“Please.” The Foreman takes the object from his hand and sets it back on the desk. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Zok grunts in agreement.
“If I understand correctly, we’re all looking for Adam Jones,” The Foreman says.
“So what?” Steve says, between loud slurps of his coffee.
“So, does anyone have any ideas about how we might find him?” She looks around the room, expectantly, and leans back against her desk, revealing even more of her perfect, silky thighs.
“The UE has nothing on him,” Zok says. “It’s no surprise. He’s not a citizen. But I’ve sent out an image of his ship to all of our surveillance units. They will contact us the moment he’s spotted.”
“Good,” The Foreman says. “And I’ll make sure we’re alerted if the element turns up in any scrap shop in the habitable universe.” She turns her attention on Steve and Dave and asks, “What have you two brought to the table?”
“Oh,” Steve says. “We’ve got all kinds of information on Adam Jones. You can have it.”
“We’re only supposed to access customer information for official business,” Dave whispers.
“This is official business.”
“You know what I mean!”
“We’ll lose our jobs if we don’t do this,” Steve insists. “On the one hand, we definitely lose; on the other hand, we might possibly win.”
Dave shrugs. “When you put it like that.”
“Then it’s settled,” The Foreman says.
Steve sets his coffee on the desk and takes out his phone. As he’s messing with it, The Foreman lifts his cup and slides a Scrapper’s Delight coaster underneath it. He presses his thumb to the screen and waits for the credit system to verify his identity. When the database loads, he types Adam’s name into the search box and a long list appears.
He squints at it. “Hmph.”
“What is it?” The Foreman asks.
“There are thousands of Adam Joneses in the system.” He laughs, swiping at the massive list.
“How do we determine which one is our Adam Jones?” she asks.
Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“Well, this was a lovely waste of time,” Zok says, with more than a hint of I-told-you-so.
“I’ve got it.” Dave grins, pointing his finger into the air. “Search by plate number. I remember – it was A-J-9-0-0-0.”
“Ooh, good thinking, Dave.” Steve enters the number and the list reduces to a single result. “It worked. We got him.”
The Foreman rolls her eyes. “What does it say?”
Steve scrolls down the page. “He’s a big fan of rations, a regular at Ferd’s. He buys a lot of fuel, food, movies… and he recently got a haircut.”
“It’s so simple,” Zok interjects. “All we have to do is look for a guy with a fresh trim who eats.”
“This is interesting,” Steve says, ignoring the ackle. “He just bought two tickets from the nearest starline. It doesn’t tell us where he’s going, but we know where he went.”
“What are we waiting for?” Zok springs out of his chair and marches toward the door.
“Hold on,” The Foreman says. “By the time we get there, he’ll be long gone. Before we start chasing this guy across the universe, let’s see what else we can find out.” She waves at Steve to continue.
“He was in massive debt,” Steve says. “Big surprise there. However, that changed after a recent trip to Ferd’s.” He scowls at the screen. “Chit, this guy’s got plenty of crits, and he still hasn’t paid off his ship.”
“Go on,” she says.
“He drinks, a lot. There’s also a series of payments made to a company called SPACEJUNKLLSC…”
“Wait a minute.” The Foreman waves her glass in the air. “Go back. You said this guy used to be broke. How did he get the credit to pay for his ship in the first place?”
“He had a co-signer on the loan,” Steve says.
“Who was that?” she asks.
Steve scrolls up the page. “Somebody named… Silas Jones.”
“Ugh,” The One groans as he unceremoniously follows his friends through the wormhole. He stares longingly into the empty fridge beneath the dash and grabs his stomach. “I gotta eat something, you guys.”
“We’ll be home in a minute,” Beer says, glaring through his video feed. “We’re lucky we can even travel like this. If Horton hadn’t figured out a way to game the starline-rewards, we’d never be able to afford it.”
“Yeah, I know,” The One says.
“First class, even!” Beer says.
The One’s stomach growls, and he scrunches his face. “That’s great and all, but I’m starving over here.”
“You know,” Horton’s voice chimes, “you could probably survive without food longer than any of us.”
“This will serve as a good lesson for our next mission,” Beer says.
“Will The One ever eat again?” Pants asks. “Will we finish our summer reading assignments? What happened to the Asteroid Jones II, and where is the element? Tune in next time for—”
“Would you give it a rest, Pants?” Beer says.
The One closes his eyes and tries to keep his mind off dinner as the team nears the familiar blue-gray orb they call home.
“Hey, you guys want to play Immaterial Girl later?” Pants asks.
“Sure!” Beer and Horton enthusiastically exclaim.
“What about you, The One?” Pants asks.
“Yeah okay,” The One says. “That’ll be fun, I guess.”
Hunks of debris clank against his ship as he navigates the dense trash field orbiting the planet. He spots a lump of metal that looks like a perfect candidate to replace one of the obliterated sesame seeds on his bun, but he decides it isn’t worth being late for dinner. As the craft enters the atmosphere, it shakes furiously and flames flicker over the window.
The One anxiously taps the dash and fidgets in his seat. “Come on, come on,” he mutters to himself as his ship glides across the gray sky, zipping past wide swaths of decomposing rubble and dead earth.
“Commercial time,” Pants says. “See you guys later.” Her pink kitten drifts down toward the houses dotting the wasteland below and disappears through the clouds.
“Bye, Pants,” Horton says. “I guess I’m going home too.”
“Hey, will you send me that book summary when you find it?” Beer asks.
“Sure thing,” Horton says as his dark boomerang sails down the sky.
“Let’s go already,” The One complains. He guides his ship down through a wispy cloud toward the familiar arrangement of little boxes that make up their neighborhood and lands atop the great landfill mountain behind their house.
As soon as his ship is powered down, he races into the back, down the metal steps, and bursts out of the bottom bun. He skids down the trash pile, laughing, and tumbles into their backyard. The sky is just starting to turn from burnt orange to purple, and the warm late-summer air hugs his skin as he sprints across the dry lawn toward the weather-beaten ranch.
“Mom, I’m home,” he yells, as he pushes through the screen door.
“Where have you two been?” Mom shouts back from the kitchen. “Is your brother with you?”
“Yeah, he’s here,” The One says, sitting on the steps to untie his shoes.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” she calls.
Before The One can get his sneakers off, Beer bursts through the door and throws his windbreaker on the floor. “Hurry up,” he says, knocking his brother over as he squeezes up the steps.
The One finally yanks his foot free, stumbles up the steps, through the dingy kitchen, and into the corner of the narrow dining room. He almost topples his chair reaching for the overflowing bowl in the center of the table as he eagerly piles spaghetti onto his plate.
“Are you ready for school?” Mom asks.
“Ye-esss,” Beer moans as he wrestles the pronged serving spoon away from his broth
er.
Mom looks at Beer and says, “Michael, I know you’re working on your summer reading. Billy, did you finish your homework?”
The One stalls, fake-mumbling through a mouthful of pasta, and finally says, “Pretty much.”
“Well, make sure you do,” Mom says. “Did you two have fun with Jor and Kelly-chan?”
“Yes,” the boys drone.
“I bet you’re excited for school tomorrow,” she says. “When I was your age I couldn’t wait to go back. You get to learn lots of new things and see all the friends you missed over the summer—”
The One’s e-phone rings, mercifully interrupting Mom’s spiel, and he wrenches it from his pocket. Pants’s cherubic face appears on the glass, and she asks, “Hey, are you guys done yet? Me and Horton are already playing.”
“Hold on a second,” The One tells her. “Mom, can we finish in our room?”
“Well, I guess so…” Mom looks down at the table, spattered with sauce and strewn with dirty dishes, and sighs.
With their plates and glasses in hand, The One and Beer jump out of their seats and race toward the back of the house.
“What about dessert?” Mom shouts after them.
“Can you bring it to our room?” The One yells back.
They plunk down into folding chairs in front of their cluttered desks and strap on matching plastic goggles. The One’s interface boots, and he enters Immaterial Girl. His character, a subtly feminine troll with dark green skin and leather scraps for clothes, appears on a bustling cobblestone street opposite a potion shop spilling purple smoke from its door and windows. Avatars from a dozen different imagined alien races — young and old, pint-sized and towering, scrawny and rotund, clad in suits of bejeweled armor and sweeping robes surrounded by bright auras – stroll, run and skip through the square around him.
The One glances through the window of one of the many stone storefronts and stares at the browned carcass of a gigantic bird roasting on a longsword, dripping grease and glistening in the firelight. He licks his lips, lifts his goggles, and reaches for his fork.
“Where are you guys?” he asks as he twirls a heap of spaghetti onto his fork and stabs a giant meatball.
“Meet us at The Ol’ Lady,” Pants says.
The One stuffs the entire forkful between his cheeks and, pulling his goggles down, mumbles, “Kay, be thrr in a semmond.”
He starts his troll queen running in the direction of The Ol’ Lady and looks over her gear, equipping a helmet she looted a few days prior as offers for weapons, armor, building materials, magic items, and group invites flood the chat.
“Totking, totking, totking,” The One babbles into the chatter. When she spots The Ol’ Lady, she stops a few doors down and casts a tolerance spell on herself. A yellow glow briefly pulses through her body and fades away, spilling across the cobblestone street and out of existence. She lets out a gruff titter and slips inside the little building.
The room is dim and full of armor-clad customers seated at candlelit tables. In the corner, The One spots three familiar shapes shrouded in darkness. She approaches their table, squeezes into the open chair, and warily glances at the shadowy figures.
“Finally,” Pants complains, her pink fur bristling.
“What took you so long?” Beer-as-biker-squirrel asks, leaning into the candelight.
“Aww, are you tired?” The One taunts.
“Now that we’re all here,” Horton says from the shadows, everything but her shiny black lips and pale jaw hidden underneath her dark robe, “what’s on the agenda?”
“Before we do anything, I say we have some drinks to celebrate our first mission.” The One waves at the werebear drying a glass behind the bar and shouts, “Prairie oysters all around!”
“Ulchh,” Pants grimaces, sticking out her tongue.
Every rough-and-tumble customer in the dark room, except Pants, gathers around the bar as the NPC lays out half a dozen glasses and starts cracking eggs.
“To the black gold!” The One lifts the concoction into the air, swallows it in one slimy gulp, and slams her empty glass on the counter. “Another round,” she tells the bartender. The strangers at the bar cheer as they collect their free drinks, and The One juggles three more yellow-brown glasses back to the team’s table.
“I think we should raid Candy Cavern next,” Pants says.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” Horton says, slurping down one of the murky drinks.
“You might be high enough level, Pants,” Beer says. “But Candy Cavern is way too tough for the rest of us. We’re gonna have to grind out some XP first.” She swirls her glass, holds her nose, and sucks down the smelly brew. “What about Gory Gummy Forest?”
“Maybe we should—” Horton starts, when her mouth suddenly drops, and she grabs her stomach.
“What’s wrong with—” Beer’s face turns pale.
They both begin to sway back and forth. Incapable of holding it in any longer, The One bursts out laughing.
“What’s going on?” Pants asks.
The One wipes her eyes and raises her glass. “These are the strongest drinks in the game.”
Beer and Horton stare at their glasses with sick remorse. With the exception of a few shrewd outliers, everyone in the bar is rocking in their seats.
“You ackle,” Beer says.
“How come you’re not sick?” Pants asks. “You drank as much as they did.”
The One removes her tolerance spell, and a cascade of yellow light spills off her and scatters across the floorboards.
“Oh, real good,” Horton says. She leans over the table and violently vomits green sludge onto the floor. “Who knows how long it’ll take for the effects to wear off.”
“Just calm down,” The One says, still trying and failing to stifle her laughter. “It was just a joke. Relax. We haven’t even figured out where we’re going yet.”
“Yeah, and now, hic—” Beer slaps her forehead. “It’s gonna take us, hic, even longer to get there.”
On the screen, a bunch of ancient humans frantically climb between box rooms in a futile attempt to escape a shared, labyrinthine prison as the walls dispatch them, one by one, in gruesome fashion. Out the other end of the window, ships zip by with monotonous regularity.
Daizy yawns, stretches, and glances at Adam passed out in the seat next to her, his feet on the dash, arms hanging at his sides. The black gold is securely stuffed inside his pants pocket.
The metal floor is cold against her bare feet as she jumps up and plods into the living room, holding up her baggy shorts to keep them from falling off. She sits in front of the TV to browse through Adam’s video collection and starts picking through one of the many boxes scattered throughout the room. It’s full of tapes and discs of different sizes, shapes, and colors. They look ancient; housed in faded cardboard sleeves and plastic holders, with titles, many in dead languages, printed on glossy stickers or scribbled in marker across their fragile cases. Failing to find anything appealing, she pushes the box aside and drags another one out from behind the TV. Inside, she finds more movies.
“Chit, is this all this guy ever does?” she wonders aloud.
As she rummages through the box, she discovers a folded piece of paper crammed in between the tapes. She pulls it out and unfolds it. It’s a photograph of a smiling little boy and an older man, who looks sort of like Adam, standing in front of an old beat-up ship with the words “Asteroid Jones” painted across its hull. She turns the picture over, and she can just make out light pencil markings in the corner: “Silas and Adam – Adam’s first flight.”
“Hello?” a voice calls from the front of the ship.
Startled by the sudden intrusion, Daizy stuffs the picture back into the box and springs to her feet.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” the voice asks.
Dashing to the cockpit, she calls out, “Yes, we’re here.”
“Next stop Earth,” the voice says. “Prepare for takeoff.”
Daizy sits in the passenger seat and buckles herself in. She smacks Adam in the chest, and he jerks awake.
“We’re next,” she says.
Adam fumbles over the dash and stares out the window, scratching his head. “What? Where do I go?”
“You go straight,” she says.
“But there’s nothing out there.”
“Just…” She throws her hands into the air, exasperated. “Trust me, all right?”
Adam shrugs and Daizy clutches the sides of her seat as the Asteroid Jones II hurtles through the holographic tunnel and out into open space. In an instant, a rocky blue-gray planet, largely obscured by a thick layer of orbiting scrap, is hovering outside the window in front of them.
“Hey, what happened?” Adam glances around the cockpit. “We’re already there?”
Daizy holds up her hands and wiggles her fingers. “Like magic…”
“This place looks like a dump,” Adam says. “I heard it used to be pretty nice, a long, long time ago. My ancestors were from Earth, you know.”
“That’s not the sort of thing I’d brag about,” she says. “I’ve been here before.”
They crash through a field of metal bits and old satellites, and as the ship enters the atmosphere, ghostly red flames engulf the windows and it shudders violently.
“Is this thing going to make it?” Daizy asks.
“Oh, she’ll make it,” Adam says.
Before long, the tremors cease, and the Asteroid Jones II glides down through bright gray sky. The planet’s surface is all muted browns and grays, alternating stretches of dead fields and dusty lakebeds which morph into sprawling tracts of decaying, overgrown cityscape.
“Are you sure there’s somebody here who can afford the black gold?” Adam asks. “This whole planet looks dead.”
“It is, mostly,” Daizy says. “But it’s also home to one of the biggest and oldest scrap markets in the universe, located in the last city on Earth – Hoboken, New Jersey.”
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