preference.
Oliop perused the dozens of demo models, running fingers along some, poking others, and actively testing a few. He settled on a row of microfusers laid in a row on a tray. These could join the smallest chains of matter together, bonding molecule to molecule as if they were always one. Some had software interfaces; most were designed for bots. Oliop settled in on the few that were for manual use. One tool with a bright blue handle caught his eye. He considered it, stroked its handle. This one was marked down, on sale, a close-out, priced below a single pink jackfruit from his homeworld, and an absolute bargain.
Four tiny insects entered the kiosk behind Oliop, one on point, two behind, and the last walking tail-end Charlie, all close together yet none touching. They each moved with a ground-humping vibrating motion, an unnatural hop that sent each machine skittering forward. They broke their diamond formation and spread out to the four corners of the kiosk. Once at the corners, they climbed.
Oliop paid the insects no mind. His complete focus rested on the microfuser with the blue handle. He held it close to his eyes. He sighted down its length. He tested its balance on a finger and its weight in his hand. He turned it on. The tool produced no noise and no heat at this setting. Under a magnifier, the fusing blade would be visible. Oliop trusted it was there. Then he put the tool down and picked up another one, less elegant in hand feel, a grey invention of a pragmatist with no sense of beauty in the design. This one he flicked on as well. He applied the blade of invisible flame to its discounted tray mate, a quick passing of the tip across the blue-handled fuser. Oliop next put the grey tool back and moved along. He turned around to examine the kiosk’s other offerings.
His bushy mustache twitched. His furry face scrunched up as he browsed.
Meanwhile, the insects had finished their climb. They stood in their respective corners, high on the kiosk walls, and did their little push-ups. Oliop didn’t look up at them. His tail dusted the tray of microfusers at his rear. He finished his circuit of the store. Upon exiting, he scratched his ear. The bugs dropped as one from the walls and scurried after him. Oliop waited until they crawled up one of his pant legs. He began walking down the street. He took his tiny bug bots and turned off their surveillance-spoiling exclusion field. Each bot was then slipped into the null-space tool pouch right next to the blue-handled microfuser so recently placed there by his tail. He touched the new tool where it rested in the pouch, running a finger along its blue handle and over the destroyed microdot that would have traced it if it were stolen. He confirmed that the fuser was firmly seated along with his other tools, including a set of seventeen other microfusers admittedly quite similar to the new one.
Oliop felt a rush of excitement as he rounded a corner. He paused in front of a restaurant with a small courtyard and fountain. “Come in and bob for mini-lobsters!” a sign read. Even the suggestion of eating such fare disgusted Oliop, but he pretended to be interested in a menu attached to the front gate of the establishment. He caught his breath, tried to calm down. The exhilaration soon passed, replaced by a pang of guilt. This feeling would pass as well, as he would return the microfuser eventually, in time, one day.
If only his human sidekick could see him now.
***
Jeff followed Ceph and tried to remain patient.
“Like a trail of breadcrumbs,” Ceph said. The puttering crime scene bot moved from DNA trace to DNA trace. If Jiminy Cricket had a pint-sized peddle car, it would go faster than the evidence-sniffing automaton.
The trail led to the basement. The space was filled with stored rows of office products, mothballed terminals, desks, and adjustable chairs built to meet the needs of dozens of varied Galactic Commons fannies. Jeff looked down all of the aisles. The only other place to go was through a large white sliding door.
Jeff was about to unlock the door when Ceph stopped him.
“We don’t know what’s behind this curtain,” Ceph said.
Jeff took his tablet out. The blank, black screen stared back at him with a reflection of his divergent eyes. He tapped the surface, tried to wake it up. The screen flashed once before going dark again.
“May I?” Jeff asked, his hand out to Ceph.
Ceph handed over his own tablet. Jeff opened up the security building application. Ceph’s last viewed page appeared, the recent sensor results that confirmed that the tiny hole drilled into the holding cell didn’t lead outside. But where the intruder came from was still a mystery. Jeff refreshed the page to allow for further analysis, and the report confirmed no new holes in any part of the security building. Whatever had entered and helped the Grey escape had eluded all sensors and cameras. But the camera had seen the Grey leave. Jeff tapped through the security footage. There walked the pissy, bulbous-headed pale grey bugger, author of the Galactic Commons’ current woes, here strutting like it owned the joint. It held something small in one hand. The Grey descended the ramps to the basement and stood before the white door tha
t Jeff now faced. The door didn’t open for the Grey until it did something to the keypad with the mysterious object it carried. Jeff couldn’t make out what happened next, except that the door soon opened, and the Grey went inside.
“I guess there’s no alarm on this door?” Jeff asked.
“Plain as day.” Ceph pointed.
Jeff examined the door before him and its rectangular entry pad. A small hole had been bored through the pad’s frame, the same size as the hole in the detention block. Jeff put a thumb to the pad’s biometric sensor. The door didn’t open. He tried his other thumb. Nothing. He pressed with his palm. He tried staring at the pad for a retinal scan. Produced his security keycard and swiped it.
“Jeff Abel,” Ceph said, “the door’s gas tank is empty. Absent of power.”
The indicator light that would show that the door was either locked or unlocked was dark.
“Good catch,” Jeff said.
He reached into his null-space pocket and produced a pry bar. The pouch held dozens of tools he had accumulated since joining Galactic Commons Security. This was the one piece of tech he could appreciate, even if he misplaced things inside. Jeff wondered if he could ever go back to storing his tools in a regular tool box. You can keep your translators and planet-jumping elevators, but this pocket was worth the cost of a week’s allowance working the security beat.
House of the Galactic Elevator Page 5
