As soon as she steps into the lobby, she hears a tinkling from a distant corner of the building. She swiftly glides behind the counter, through the curtain, and sees a rotund human in a business suit, one of the nameless wealthy clientele who pay through anonymous accounts, waving a bell from a bed at the back of the room. She hurries to his aid, checking on her other customers as she passes.
When she approaches, the man groans and points over his shoulder. “My back is killing me.”
Ms. Chibois snatches a pillow from an empty bed and tries to shove it underneath the client’s fleshy frame. “I’m going to need your help.”
“Ughhh…” He takes a few deep breaths and rolls slightly to one side.
Ms. Chibois leans into him with her shoulder, straining to support his weight, and somehow manages to stuff the pillow between his meaty back and the creaking bed frame without injury.
He huffs as he rolls back over and wipes his brow. “Thanks, dear.”
Ms. Chibois smiles and bows. As she turns back toward the door, she can hear the desk bell ringing in the lobby.
“Oh, just one more thing.” The man points to his throat. “Could I trouble you for a cup of water?”
With a smile, she fills a paper cup from one of the coolers lining the walls, and the man shakily grasps it with both hands and gulps it down.
“Thank you,” he says, with some effort.
She pats his shoulder and scurries back to the front of the building, where she finds two smiling men in ties and short sleeve shirts waiting for her.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” she asks, as she steps behind the desk and resumes folding.
“We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am,” the short one says. “But we’re looking for one of your customers. His name is Adam Jones. We were hoping you could help us find him.”
She puts down her sheet and scrutinizes the grinning men. “I don’t give out customer information. Sorry.”
“Ma’am, we’re from the ICA,” the tall one says. “It would really mean a lot if you could help us out here. We wouldn’t want to have to report you.”
“I don’t care where you’re from,” she says. “You can’t intimidate me. I know my rights. I don’t owe you anything. You have no business here.”
“Listen, lady…” The tall one leans across the counter. “Just tell us what we want to know, and we’ll get out of your hair.”
In one swift motion, Ms. Chibois slips a thin wooden stick out from underneath the counter and smacks it across his knuckles.
He yelps and jumps backward, rubbing his fingers. “What’d you do that for?”
“Hey,” the small one says. “We’re not going to hurt anybody.”
“That’s right.” Ms. Chibois steps out from behind the counter, her smacking-stick held high.
But before she has a chance to punish the troublemakers further, the door swings open, and a high-ranking Ear, in his conspicuous black and white uniform, enters the lobby.
“Fish, what now?” She retreats behind the desk and sets her stick down but doesn't take her hand off it.
“Excuse me gentlemen, but I have pressing business,” the Ear tells the two ICA chidiots cowering in the corner. “Good day, ma’am.”
“I don’t want any more trouble,” Ms. Chibois tells him.
“Nor do I,” the Ear says. “Please allow me to introduce myself; I am Vice Admiral Zok of the United Empires.”
“I can see who you are,” she says. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for a man who I am told frequents your establishment,” the Ear says. “His name is Adam Jones. It is of great importance that I locate him. If you have any information pertaining to his whereabouts—”
“I already told them.” She points at the debt collectors. “I’m not telling any of you anything.”
The Ear glances over his shoulder. “Nevertheless, this is a matter of universal security. I must insist, on behalf of the UE, that you provide me with any and all information you possess regarding Adam Jones’s location.”
As Ms. Chibois considers various painful ways of getting rid of her intruders, the door bursts open, and boisterous, chaotic chatter descends on the room.
A young girl in a neon pink dress skips into the lobby. “Haha, wow!” she shouts.
A chubby boy follows, slurping on a bright blue ration-pop. “Look at the crazy wallpaper.”
“What is this place?” another boy asks, as he wipes a pair of thick glasses on his shirt.
“I knew it was gonna be brule,” the chubby boy says. “I told Horton to come, but…” He shrugs.
“You know how he is about his privacy,” the boy with the glasses says.
“Look at this place, you guys,” the girl tells her phone as she wanders the room.
“Okay guys,” the boy with the glasses says. “Let’s see if we can—” he stops when he notices the roomful of adults glaring at them.
“Hi,” the girl says.
“No, no, no.” Ms. Chibois tramps out from behind the counter and makes a shooing motion with her hands. “No kids allowed.”
“Can’t we just take a look around?” the chubby boy asks.
“It’s not for you,” she tells him.
Before she can stop them, the kids split up to evade capture. The boy with the glasses ducks past her while the chubby one pokes behind her desk and the girl twirls around the room talking to her phone.
“If you would be so kind as to provide me with the information I’m looking for, I will get out of your way,” the Ear says.
“What’s wrong with these people?” the boy with the glasses asks, as he peeks into the next room.
“Enough!” Ms. Chibois yells, and she smacks her stick against the counter to produce an ear-splitting thwack. “Everyone out! This is a private adult establishment. No kids allowed.” She yanks the chubby boy’s ear and drags him to the door.
“I don’t have whatever you’re looking for.” She glares alternately at the Ear and the ICA chidiots. “If you want information, you don’t come here. You go see The Foreman.”
“Who’s The Foreman?” the chubby boy asks.
“Never mind, boy,” Ms. Chibois says. “You and your friends go home.” With an agility that catches the kids by surprise, she quickly wrangles the rest of them and shoves them out the door.
The debt collectors raise their hands in defense when she shifts her attention onto them. “Yes, The Foreman,” the short one says, and they slink out.
The Ear opens his mouth, but before he can speak, he wisely shuts it and follows after the others.
With peace and quiet restored, Ms. Chibois sighs and steps back behind the desk to resume her folding, only to set it aside when she hears the faint tinkle of a distant bell steadily tolling.
Thousands of tiny lights busily navigate the congested airways below as the Asteroid Jones II passes over the fabled artificial moon. The dark satellite appears almost organic, as if it spontaneously grew out of the void; its shadowy surface is covered in tangled roadways that branch out like metal veins toward the undeveloped edges, facilitating its constant, insatiable expansion.
Adam is just beginning to wonder how he’ll ever find The Foreman in amongst the sprawling metropolis, when he spies the glowing black megastructure creeping over the horizon. A dark beacon wedging into the sky, it dwarfs the surrounding skyscrapers.
As he gapes out at the incredible edifice, an ad appears on his ship’s window. “Welcome to Scrapper’s Delight! At Scrapper’s Delight, you’ll find everything you…” a spastic man’s voice announces over glamour shots of the pyramid, and Adam impatiently swipes it away.
He spots a parking space only a few hundred aisles from the building’s entrance and almost collides with a tour ship full of senior citizens rushing to claim it. Before he disembarks, he snatches the cube of black gold off the dash and stuffs it into his pocket, where it bulges conspicuously.
As he steps out onto the moon’s metal surface, he joins a mass of t
ourists who are busy gawking up at the dark pyramid and awkwardly posing for videos in front of it. Oohs and ahhs abound.
When Adam reaches the pyramid, he notices that it’s constructed of some type of glowing black stone. He presses his hand to it, and the dark phosphorescence emitted from its surface bends under his touch.
“Neat!” he exclaims.
Inside, the lobby is bustling with vacationing families, retirees, college kids, buskers, hucksters, grifters, and gamblers from every corner of the universe. They shove past Adam in an unnavigable and unrelenting torrent, fiercly flowing toward distant, invisible corners of the seemingly boundless building.
The ceiling is just a vague blue dot high above, and as Adam is staring up at it, wobbling with vertigo, someone bangs into his elbow and growls, “Move it!”
A woman howls as he accidentally steps on her foot, and he starts grasping at shirts and arms to keep himself afloat. After a few harrowing moments orienting himself with the flow of the tide, he pushes his way through the crowd toward a big sign with the word ‘INFORMATION’ printed in a bunch of different languages.
“Ahoy!” a grinning woman with flat, luminous features greets him as he approaches the giant kiosk. “Allow me to navigate you toward your destination.”
“I don’t know if I’m in the right place,” Adam shouts over the roar of the crowd. “I’m looking for The Foreman.”
The woman’s smile shrinks and she squints at him, skeptically. “The Foreman? Do you have an appointment?”
“No, do I need one?”
“Not if you’re the space king,” she says.
“There’s a space king?”
“That was a joke.” She smirks and shakes her head. “The Foreman is booked for five years, UST.”
“Five years?” Adam says. “What’ll I do ‘til then?”
“That’s up to you, sir,” the woman says. “I can set an appointment for you.”
He glances around the room, weighing his options. “Yeah all right, go ahead.”
“Great,” she says, cheerily. “Place your thumb on the counter.” She looks down at the screen in front of her and frowns. “Mr. Adam Jones,” she says, surprised. “Why didn’t you say so? You have an open appointment.”
“I do?”
“You’re to be sent directly to The Foreman upon arrival.”
“O-kay…”
“Step down to the end of the hall, past Sensual Candlemaking,” she instructs. “Inside the elevator, press the button for ‘Waste Management.’”
“Sensual Candlemaking?”
“Just down the hall,” she says, pointing.
Wading through a sea of damp alien bodies, Adam stumbles into the hallway and shuffles past a group of excited tourists fighting to see inside a room full of elderly humanoids violating themselves with hot wax.
“I can’t look away,” one of them mumbles.
Adam squeezes onto the elevator and presses the button for ‘Waste Management.’ A woman a few decades his senior glances at him out of the corner of her eye and grunts as the box jerks into motion. Above the door, a screen indicates department names as they speed past – Lobby, Receiving, Organ Harvesting, Gift Shop, Gift Wrapping, Light Petting, More Gifts, Souvenirs, Accounting, Fudgery, Other Fudgery, and countless more. The passengers get off, one by one, until Adam is the only one left.
The elevator shoots up to the ninety-seventh floor and finally slows to a stop, opening to a small room with waterlogged floorboards and walls adorned with colorful buoys.
A very tan man with bright teeth grins as Adam steps toward the desk. “Ahoy!” he says, his swollen muscles visible even through his thick yellow rain slicker. “Please have a seat.” Beaming, he announces to no one, “Adam Jones is here.”
“Uh, are you The Foreman?” Adam asks, but the fisherman just grins, staring into space.
After a long while, a door in the wall slides open. The fisherman motions toward the doorway, and Adam steps into the dim cabin. Fishing nets and other peculiar and ancient-looking objects hang on the walls. Virtual droplets of water drip from the ceiling, splashing out of existence as they hit the deck. Near the back of the room, a tall, thin woman with a long mane of blonde hair, her soft shoulders exposed above a formfitting red dress, shuffles shadowy objects atop a large wood desk.
“Ahoy! Can I get you something to drink?” she asks, in a lilting, indiscernible accent.
“I’ll have an Ol’ Guard, if you got it,” Adam says.
The woman bends over, theatrically, and retrieves a can from a small bar underneath the desk. She empties the beer into a glass mug and turns toward Adam. Her bright, impenetrable eyes – like Debbie Harry circa Videodrome – reveal themselves as she steps into the light and hands him the mug.
Adam swiftly gulps down half the contents and belches, “Buaaa, I thought I was going to meet The Foreman.”
The woman smiles and gives him a curious look. “The pleasure is mine.”
“Oh,” Adam says. “I guess I thought you were a man.”
“A mistake often made by men.” She laughs and motions to a wood bench in front of a crackling fire. “Won’t you have a seat?”
“Is that an artificial fire?” Adam asks as he sits, squirming against the hard bench.
“Yes, of course,” she says, sipping dark liquid from her glass. “I find it soothing.”
“I spotted it right away. You know, you could have a real fire in here, if you wanted. They’re kind of expensive nowadays, but I’m sure you could afford it, judging by the look of this place.”
“But this is better than a real fire,” she says. “It lights the room, produces heat. It even looks like a real flame.”
Adam shrugs. “Personally, I always preferred the real thing.”
She stares at him through bright, calculating eyes. “Let’s discuss the reason you came here.”
“Hey, that’s right. How did you know I was coming, anyway? The girl downstairs said I already had an appointment.”
“That’s simple. I know what you’ve found.”
Adam laughs and almost spits his beer. “Trust me, you have no idea.”
She shifts her gaze toward the false flames. “My search for the black gold began many years ago. I became fascinated by Ponce Raleigh and his life-long pursuit. It was strange, the connection I felt with him, like we shared a similar conception of the world. Everyone said it was only a story, but I never believed them.”
“But how could you know?” Adam asks. “I haven’t told anyone, except my grandpa.”
“In order to carry on Raleigh’s quest,” she continues, “as so many do, I began scrapping. I realized immediately that the search area was beyond my scope. I needed a way to comb the entire universe, and so I began looking for ways to connect with other scrappers. That’s what led me to create the Simple Centralized Retail Augmented Plexus, or SCRAP as you surely know it. I offered free use of the system to scrap shops the universe over, nearly all of whom, upon understanding its potential, eagerly adopted it. By now, most of the universe has been catalogued.” She takes a sip of black goop from her glass and closes her eyes. “Since the universal economy is heavily dependant on scrap shops, I knew the black gold would reveal itself to me eventually. I programmed the system to alert me whenever it detected an object with a hitherto unknown composition—”
“So basically you found out I had it when I took it into Ferd’s,” Adam says.
“Yeah, basically.” She rolls her eyes.
“But how did you know I’d bring it here?”
“I didn’t. I have men out searching for you as we speak. It was merely a fortunate coincidence, or perhaps some force beyond what either of us is capable of understanding, that you ended up here. Chalk it up to my fastidious nature that I thought to give you security clearance. I was a little surprised that it was you who found the black gold, based on your trading history. It’s been unremarkable, to say the least.”
“Yeah well,” Adam says, “sometimes
you get lucky.”
“Yes,” she says, stifling laughter. “Sometimes you get lucky.”
Finishing the last sip of his beer, he asks, “So, what am I bid for the black gold?”
She sets her glass down and smiles. “I offer you absolutely nothing.”
Trying to make sense of her words, Adam says, “What do you mean? You said it yourself – it’s the most valuable object in the universe. It sounds like you’ve been searching for it for a long time. Now you’re telling me you’re not going to give me anything?”
“Why would I pay, when I can just take it? You have to agree, I have the upper hand.”
“Pfff…” Adam stands, rubbing his lower back and waving dismissively as he heads for the door.
“A thousand credits,” she says.
He stops and turns back. “A thousand crits? I can find somebody in this building who will give me more than that.”
“You should take the money. It’s worth that much to save me the trouble of tracking you down. But the fact is, I like the chase.”
“Tracking me down?”
“I know even an obvious imbecile such as yourself is smart enough to have stashed it somewhere for safekeeping.”
Adam’s hand twitches as he stops it from reaching for the cube. The Foreman notices the movement and glances toward his bulging pocket.
“But nothing remains safe forever,” she says. “You’ll have to go back for it eventually. And when you do, I’ll be waiting.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Adam says. “But wouldn’t you rather make me a real offer right now and avoid all the trouble?”
“As you so astutely noted, I’ve been waiting a long time. I can wait a little longer. And trust me, it won’t be much longer.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Unless…” She gracefully stands and saunters toward him. “Maybe you’d be interested in another kind of trade,” she suggests, reaching toward the bulge in his pants.
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