by Mark Wandrey
“Ugh,” Terry said. He looked back at the gun and noted the price again. Doc had given him enough credits to buy a dozen of them. He began to understand what the man had meant by credits not being the same in value out there as dollars.
“Come on kid, if you want a gun, we’ll get you one.”
“No!” he said a little too defensively. “I don’t want a gun, I was just...”
“Seeing if I was full of shit?” Terry spluttered. “It’s cool, I usually am full of shit.” He looked up at her, and she winked. Terry laughed, and they continued down the line of kiosks. In a little bit, he came to one he liked.
“Hey, now this is something!” he said. The kiosk had a Tri-V running over the booth showing a variety of slates and other computer equipment. “Do you think I can afford one?” he asked Tina.
“How much you got? I doubt dollars will convert out here; we’re not common enough yet.” Terry took out the 1,000 credit chit and showed her. “Woah, dude! Where’d you get that?”
“Doc gave it to me for working so hard while he was gone.”
“Guy likes you, that’s a nice little payment. Let’s see...” she said. “I don’t want to sit here all day while we do this slowly.” She used her slate to interface with the kiosk. The computer was linked wirelessly to her own translator, allowing for text conversion. She knelt down so he could see the written inventory and prices.
The kiosk had slates ranging from ones it called ‘Routine’ to ones that were ‘Industrial.” Terry clicked on Routine, and it showed a list, varying by size and configuration. He’d only seen the ones a few aliens carried and that his father had bought for the institute. They’d all been rectangular and transparent. He realized that was only one of a thousand variations. Many were hexagonal, or hourglass shaped. They even had some that were as thin as a pencil.
“I didn’t know there were so many,” he said, shaking his head.
“You just want one for yourself?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Let me.” She clicked on the slate, and in a second three were displayed. All were similar to the ones he’d seen his mom using, though in three different colors, and one wasn’t transparent. However, the cheapest was, and labeled as ‘reconditioned’. He was used to that on Earth; a lot of high-end electronics were recycled. He clicked on the one at the bottom of the list. It was 19 credits.
“That’s it?” he wondered.
“Sure,” she said. “There’s probably a thousand companies making a million of those every day. They’re like water bottles back on Earth, cheap and everywhere.”
Terry clicked on a new version of the same slate. It was 53 credits. “Can you show me one of the Industrial type?”
“Sure,” Tina said. She clicked a few times. The selection there wasn’t as large. “These aren’t always made to be easily portable,” she said and pointed to the dimensions. “That’s translated into English meters.”
Terry could see what she meant; most were pretty big. The smallest was 34 centimeters by 19. He conjured up a mental image. It would be a little bigger than his tablet back on Teddy Roosevelt. He clicked price. That model would cost 198 credits. He looked at Tina and grinned.
“Go for it,” she said, “it’s your money after all!”
Terry gleefully pressed the select button. A little window lit up on the side of the kiosk where a door opened. He placed the chit inside, and the door closed. “What if it doesn’t give me the slate?” he asked suspiciously.
“That would be how you got your expensive robotic kiosk shot full of holes,” Tina said and winked. “Remember that HecSha? What do you think it would do if a slate didn’t pop out?”
Terry laughed and imagined the alien merc eating the kiosk. Crunch, crunch, yum!
The machine displayed some words on the screen above where he’d put the money. Tina held up her slate for him. “Processing Request,” it said.
“It’s probably verifying the credit chit is genuine. Takes a few seconds.” The machine beeped and new words appeared.
“Would you prefer cash or credit in change?”
“Cash,” Terry said. Tina pressed the selection for him. The same door he’d put his money into reopened. Inside was a box and a small stack of credits. He took the slate and tucked it under his arm while counting the credits. There were eight 100 credit chits, and two little 1 credit chits.
“Are you satisfied with your transaction?” the machine asked.
Terry opened the plastic box and found exactly what he’d ordered inside; a shiny new silver-backed slate. He found the activation plate at the bottom, just like on his mom’s, and pressed it. The slate came alive with sliding alien script.
“We can get it configured in a minute,” Tina said, then pressed “Yes” to answer the machine.
“Thank you for your transaction.”
“Holy cow!” Terry said, and turned the slate over and over in his hands.
“Score, kid,” Tina said. “Come on, there’s a little place just over there that serves drinks. I have a program code for a few you might like. We can have a drink, and I’ll get that slate working in English.”
Terry nodded and followed her like a puppy dog, never taking his eyes off the amazing machine he’d just bought for only 20% of his money. He was also thinking, What else can I get while I’m here?
* * * * *
Chapter 9
Teddy Roosevelt, Karma Star System, Cresht Region, Tolo Arm
October 3rd, 2037
For the first time, Terry was in a hurry to return to his quarters after doing his chores and giving Pōkole his morning feeding. He didn’t have a lot of time because he needed to get to his studies. Regardless, he was committed to spending some time with his new slate.
Her familiarity with the technology, as well as an understanding of some Union languages had enabled Tina to set up his slate in just a few minutes. It had been hard for him to sit on the little shop bench and wait; he’d clenched his hands under the table as she worked. Finally, she spun it around on the table and the writing was in English.
“I interfaced it with my own tablet and uploaded an English matrix. You can add other languages later.”
All thoughts of seeing where he could spend some more of his loot was gone as he began to explore the slate, and he quickly realized it wasn’t just a fancy computer. It was more powerful than the most capable Human-manufactured computer ever made.
He did make one more stop before heading back to the Pit of Occo. He went to the same kiosk he’d bought the slate from and also bought a carrying case designed to fit it perfectly. Thanks to the new slate, he didn’t need Tina’s help ordering, either. It cost him another five credits for the case, and one credit for an adjustable strap. At the same time, he dropped 100 credits into his Yack. Now he had some digital money to play with as well. US currency was less than useless out in the galaxy.
Comfortable in the cabin he shared with his mom, Terry linked the slate with Teddy Roosevelt’s computer, and through it to the GalNet. The slate instantly began an update cycle, telling him it was copying 11 petabytes of data.
“Oh, no,” he said, gawking at the number. He went into the slate’s internals and checked on available memory. The slate had four exabytes. “Exabyte?” he wondered, and accessed the ship’s computer for a reference base he’d understand. In a second he had the answer and gasped out loud. An exabyte was 1,024 petabytes, and of course a petabyte was 1024 terabytes. The little silver slate had 11.5 million terabytes of data. His old slate had 10 terabytes, with just 2 available for downloaded data. In short, the new slate was a beast.
“It isn’t even the best,” he said as he clicked around. He’d bought it from a kiosk in a tourist area of Karma Station. That must mean the really powerful ones were sold in other locations where serious customers could be expected. Tina and Doc had said Karma was only a minor trading hub, which meant they wouldn’t have the best computer technology available. Of course, he’d spent almost 200 cre
dits, which on Earth would be $7 million.
He went back to the main screen and checked the download status. “Time to complete—65 hours.”
“Crap,” he said. It must be the Teddy Roosevelt’s computer causing the bottleneck. “So, can I just connect to the GalNet directly?” He tried. The slate informed him three GalNet nodes were available with a transfer rate of one petabyte a second, ten petabytes a second, and twenty-five petabytes a second. Of course, having his own connection would cost him. He checked how much, and grinned. Even the slowest, one petabyte a second, only cost two credits per day.
Terry pulled out his Yack and bought a months’ worth of access and got a discount to 50 credits. Money well spent, he decided, and resolved to put most of the rest of his credits on his Yack. He was beginning to understand what Doc had meant about the economies being different once you got off of Earth. His 1,000 credits wouldn’t go far.
With his own personal temporary GalNet node, the download took 11 seconds. Afterward he had a completely up-to-date and working slate, just in time to do his school work. Crap. He wanted to use the slate for the work, but he had some trouble getting the slate to interface with his tablet. It seemed the tablet was so slow, the slate didn’t think it was even working.
Terry went ahead and did his classwork on the old tablet, all the while chewing over how to get the new slate to behave with his old tablet. He was just about done when his mom floated in, yawning and half asleep.
“Hey,” he said.
“Oh, hi. I wondered where you were.” She slid over to their wardrobe and grabbed her towel and a clean pair of sweats. The ship never quite kept up with their laundry needs.
“Yeah, I wanted to work here. You’re back late.”
“The orcas are starting to show some negative effects of extended zero gravity,” she explained.
“I thought that wasn’t a concern because they don’t need the exercise we do.”
“Sort of,” she said. “They get their basic exercise from swimming around. There isn’t much room, but we’ve got all the cetaceans doing laps twice a day. The bottlenoses understand better than the orcas.” She got a curious look on her face. “Anyway, it isn’t physical strength or bone, it’s digestive. Something nobody expected.”
“What can we do about it?” Terry asked.
She smiled, glad he was so engaged. “Dr. Jaehnig’s working on it, but he’s worried there’s nothing we can do except get them out of space as soon as possible.”
Terry knew all too well that keeping them all supplied with fish was also becoming an issue. Kavul Tesh had been positively crammed with frozen fish, hundreds of tons. But they’d been in space for months. They’d managed to buy some fresh fish from traders on Karma Station, after extensive testing of samples to verify it would be edible by their charges. Even so, supplies were getting slim.
“What are you working on there?” She’d noticed his new slate.
“I bought it over on Karma Station with Doc yesterday!” He held it out for her to see.
“Holy cow,” she said, looking at it with wide eyes. She rolled it over in her hands, examining its build, then tapped on the controls icon to see capacity. “Damn!” she said. “This is 10 times better than our best ones. How much did Doc give you?”
“That one cost 198 credits,” he said. “I got a few extras with it.”
“Most of ours were under 20 credits,” she said, her mouth turning into a frown. “He gave you 200 credits.”
“No, he gave me 1,000.”
Her eyes went wide. “That’s like 30 million.”
“More like 35 million,” he said, but he was getting suspicious.
“Terry, we’re struggling to make ends meet.”
“I know, I didn’t spend it all. I thought a new slate would be a good investment. They practically last forever.”
“I know, ours are like 300 years old,” she mumbled under her breath.
“You’re not going to take away my money, are you?”
“No, you earned it.” she said, though he could see she’d thought about doing just that. “I think I need to talk to Doc about this, though. Take extra good care of that slate, ok?”
“You know it,” he said, breathing a little easier. “I got a custom carrying case for it, too.”
She made a face and headed out into the corridor with her clean sweats and a towel. She came back a minute later, her mood even worse. There was no hot water.
* * *
The next morning he ran into Doc and his team in Kavul Ato’s equipment bay. They were working on some kind of metalworking gear. Terry was there for a new seal on one of the water transfer pumps and hopefully a Union-designed electronics diagnostic tool. It would interface with his slate and help figure out why one of the pumps kept chewing up seals.
“Hey, kiddo,” Doc said as he watched Honcho and Peyto swear and fight with a fitting.
“Hey, Doc,” Terry said and floated to a stop. He watched the two big beefy SEALs struggle to get a good bracing in zero G, while also trying to apply force in opposite directions. “Did mom talk to you?”
“About your money and slate, oh yeah.”
“Uh, oh,” Terry said.
“Don’t sweat it,” Doc said. “She’s honked I didn’t tell her about the money I gave you.”
“What did you say?”
“I said what I gave you was my business, not hers.”
“Wow,” was all he could manage.
“You gotta keep ’em in line,” Tina said and winked.
Terry blushed, though he didn’t know why. “What did she say to that?”
“What could she say?” he said, and shrugged. “She asked me to tell her next time I gave you money, and I said I would. That much was her prerogative.”
Terry didn’t understand how that worked, but he did understand getting between grownups having a disagreement was a bad idea. Peyto let out a grunt, and the nut broke free. The huge man managed to not crash into the wall behind him, mainly through an amazingly acrobatic move. After he recovered, Honcho slapped him a high-five while Toothpick slid in and removed the bolt. It looked for all the world like they were working on a tiny spaceship.
“What is that?” Terry asked. Tina glanced at him and looked away. Was there a hint of a grin on her face?
“I can’t tell you right now,” Doc said. To make it worse, Piano moved between the thing, whatever it was, and Terry. Peyto already had a deck of cards out and was back to playing with his buddy Hutch.
Terry made a face and thought about trying to use his slate to get some pictures, then decided against it. Instead he gave up and went to the stores area to look for the parts he needed. The SEALs continued talking but kept the volume down too low for Terry to hear anything. He got what he needed and headed out the door. Doc watched him the whole way, nodding and giving him a half smile. Terry just frowned.
He returned to the pump room, floating down the corridors from memory without thinking about it. One of Kavul Tesh’s maintenance techs was looking over the technical manual on his personal slate, trying to make sense out of what was wrong. Terry took the diagnostic tool, connected to the pump, and linked it with his new slate.
“That’s an impressive slate,” the tech said.
“I just got it,” Terry said and loaded all 22 diagnostic subroutines. With a click, he ran them simultaneously. “And yeah, it’s pretty cool.”
“I’ll say,” the tech said. “I can only run two of those at the same time; and it’s slower, too.”
Terry grinned as the machine worked. He had the results in only a few minutes, and the tech was able to adjust the parameters.
“I would never have guessed the pulse rate would cause the seals to fail,” the man said. “Thanks, kid.”
“No problem,” Terry said and went happily back to the hold to see how the bottlenoses were doing.
Because his duties mostly revolved around Pōkole, Terry seldom got to see the Sunrise Pod. Because there were so man
y of them, they had more space than either of the orca pods. All three holds within Kavul Tesh had been converted to tankage and interconnected to provide thousands of cubic meters of tank space. Water was purchased from a tanker—normally used for reaction mass—and loaded aboard. Converting it to the right chemical structure wasn’t difficult.
“Terry, Terry, Terry!” they greeted him in their traditional manner.
“Hello, Sunrise Pod. How are you doing?”
“Miss sky, miss beyond,” Skritch said.
“I know,” Terry said. “I miss the sky too.” Though I don’t miss hyperspace, he thought.
“How long?” Hoa asked.
“You mean how long have we been here?”
“How more long?” Skritch said.
“I don’t know,” Terry admitted.
“Understand,” Skritch said, and he went off to swim through the various tunnels connecting the sections together.
“They’re worried.”
Terry turned and saw Dr. Orsage floating by the door with his ever-present slate, taking notes. “About what?”
“Three of the females are pregnant.”
“Oh!” Terry said, surprised. “I thought they were getting drugs to suppress that.”
“They were,” the cetacean psychologist said. “It doesn’t seem to have worked. When a routine test showed the pregnancies, we discontinued the drug.”
“When are the babies due?”
“In about 7 months is our estimate.”
“They’re worried about having the babies here on the ship?”
“Yes,” Orsage agreed. “So are we, actually. Now, excuse me.”
Terry went back to his room after he finished Pōkole’s late feeding. The calf was growing at a phenomenal rate and showed no negative signs of zero G, unlike the adult orcas. In his room, he logged into the education network and checked for classes he needed to work on.