Letterman entered the room and waited to be acknowledged. Treasure waved at the enforcement bot while Electra actively ignored him.
“Want to join us?” Treasure offered. “You can be the thimble, or the iron or the race car. You should be the race car. Usually nobody gets to be the race car joining a game this late.”
“Why is that?” Electra asked.
“Everyone loves the race car,” Treasure said.
“But you picked the dog,” Electra said. “What is a dog, anyway?”
“Small furry animals that humans used to be best friends with.” Treasure picked up the little pewter Scottish terrier and made it bark at Electra. Letterman rolled over to get a closer look at the game. “She picked the shoe.”
“Shoes are awesome,” Electra said.
“It’s also the only thing she recognized,” Treasure explained.
“The game is literally thousands of years before my time,” Electra argued.
“A VI can grasp the rules of this game?” Letterman asked. “It would be too simplistic for me.”
“Ivy is the banker,” Electra said. “She’s helping, not playing.”
“Because Electra wanted to be the banker so she could skim money,” Treasure said.
“It was a paycheck,” Electra said. “You told me bankers made good money.”
“Banker in this game is an unpaid position. You’re lucky you didn’t end up in jail for embezzlement, young lady,” Treasure said.
“I did end up in jail, twice.”
“This game is not present in my databanks of approved recreational activities for debtors,” Letterman said.
“It’s Monopoly,” Electra said.
“It’s the game that taught generations of impressionable children how to get screwed over in the real estate market,” Treasure said, “and usually inadvertently taught them the names of a dozen or so streets in New Jersey.”
“It is a human game?” Letterman asked.
“Better, it’s an Earthling game,” Electra said. “Bi-MARP will pay five million units for a complete set, which this one is now. We figured we’d make sure it worked first.” Electra waved toward the game cabinet absentmindedly. “There’s Yahtzee too, but all the scorecards are filled in.”
“That’s a lot of money for a game that mostly made families fight about semantics,” Treasure said.
“I will log the games into your potential assets,” Letterman said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do that.” Electra rolled double sixes and walked her lone shoe right around the corner to the luxury tax space. “What is a luxury tax and why do I have to pay it?”
“It’s a tax the government used to collect for having too many nice things,” Treasure said. “And if you don’t pay it, the IRS will be on your ass about your allegedly duty-free caviar.”
“What’s caviar?” Electra knew what duty-free meant—no taxes on importation. Caviar sounded expensive and something she should probably try.
“Fish eggs that haven’t been laid yet.”
“Sounds gross.”
“It is,” Treasure said, “but it’s also strangely compelling.”
Electra paid the seventy-five dollars using her last fifty, her second-to-last twenty and a quintet of ones.
“Tell me about mortgaging again?” Electra turned over her Boardwalk card to stare at the numbers on the back.
“You turn the card over to loan it out to the bank,” Treasure said. “You get the top number but have to pay back the bottom number to use the card again. In the meantime, you can’t collect any rent on the property. It’s basically a small loan.”
“Screw that. I owe enough,” Electra said, realizing her mistake a moment too late. “I mean to say I owe you orgasms and favors for how much you’re helping me.”
“I have located an item for retrieval,” Letterman said. “An elephant.”
“That’s big ticket,” Electra said. “Also really unlikely, since none of the Bi-MARP collectors have found any living wildlife yet.”
The entire process of rebuilding Earth, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica fourteenth edition, had turned two galaxies into a giant gold rush of people searching for items they wouldn’t know from their own foot in hopes of making some Chamber-guaranteed money. Each collector hired subcontractors, who hired assistants, who hired temps, and they all tried to pass off every bone fragment and weird rock as an Earthling artifact. The Jun’Tar contractors then hired people to sort the mountains of junk, allowed them to subcontract, and ended up with an unwieldy mess that could barely be called an organization. On message boards and newsreels about the Chamber’s latest large-scale endeavor, Electra and Sempa stood alone as the most successful contributors to the Bi-MARP project, based solely on the monetary value of what they’d provided, even though Electra had only delivered Bort to that point.
“A bioengineer on Station 111 claims to have reconstructed elephant DNA and already produced a viable sample pachyderm,” Letterman said.
“I thought cloning was illegal,” Treasure said.
“Sentient species are strictly forbidden. A few bioengineers are allowed limited production contracts if they reconstruct their own DNA samples and produce only non-sentient species entirely through organic printing, Miss Treasure,” Ivy offered. “The current number of sanctioned bioengineers stands at seven. Would you like their names and favorite colors?”
“No, that’s okay, Ivy,” Treasure said. “An elephant is a big score…literally and in more ways than one.”
“Off to Station 111, I guess,” Electra said. “Too bad… I was just about to make my comeback in the game.”
“You’re almost broke,” Treasure reminded her. For what seemed like the umpteen millionth time, Treasure’s little doggy made its way past Go, collected two hundred dollars and headed down what she’d been referring to as ‘fleabag row’ of her red hotels on the purple and light blue titles she owned.
“Is there an option in this game to trade sexual favors for money?” Electra asked.
“It was originally designed for children and families, so no, obviously not,” Treasure said. “But since no children and families are present…” Treasure grinned impishly.
* * * *
A sickly greenish-yellow nebula hung around Station 111, illuminated by a cluster of red dwarf stars that the whole mess slowly orbited around. Cosmic signposts warned of methane and sulfur concentrations. Certain types of engines were discouraged when passing through the artificial nebula. The station itself hung amid the putrid clouds like a fat, wallowing hog—large, essentially spherical and corroded in multiple places along the hull. Electra could feel the stench sticking to her beautiful ship from simply flying near such a vile place.
Gas farming didn’t have to be a disgusting process. Plenty of species managed clean, efficient facilities to create, grow, harvest and refine all sorts of organic and inorganic gases. But Station 111 was run by Glotts, and Glotts were gross. Multiple means of producing sulfurous compounds existed within the station, along with a number of methane-generating industries. When the gasses, condensates or solids reached the desired state, concentration or decay rate for a specific use, they were expelled into the nebula to a particular region at the correct distance from the stars to remain at the same point in the cold vacuum of space or mature to a different level in the ultraviolet rays from nearby red dwarf stars. Basic, efficient and icky, the system matched perfectly the Glott mentality.
“The signs say it’s run by Glotts,” Treasure said. “Aren’t those the pirates chasing us?”
“Yes, but Glotts are the third most populous spacefaring species,” Electra said. “In both galaxies, there are something like three and a half trillion. The odds these gas farmers know Sempa or his fleet are pretty remote.”
“The odds of a Glott on this station personally knowing any of Sempa or his crew are exactly ten point three billion to one, Miss Electra,” Ivy said.
“See? Remote,” Electra said.
“You know what? We’re good on odds for right now, Ivy,” Electra said. “The air won’t be breathable inside, so we’ll need respirators, but we shouldn’t need environmental suits for the sections we’re going to. Oh, and don’t wear clothes you want to keep. Whatever we wear will definitely pick up stains and smells we won’t want to have around.”
It took the better part of an hour for Ivy to find a docking slip that Electra approved of. There were simply too many spaces where the Cadillux would be in danger of being dinged, scratched, dripped on or looked at the wrong way. By the time she approved of Ivy’s selection, the jumpsuits Treasure had promised would be perfect for the upcoming job were finished printing in the fabricator.
“What do you call these again?” Electra asked, reluctantly pulling on the coarse, frumpy, grayish-blue garment that covered her from neck to wrist to ankle in functional hideousness.
“Dickies,” Treasure said. “They’re service industry uniforms turned into fashion statements.”
“What statement could they possibly make besides that the wearer is blind and nerve-dead from the ears down?” Electra chaffed under the rigid material and all the bizarre ways in which it touched her with its unappealing bagginess.
“Yes, they’re ugly, but making them used up almost no molecules in the fabricator and you’ll really enjoy tossing them into the shredder when we’re done,” Treasure said. “Plus, you’d be adorable dressed in anything. You look like an endearing, squirmy little grease monkey right now.”
“That sounded complimentary in tone, but the words didn’t really fit,” Electra said. “Okay, let’s get an elephant’s DNA and get out of here before any part of this place rubs off on any part of me or my ship.”
“Will you require a tether?” Letterman asked.
“Nope, you’re coming with us to touch anything I deem too disgusting,” Electra said. “Then you’re getting hosed down with industrial cleaners before you’re allowed back on my ship.”
The gangplank lowered into the murk of the docking bay. Black-and-yellow haze floated barely above eye level, obscuring the ceiling entirely and anything more than a few dozen feet away. Glancing down to the filter rating on her ventilator, Electra discovered they wouldn’t have long before the corrosive, vile environment clogged their breathing apparatuses. She hated to even think about what was getting into her hair and regretted not wearing a full environmental suit for protection from being skeeved out.
The reptilian question-mark-shaped Glotts drifted through the haze, many of them leading bulbous, pulsing grubs twice the size of the Volkswagen Beetle they’d just purloined. Walking through the Glott foot traffic was slow going. Between the meandering pace the Glotts moved at and the sheer number of them, it didn’t take long for Electra and Treasure to quickly outpace Letterman, who struggled mightily to move his bulk among the myriad organic obstacles.
“Why are there so many of them?” Treasure asked.
“The Glott home world isn’t vastly different from a lot of the worst places in the galaxies that nobody else wants, so they picked up a ton of new territory the second they entered spacefaring society,” Electra said. “They can live in almost any environment, they filter-feed noxious gases for food and they reproduce asexually.” Electra steadied herself and leaped over a slime trail left by a glowing pile of worms dragged by two Glott workers. She misjudged the distance and only a quick, steadying hand from Treasure prevented her from falling into the little river of vileness in the street.
“You saved me,” Electra beamed.
“You saved me first,” Treasure said. “So Glotts reproduce like Om?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure how Om works,” Electra said with a shrug. “I do know that Glotts don’t have male or female-specific organs. They’re all considered males that can impregnate themselves. And they do, a lot.”
“So it’d be like if I could get pregnant whenever I masturbated?”
“Yep, with a high probability of it happening,” Electra said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that, by the way. You masturbating, I mean.”
“I’ll show you my technique if you show me yours,” Treasure teased. “Do you have sex toys? Are sex toys still a thing?”
“They are and I did have some, but they were incinerated with the rest of my stuff when I couldn’t pay my rent,” Electra said. “Did you have some?”
“Two, but I really only liked one of them,” Treasure said.
“What was wrong with the other one?”
“Performance anxiety. It just didn’t get the job done as well,” Treasure said. “There was a stigma attached to sex toys in my time. Getting one required going to a specific kind of store, and those stores weren’t common or nice. People were starting to sell them on the Internet. It was like the galactic net but much, much smaller and slower. The problem with that was the pictures and descriptions didn’t always match what was sent.”
“Ancient human modesty is so strange,” Electra said with a laugh. “Most species now have elaborate stimulators that some even wear in public. You can print whatever you want right off the fabricator and recycle it if it doesn’t curl your toes. I’m actually feeling somewhat abnormal for not immediately replacing the ones I lost.”
“We should print some when we’re done here,” Treasure said. “The famous Captain Rex can’t be thought a sexual deviant for not owning orgasmic accoutrements.”
If it weren’t for Ivy’s assistance in illuminating a path on the head-up display of Electra’s mask, she doubted she could have found the bioengineering firm. Everything on Station 111 looked the same—gross, corroded, slime-covered rounded metal buildings, silos, collection tanks and holding pens. At long last the green line faded out on a nondescript, domed domicile. Electra stood in the security scanner of the front door and waited for the pale blue lights to pass over her, then Treasure and finally Letterman when he caught up. The dome cracked wide enough to allow them entrance.
Electra thought she’d be glad to get out of the chaotic, bustling streets where she had to dodge surly Glotts and their disgusting livestock, but once she was inside, every other sense she had was bombarded by a thousand different animal species making every noise, smell and light display they could to defend themselves from intruders. Cages lined every wall, covered every surface and dangled from the ceiling. Each contained creatures both great and small from every corner of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies.
A Chizzerod emerged from behind a bio-fabrication tank, wiping her hands on a rag. The little alien made several strange noises and gestures in every direction and eventually the agitated creatures in the tanks and cages calmed. Even Electra’s translator implant couldn’t understand anything that was said or done by the Chizzerod when communicating with the animals.
Chizzerods were fairly common in the Andromeda Galaxy, less so in the Milky Way. The Chizzerod bioengineer in question was short, a little under four feet tall, mammalian and for the most part looked like a white, humanoid rat sporting backward knees, enormous pointed ears and a lone eye in the center of her forehead.
“I am Professor Mims,” the Chizzerod said. “Which one of you is Letterman?”
Electra jerked her thumb backward to the enforcement bot who’d followed them into the dome.
“I am Letterman, a lien enforcement bot,” Letterman said. “And these are my assistants.”
“We’re not your assistants,” Electra said.
“You are assisting me in this transaction, thus you are my assistants,” Letterman retorted.
“From your messages, I thought you’d be shorter and more organic,” Professor Mims said. “No matter. You came to see the elephant and so you shall.” She dropped to all fours and scurried between the cages, tables, containers and tubing running t
hrough the lab to reach a panel on the far wall. The Professor punched a code into a security panel using her prehensile, scaled tale. The wall slid open a crack. From the brightly lit room beyond, a mighty trumpeting echoed into the lab.
“Come along, Georgie.” Professor Mims attempted to coax the elephant from its separate chamber using a synthetic peanut daintily held between two long, sharp claws. The trumpeting stopped, a shadow darkened the gap in the wall and a two-foot-tall, bright green elephant emerged to accept the offered treat.
Electra looked to Treasure for confirmation. Treasure held up a hand, palm down, and made the ‘sort of’ gesture by wobbling it.
“Where exactly did you get the DNA for the elephant?” Treasure asked.
“It wasn’t extracted…no extant species to get a sample from,” Professor Mims said. “I found partial records of a genome and wrote genetic code to fill in the gaps. It’s a full reconstruct without source genetic material. I have a deft hand when it comes to recreating complex species from nothing but a few scraps of genomic code and a vague description.”
“That explains quite a bit,” Treasure said.
“You are looking at the foremost expert in pachyderm behavior and history,” Professor Mims said, scooping up the elephant to cuddle it like a puppy, despite the green creation being half her size and probably equal in mass. “I’ve researched and catalogued all available information on the no-longer-extinct species of African elephant in the most thorough compendium since the fall of Earth.”
“It’s a very impressive…thing you’ve created there,” Electra said. “Lots of ear and nose going on.”
“Can you imagine thousands of these roaming the mighty forests of Antarctica?” Professor Mims said.
“Not the right continent,” Treasure muttered.
“Feasting on tree-dwelling marmots.”
“They were herbivores.”
“Performing tricks in human circuses for peanuts.”
“That one is true,” Treasure admitted.
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