Author: Joseph Phelps (fantasy Writer); Damien Hanson
Date: 2022-12-15 03:36:41+00:00
Description: "The Shopocalypse is Here! Tyson was just a handyman. A non-motivated slacker. the kinda [kind of] dude that you inevitably find hanging out doing odd jobs at the local trailer park, a couple ragged bucks in their pocket and a jar of change on top of their ancient microwave. That was of course, until the arrival of BuyMort. Nanobots of a mercantile sort, the robots of the Shopocalypse, these bad boys set up shop in everything with even an ounce of sapience and installed the only app anyone would ever need to have--BuyMort, the multidimensional monopoly with something for everyone. Priced appro
Publisher: publisher not given

BuyMort: Grand Opening

A BuyMort Novel

Joseph Phelps

Damien Hanson

A Sconnie Books Production

Copyright © 2022 Joseph Phelps,  Damien Hanson

All rights reserved.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

For more information, address: damien@damienhansonbooks.com

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798351389240

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We want to thank every arbitrary fee, every overcharge, every fine print item, advertising algorithm, and predatory firm in existence for the production of this story.

We couldn’t have done it without you!

I want to dedicate this book to all of our fans at Royal Road and ScribbleHub. Without you, this story would not be what it is today.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 – Day 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11 – Day 2

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28 – Day 3

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Epilogue

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Prologue

My little corner of the world wasn’t exactly fantastic before BuyMort came to earth and fucked everything up, but it was mine dammit. I liked my Airstream trailer, and I liked having it parked in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.

My name is Tyson Dawes, and I used to manage the Crappy Trails Campground, in the Skull Valley Desert just outside Prescott. It’s actually the Happy Trails Campground, but Skull Valley is the depressingly real name of my zone on the map. Supposedly the name has some big historical relevance.

Dunno, never learned it. Or cared to, really. I keep out of shit that doesn’t directly affect me, as a rule.

Some jackass told me it was a big important name in the campground office one day while I was trying desperately to pay attention to anything else. People talk way too much to complete strangers who hate them in that industry.

Before we go much further, I need to tell you something about myself. I became a warlord, yes. But I did not start out that way. My story starts out at the end, really. The end of my world yes, but also the end of myself. I had burnt out. Stopped trying. Stopped caring. I was already done for, even before the world came crashing down around me.

I used to do normal things with my life but hiding on the edges of the world seemed like a better option after I got chewed up and spit out by it. Worked what most would call normal jobs most of my life.

I was a good employee too. A slacker at life, yeah. Not very involved with stuff, sure. But I always stayed and worked whatever job I had until they decided they got tired of me and laid me off.

Like that time my last boss lost big on the stock market and suddenly 1500 of us weren’t up to performance standards. Boom. Job gone.

But let’s not forget the pandemic. Everybody’s getting sick, so let’s lay ‘em all off to save the CEO’s yacht club membership. Fuck the rat race. I’m happy to leave it to the rats.

So, I bought my gorgeous little 1962 Airstream Tradewind on loan, towed it out to the first campground to promise me a remote site, and started the last job I would ever have. Well, till the world as we knew it ended, anyhow.

I was a campground attendant.

The work was mostly landscaping, whatever good that did in the land of hot rock and steaming sand. Oh, and picking up empty cans of Thunder Eagle, that piss-water local brand of brew with an American flag-caped Bald Eagle flipping the bird that somehow topped ten percent alcohol content and netted me five cents a can at the recycling plant.

And, of course, the office work. The campground hired strictly minimum wage so there was a steady influx of bubble gum chewing belly shirts who cycled through weekly. It got to the point I didn’t even bother learning their names.

For that workload, I was given a site with generally reliable power, water, sewer, and a monthly stipend that barely covered my necessities.

Still, the owner also owned a local liquor store, and never ‘noticed’ me stealing bottles off shipments, even when he caught me red-handed. Fuck ‘em, the bastard owed me for being the only thing that kept his shitty campground from falling apart.

When BuyMort came to Earth, all of that fell apart within the week, but until then it had been a sweet deal. I was in my early 30’s, no romantic prospects, family, friends, or even pets. I was chill with the spider that lived in my kitchen, but that was about it.

Turns out, all I need is peace and quiet, and the odd occasional bottle of hooch to live life on my own terms. Good enough for me, I can smile and nod with the best of them. And, while Prescott was kind of famous for being crime-riddled, I had my old Mossberg Shockwave, and wasn’t too worried. Criminals around here tended to prefer victims with more stuff to steal than buckshot to share anyway, and nobody wanted my anime stuff but me.

I should probably explain BuyMort. You know those big box stores that show up in your town, sell crappy versions of everything to drive actual small businesses out, then close up and kill the whole town once they’ve sucked all the money out of it? That’s BuyMort, but on a universe-spanning scale.

I don’t understand it all perfectly yet, but literally no one does. That’s the sheer majestic horror of this entity. Nobody really knows what it is or how it works, but it pretty much rules the entire multiverse. With shopping.

Motherfucking shopping destroyed the world.

Chapter 1 – Day 1

So, one peaceful October morning, I was doing my usual. Mowing the lawn around the campground pool, pretending each blade of grass was one of the guests and listening to a little Nietzsche Wasn’t Read, my favorite band. Just pretending it was going to be a perfect day. No day ever is but I was right at that moment where I was still stupid and groggy enough to believe in miracles.

That’s when fire began to rain from the sky.

Wicked.

That was my first thought. I mean fire from the sky is pretty damn cool even if it is going to torch everything and everyone you love. And super big bonus — I had jack shit in both of those departments. Unless you count my collection of anime films, shows, and memorabilia.

Honest-to-god my first reaction was to get excited. I was amped up, full of coffee plus a hard dose of Nietzsche Wasn’t Read rolling on repeat in my brain.

Burn! Burn!!

It was the sort of sick shit that made me mosh-like-mad at a concert and here it was coming out to visit me at the worst damn place on earth.

Sweet.

It was exciting, seeing all this crazy shit. Everyone else was just as excited, too, buncha rubber-necking dumb shits just like me, lining up to see the next bit of mindless entertainment.

One dude in a mohawk was even doing devil horns, screaming up at the sky while playing air guitar with his other hand. Dude was awesome.

Or drunk, couldn’t tell. I wondered if maybe we’d be best friends after the apocalypse.

Or if I was the guy whose skull he’d be drinking from when it was all over.

It all really just looked like a meteor shower. Just meteor after meteor after meteor, all clustered together and coming way too closely on each other’s tails. I actually started to think that it looked sloppy, somehow.

Rushed.

Not at all like the Flying Spaghetti Monster rapture I had been secretly kind of hoping for most of my adult life.

It got better when they got closer though. There were thousands of fireballs raining from the sky, each a different size. And the closer they got, the more they changed in color. At some point there was a full spectrum of shimmering energy fields and blazing trails, ranging from red through violet, with the occasional green or yellow.

It was fascinating watching it all, a lot of colors I just didn’t have a name for. It made for a tremendous spectacle, and I have to admit that nowadays I’m surprised some alien go-getter didn’t get ahead of the crowd and sell us tickets to watch.

It was a mass landing event. See, BuyMort has this following. Groupies of a sort. Desperate, dangerous, devious aliens that form a loose band while they follow the store’s trajectory through space.

The aliens were our first clue that something wild was happening. First contact hit us and was nothing like what we expected. But, I must admit that the gift baskets were a nice surprise.

All that night, I sat in front of the TV in my Airstream, cradling my shotgun, and drinking cheap tequila from the bottle while I waited for aliens to invade my campground. I almost blew off my damn door when something clanked into it. I opened it up to find a cute little parachuted pod that said Welcome to the BuyMort family. Inside was a piece of candy, a cheap plastic flower, and an envelope.

At least I think it was an envelope.

It was envelope shaped, but it had a mouth. A horrible mouth. A pair of fleshy lips embedded into the envelope that attached to vibrating vocal cords and a small inflating bladder. It rested on the counter, leaning forward to point its lips directly at me and shrieked, “OPEN ME, I’M IMPORTANT” over and over again. It would wiggle a small flesh-tab at me and added, “TEAR HERE! TEAR HERE, PLEASE!”

I know what you’re thinking, cause I obviously thought it too. Don’t open the envelope. But you didn’t hear the voice on this thing. It was like razorblades being dumped into my ears. I did try not to open it. Even approached with my shotgun and poked it a couple of times. The insistent demands grew labored, and ragged, taking on a new decibel level.

“Enough!” I screamed, grabbing the thing and tearing off its side. It screamed in agony and then was silent.

Paper. The thing inside it was paper. Just paper. It was that disgusting flesh the envelope had been made of, but lighter and folded like any other letter. Thank the Great Spaghetti in the sky there was no blood. I unfolded the document and read it through bleary but rapidly sobering eyes.

CONGRATULATIONS PROSPECTIVE

CUSTOMER!

SOON YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE JOYS OF BUYMORT. TO PREPARE YOU FOR YOUR UTOPIC DESCENT INTO MULTIDIMENSIONAL ONE SHOP CONSUMER JOY WE OFFER YOU A FREE GIFT CARD WITH 10 MORTIES!

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS START A CREDIT ACCOUNT WITH BUYMORTSAVINGSPLUS ON ASCENSION DAY AND USE YOUR NEW CREDIT ACCOUNT TO PURCHASE AN ITEM OF 11 OR MORE MORTIES AND HURRAY YOU HAVE JUST RECEIVED 10 FREE MORTIES!

BUT ACT FAST BECAUSE THIS OFFER WILL EXPIRE IN ONE FULL EARTH YEAR.

And it ended there. That envelope creature had died for a mildly garish advertisement. Nothing else. No aliens ever came to visit me but watching the TV I learned a shitload of seemingly unimportant details that first night.

We were being settled. Aliens of all sorts were crashing, or landing, or even, in one case, setting up some sort of ready-made pop-up city.

On the TV, news agencies scrambled for the on-scene scoop. On Electronic World Talk there was a reporter standing in her cool full-length trench coat zipping her news van over to where a cigar-shaped ship had just slammed into the earth.

Eyes wide, I watched as she got out with her cameraman and rushed on over. I could hear the clinks and clanks of the cooling aircraft and I suspected that something big was about to go down.

Then a door opened, and three green-skinned aliens popped out and threw up all over her, shiny bottles of alien hooch in hand.

The apocalypse was like that. No rhyme or reason. No solid theme. On another channel I watched as a ship shaped like a pancake popped open and flames coursed out, rolling over and incinerating the reporter.

Over and over, channel after channel, I saw first contact. Some were good. Others not so good. And I saw battles. In some places Americans went full-on second amendment, blasting at newcomers and getting blasted back in return. Sometimes the aliens shot first.

It was a mess.

And let me tell you something else.

Orcs are real. Play with that in your head a little bit. Battle axes, roaring, screaming at you like a maniac.

Except, apparently, they are actually really nice until you’re a dick to them. There was a small issue with some kind of professional LARPing group that heckled a group of Orcs to some kind of confrontation, but for the most part it was all peaceful interactions with them.

The real issue was the affiliates. Those came in bigger ships, which were all manned by multiple races of aliens. Orcs, giant snake people, blue people with antennae, hyenas walking on their hind legs, and a near constant stream of tall gray humanoids with pebbled skin. Some of them even wore uniforms.

Wherever a bigger ship landed, armed conflicts quickly broke out and news coverage in the areas became spotty at best. Whatever affiliates were, they were dangerous, and they were an integral part of BuyMort itself.

I think it’s time to tell you exactly what BuyMort is before we get into my daily fight to survive it. BuyMort is a self-replicating nanorobotic intelligence structure that has been programmed to bring a Mortfront to every sentient being in the known multiverse. That’s right, it’s a fucking store. A gol-damned targeted marketing scheme. A god of commerce, drifting through the fabric of reality, aiding anything that can shop with its specific shopping needs, by force. Thank you for shopping at BuyMort.

Hate the name yet? I know I did ten seconds after it arrived in my head.

See, these nanobots just fly through space, infecting every creature on every world that exists anywhere. They set up shop on your planet, in your brain, and in your wallet. Then they collectively speak to each other and choose a name for your species.

For humans, it tossed every bit of known commerce we had ever engaged in and kept records of into a shitty AI blender and picked the name out of that. It claims the name was chosen carefully from the very best parts of who we are as a people.

Fuck that.

But, once your species has a chosen name for the storefront, it translates any other version of that name into yours and you can literally never know what anyone else calls it. Even if they write it down or carve it into stone, you’ll just see it as BuyMort.

It’s just BuyMort forever now, and we get no appeals.

Chapter 2

So, the big night of aliens passed uneventfully for me. Well, excepting the gift basket and my passing out over the gummy, sticky flesh paper of the credit application form, further wrecking it with my spilled tequila. Looked like I somehow spilled some in my shotgun also. And in my sink apparently?

It was a wild night that I didn’t remember a lot of to be honest, but that’s the worst thing that happened to our little corner of the Arizona desert. I didn’t sleep much anyway and woke up with my usual tequila sunrise. Or as it’s more commonly known, a hangover.

The next day I arose to my headache and the same news of the aliens. The number of arrivals kept expanding, but few communicated with us.

The Orcs saw to that after they had tried.

It seemed most of the other alien races behaved subserviently toward them. Made sense, they were the single biggest faction so far, with hundreds of ships on each continent, and millions of people. Well-dressed, wealthy looking green skinned humanoid sightings were normal, and any hostility was met with immediate lethal response. They had plasma weaponry; it was fucking terrifying. People just flared to ash on TV right in front of me.

Several countries attempted to use military forces to control the Orcs movements, but they were easily swatted aside. Here in Arizona a local militia tried to do the same sort of thing, and no one knows what exactly happened to them. Their compound was emptied, and families all went missing overnight.

The Orcs didn’t seem to be doing anything much, just exploring, and taking pictures. Sometimes they would hold short, impromptu auctions at certain locations. One such event garnered much interest at the White House, and speculation was rampant on TV. They never attacked though, just held their strange auction, celebrated with the winner, took some pictures, and left.

Just as I was thinking that I sure hoped my idiot boss didn’t expect me to work today, BuyMort hit me. I took a funny breath that smelled like burnt copper and my head nearly exploded. It was like my hangover learned how to throw its own mosh pit in my skull, and a horrific bell chimed. My eyes crossed, my tongue lolled, it was so loud that I’m surprised my skull didn’t crack.

I sat in my chair stunned.

A bleary glance at the TV told me that the same thing had happened to the news casters. One was trying gamely to blather on, grinding out words like the spin of a broken See and Say, but the other had begun vomiting.

Hey, that seemed like a great idea.

I almost made it to the sink when I hurled, but instead it hit the edge of the counter and I slipped in it, bashing my head on the floor before fountaining tequila-corn stew all over my face.

As I lay in a puddle of my own rich smelling bile, staring up at the dripping counter, a sickly-sweet female voice sounded in my head.

“Hello valued customer! Welcome! Welcome to the BuyMort family!” She was so happy to meet me. As my eyes uncrossed, a partially opaque blue screen arrived in my vision. I shut my eyes, and it stayed put. No escape. It also just read “WELCOME TO THE BUYMORT FAMILY!” in sickeningly vibrant yellow on a blue background.

BuyMort, wow. What a difference.

Underneath the screen appeared the picture of some purple pills and the words HANGOVER BE GONE! (This wonderful elixir instantly rehydrates and rids your body of nasty toxins. Be strong. Use Hangover Be Gone. 25 morties, 4.9 stars). Beneath that, in smaller print and lighter font, read the label “Sponsored”.

It informed me that it existed, told me it was ready to buy or sell anything of value, added that for a monthly membership fee I could set up a special storefront, a store within the store that would give me a larger share of the sales than I’d get otherwise from selling my stuff for no fee, it advised me to advertise my wares after Earth competition started to grow, and then minimized itself into the corner of my vision.

Permanently.

Like a welded in place icon, I now have a BuyMort signal in my peripheral vision at all fucking times. Learning how to sleep with it lighting up your skull is a fun task that every sentient being must endure. Welcome to the BuyMort family.

If you look at it too hard, it pops up your Mortfront too, so that happens all the time when you don’t want it to. I kept popping it up and reflexively closing it when it first hit me.

I blinked hard dozens of times, rubbed my eye where it was, even punched myself in the face a little, just in case it helped. Nothing did. The news reported that people who had been born blind or even lost their physical eyes in an accident had it in their peripheral vision too. No escape.

One poor bastard gouged his eyes out on live TV, then wailed in the corner that it was still there. The little blue blinking icon was in my vision at all times, and I just couldn’t help but activate it.

It’s like poking a mouth wound with your tongue. You know it’s gonna suck and you can’t stop yourself until you do it anyway.

Once I got over my initial BuyMort panic, as it is now called by what’s left of our species, I started trying to explore it, while taking a shower to rinse off the tequila sunrise.

Infuriating thing I’ve learned since then, turns out BuyMort is different every fucking time you use it, unless you pay it not to be. Even then, that’s only for your sales. Purchases are like playing an online casino every time you need something.

It’s important to keep the shopping experience fresh, after all. That encourages creative and satisfying commerce.

And every few hours an ad will be sent to you, one that opens up and fills the center of your vision when you are in a place that doesn’t require your attention. You know, when you’re sitting there reading, or watching a show on TV. Maybe even when you’re playing a game because it doesn’t give a damn about boss battles and save points. I could rant on that damn thing for hours but honestly there’s an entire tutorial that explains it all.

I know of people who blew their brains out when they went through it. I gotta admit, I was tempted myself. The woman’s voice is so exuberant as she explains your new doomed nature. The nanites in your skull, the shopfront being multiverse wide, the infuriating nature of the Mortfront, all of it will be cheerfully explained to you. It’s all designed to manipulate our minds, you see, to aid us in shopping.

When asked how to delete or uninstall BuyMort, the voice merely whines “well why would you wanna do that?” and you are given the option to pause ads for a set amount of time at a price that changes depending on current consumer demand. No other response is given. Ever.

BuyMort, the only store you’ll ever need.

The first thing, it explained, is gathering currency. All currency was convertible to morties, the BuyMort preferred currency. Remember that naming thing it does? Every species had its very own currency, connected to its very own BuyMort name, but anytime someone mentioned it, the name was translated to morties in our heads.

Morties were kept on your own personal account, which you, and only you, could access. Theft of morties was physically impossible, the horribly chipper voice in your head would assure you cheerfully.

To try it out, I took some pocket change and the bills in my wallet and told my BuyMort I wanted to exchange currency.

“Pod dispatched!” BuyMort chirped.

Pods. It’s funny because any time you think of pods and space and aliens and all of that jazz, you think escape. The ship is going to blow. Run to the escape pods! But now here they were, real pods, and there was no escape. Pods were how BuyMort bought things from you and delivered things to you when you bought them.

Once you placed an order, a pod was dispatched to our location, no need for an address. When it arrived, it would scan whatever you offered it, produce a number for your morties account, and then warp away whatever you gave it with its terrifying multi dimensional beam, no information provided. Just a yes or no transaction, do you want to sell it or not?

Conversely, if you purchased something from BuyMort, the Pod would warp in your item after taking your currency. I didn’t know this at the time, but Pods come in many varieties. This was merely what we terrestrials were operating with most of the time.

The plasma people had their very own kind of pods that wouldn’t melt, and if you were not able to be reached by a normal pod, a dimensional pod could be tasked to your transaction if it were deemed worthy of the expense.

If you weren’t doing big commerce, conventional pods were what you got. They were mobile and tricky enough to get most places anyway and were a heck of a lot faster than what most of us were used to on Earth.

The conventional pod was jet black all over except its glowing red tip, sleekly styled into a tear drop shape. They were about the size of a weirdly oblong basketball. My pod knocked at my door a few minutes after I had informed BuyMort I wanted to exchange some currency. When I opened the door to my trailer, the hovering black tear drop invited itself in, pushing directly past me.

If you were in the path of a pod in transit, it would shove you out of its way, and if you tried to destroy a pod, it would return the favor with a variety of interdimensional summons. I fucking hate pods. We all do. Everyone except the church of BuyMort, of course.

My pod that day hovered in, shoving me in the face as it did. The mute black teardrop hovered into the middle of the room and stopped over my small offering: fifteen dollars and thirty-four cents on the table in my Airstream. It popped a small light on from its underside and outlined the money in bright lights. A message popped up on my Mortfront.

“Would you like to exchange fifteen dollars and thirty-four cents United States of America Dollars into morties?” came the horrid chipper voice. She delights in tormenting us. Welcome to the BuyMort family.

“Fuck. Yes, and shut the fuck up please.” I’ll admit, I didn’t set a good example for the relationship. I fucking hate BuyMort, if you haven’t figured that out yet. Hate at first sight. The sort of hate reserved for people who’d hire me to mow their lawn then stiff me on the bill.

“Fifteen dollars and thirty-four cents provides point zero zero two morties. Thank you for your business!” She shrilled at me again, right before the pod zapped my cash with a dazzling beam and wandered out the door, to scoot off into the sky. I looked around outside and noticed pods everywhere.

“Hey, wait a second you bruised scrotum! That’s not a fair exchange!” I thought about trying to shoot the pod down, but it was way too far away for my little liquored up sawed off. I sighed and went back inside.

I watched more cable news as I cleaned my shotgun out and reloaded it. I know, I know, that shit rots your brains, but they were fielding the cameras and it kept me enthralled in terror. The entire world’s economies were all crashing at the same time. Currency dwindled in value as it was consumed, and BuyMort was ruthless with its exchange rates in response. I was lucky I got .002 morties for my fifteen bucks, as cash and bank accounts quickly became worth almost nothing.

Surprising no one, the wealthy began exchanging their fortunes almost immediately, which not only netted them the greatest amount of morties for their Earth-money, but it also fucked the rest of us over on the exchange rate. Billions of people around the globe lost literally everything while a couple of dozen who already lived the best lives got a nice head start on the apocalypse. Typical.

And they wonder why everyone hates ‘em.

Then I had a thought. I pointed to a bag of bread I had just bought the last time I was in Prescott. Still snicker every time I think that name. It was some organic white bread with seeds and shit in it. I dunno, I needed to eat healthier, and it tastes pretty alright. Bite me, I like fancy bread and I’m not gonna be ashamed of it for the likes of you.

Besides, it netted me a windfall.

Chapter 3

“I’d like to sell this bag of bread,” I muttered. I held it up and shook it for emphasis, like maybe BuyMort was some sort of dog or puppy.

My Mortfront sprang to life in my vision and the damned voice came back. “Pod dispatched!”

I winced as the voice flared my hangover. This time I left the door open and waited with my shotgun, until the sleek black pod hovered into my Airstream. It traveled over to the bag of bread and slid to an eerie stop directly over it, lights active again.

“Would you like to sell this?” She demanded, ringing in my ears. She sounded like I imagine a tax auditor might look. Imperious and bored.

I clapped my hands over my ears and grunted in pain, but she didn’t notice or care. “Yes, fuck off.”

The pod cast its beam over the bread, and my account spun up. I stared, wide eyed as the numbers rolled. The bread netted me a shitload of morties. Four hundred and fifty of them to be exact. My eyes went wide.

“Well, shit. I guess if you like the hippy bread, you’ll love what I’ve got for you next.” I wandered through the trailer, grabbing this and that, just selling every bit of random junk I didn’t need in my Airstream.

Pods came and went rapidly.

I even sold an old box of chocolates off one at a time just to raise up their transport costs. Assuming multidimensional monopolies have them. In and out the pods came, each taking whatever I sold.

After selling three paperback books, an old music CD, a rubber stress toy, and a joint my last customers had tipped me, I was up to a little past seven thousand morties.

What a rush!

After that little commerce session, I stopped and thought about it for a minute. The TV was spouting all kinds of economic theory about BuyMort, but I tuned it out. Most of it went over my head. Instead, I started exploring my Mortfront. Quickly, I noticed my transaction history and went into the details.

Currency Exchange: 15.34 USAD received, .002 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Biological feed, grain based processed food block, sliced. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, good. 450 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Text, Earth fiction. Howard the Duck, novelization. Rarity, uncommon. Condition, poor. 913 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Audio disk, Earth music. Nietzsche Wasn’t Read. Rarity, uncommon. Condition, fair. 648 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Unknown category. Possible categories: Toys/Cookware/Religious Artifact. Holed metal vessel with rubber handles. Rarity, unknown. 5003 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Intoxicant, herbal. Marijuana, Blue Dream variation. Rarity, common. Quality, good. 4 morties dispensed.

Well, that was educational.

I had a spread of items sold, and a wild variety of morties paid out for each. Stupidly enough, my pasta colander had been the biggest ticket item. These rarity ratings were wonky as fuck too.

Nietzsche Wasn’t Read wasn’t uncommon, they sold triple platinum.

And that Howard the Duck novelization was actually a rare collector’s item, so that price felt fair considering how dogeared and well-loved it was.

I’ll miss that book, shouldn’t have sold it. They go for over a billion morties each now.

The bread I couldn’t make sense of exactly. Sure, it was produced by the hippy commune a little further into the desert and they didn’t produce or sell much of it, but I only paid five bucks for it. Seemed like that sort of thing should play in as well.

Don’t get me wrong though, I was happy to get more from it than that.

Made up for my poor exchange rate on the cash. Looking down at the Blue Dream joint I had sold, its rating said common, and I got paid just a few morties for it, even though it was good quality. Comparing that to my spaghetti colander led me to realize something.

Nobody had tried to sell BuyMort a colander yet. I must have been the first, that’s why it didn’t know how to categorize it or how much it was worth. Religious artifact? Ha! Indeed, it was.

BuyMort had no idea what the fuck it was buying and selling right now, and it had no clue what things were worth. Its economy was in sheer chaos, and right now was when I could make a bunch of money selling it things nobody else was selling it. I had to get outside!

I scrambled out of my trailer into my campsite and started casting around for things to sell BuyMort. I thought about trying a stone, but that seemed immediately like a bad idea.

There were billions of other humans, and hundreds of millions of aliens now probably all doing the same exact thing.

I realized in that moment that this was why the aliens were here. This planet was a gold mine if you knew much of anything about BuyMort. That was why they followed it here, that was why they were here. To exploit the system as it devoured its latest victims.

Before I did anything, I hurriedly upgraded my personal account to be able to use basic preference settings, and then paid a little extra to turn off the voice. All of my interactions with BuyMort would be text based from that moment on out.

It was expensive, hundreds of morties, but I needed it. That voice was clearly designed to get people to purchase this upgrade, so I paid my ransom and made myself free of it.

For a month.

Casting about, I noticed the overgrown planter and summoned a pod. I told the mute thing that I wanted to sell every flower and cactus in my garden, and it hovered over the area, warping them away one by one.

I checked my account and was thrilled to notice it had jumped to just over 87 thousand morties. I had no idea what I could buy with a Mortie yet, but that seemed like a good number, and I wanted to grow it. This was definitively the new law of the land, and Mortie gathering was going to be on everyone's minds.

As if to punctuate my thoughts, screaming and gunfire erupted from the campground over the ridge. I retreated into my Airstream and grabbed my Mossberg. I did give half a second of thought to selling it, but without any way of knowing how many morties it was worth without letting it go, I needed to keep it on hand for whatever bullshittery my species was going to pull next.

My phone rang, and for a moment I thought about selling that too. Especially since it was fricking eight o’clock in the morning. Then I saw it was my boss. The campground’s owner. It rang a few times, then cut out, and then started ringing again. After he called back a third time, I grabbed it and hit the green button.

“Yeah?” I tried to pretend I was out of breath, like I had been doing something important.

Mr. Sada didn’t care. He almost never cared. “What the fuck are you doing!? The guests are freaking out and calling my personal line, get out there and keep the peace!”

“Yeah, I mow the lawns dude, I’m not sheriff or something.” My response came with a snort.

“You work for me, asshole. You live on my property, and you work for me. Go shut down the camp, don’t let anybody but the cops in.” He sounded serious, somehow, while whining in fear.

“We’re in the middle of the desert, Mr. Sada.” I stepped out of my Airstream with the shotgun and started walking to the top of the hill my site was surrounded by. Just a flat-topped earthen mound about six feet high all the way around, but it helped keep the noise out. These trailers are just aluminum cans, you hear every fuckin’ thing. “And everyone is dealing with this BuyMort thing anyway.”

From the top of my hillside, I could see the campground. It spread out toward the south, in a grove of Joshua trees, dotted with scrub and cacti. Most of it was just desert sand and blacktop, with trailers and RVs parked all over the place.

The campground was small, only had a capacity of about fifty. At least three areas were on fire, and gunfire rang out sporadically from each.

So, things hadn’t changed that much, to be honest. The crucial difference here, though, was that the bullet holes were plocking into the sides of trailers instead of into full beer cans or clouds in the sky.

“Mr. Sada, honestly. I don’t know what you expect me to do, I’m not getting into a gunfight for you.” I shrugged and stared at the trouble brewing in the park.

He hesitated at that. “They’re shooting at each other already?”

“Yeah man, they’re shooting. This is the States, what’d you expect?” I shrugged again.

“Shit, man. Sorry. Just on edge. Don’t get yourself shot over bullshit. Just . . . go lock up the office and the entrance gate. Don’t let anyone else in.”

His anger had died out, I was pretty sure he could hear the gunfire in the background of my call. The owner of the campground lived close by, in a McMansion down the road.

It was gross.

I had to drive by it on my way into town anytime I needed groceries. The hideous thing stood by itself at the edge of the block. Like an evil looming castle to try and sneak past. Had to look at his brand-new Tesla in the driveway while remembering he had told me there was no money in the budget for more dog poo bags for the campground too.

“I . . . alright Mr. Sada. I’ll go lock up. Stay safe.” With that, he hung up on me and I slipped the phone back into my pocket. At least those still worked, and there was no point trying to sell it to BuyMort anyway. Everyone carried a phone. I’m sure that had been done to death.

I hefted my little sawed-off Mossberg and started walking toward the main gate. My campsite was near the back of the campground and had its own exit road with an iron bar gate. It was the dirt road to town, and nobody used it but me and Mr. Sada.

But the front entrance was a different story. That had a single lane road with a large wrought iron gate set in brackets. It was pretty secure against vehicles. The office kept all our cash and records. I assume Mr. Sada hadn’t realized it was all worthless, but it would be very little work to make sure it was closed.

Or so I thought.

Chapter 4

My normal morning rounds brought me through campsites busily sleeping off the nights’ reveries, mostly. Any interactions were surly and unpleasant, normally the effect of some kind of hangover or another. I learned to avoid people wherever possible, working there.

I didn’t have a lot of people left in my life when everything started to go wonky. Not a lot of reasons to care. Before BuyMort came I got up and went to work every day because it felt strange not to, more than anything else. Habit, I guess. Indoctrinated more likely. And a need for some sweet financial subsistence.

One of the few bright points in not just my daily workday at the campground, but also my life was one of our few remaining full-time residents. An old, wrinkled angel with a full set of fake teeth and a fondness for LSD, her name was Phyllis.

Phyllis was a sweet old lady I helped care for, the camp’s last remaining retiree. When the campground first opened, it had been a mobile home park filled with seniors. A veritable old folks’ resort, the Miami of Arizona. Mr. Sada couldn’t kick them out, per his legal agreement with the former owner, so he just celebrated whenever any of them died.

It meant he could clear out a new site and bring in more campers, which meant more money. The old folks had their rent locked in as part of the agreement too. Mr. Sada treated it as a long-term investment, even going so far as to call their deaths the more clinical “maturation of assets”. A term that he found funny as hell and would repeat loud and often, thinking people got it. Not malicious. Just childish and spoiled.

At first, he had left their side of the grounds alone. His construction crews ripped through the rest of the park and expanded it, while outfitting it for recreational use. But soon, he was installing new campsites all around the old folks’ mobile home areas.

It was a medieval siege mentality, they were beset every weekend by shrieking children, rude neighbors, and large diesel engines rumbling constantly. Many left. More died. Mr. Sada celebrated every single one.

Phyllis was our last, and she openly hated Mr. Sada. She had a hearing aid that she would gleefully turn down whenever Mr. Sada came around, to his scowling disapproval. The drugged up old lady was immune to his mercantile wrath, and he knew it. And I knew that when she died, he was going to have the biggest damn party he could throw, and I was going to knock his lights out, decades of therapist talk be damned.

That was never going to happen now. Not with BuyMort here.

Her RV was tucked away behind a grove of Joshua trees, surrounded by campsites that arched out around it in a wide circle. She had lived quietly with her husband, until he died of a stroke one night.

After that, I helped her where I could. Groceries and prescription pickups, things like that. Old lady needed very little to be content, really. She was nice, and she hated the guests as much as I did. We used to sit out on the porch and smoke joints, talking shit about them for hours at night and laughing. She was a cool ninety-two-year-old, and a great neighbor.

And since I was going to head past her place anyways on the way to the campground office, I figured I might as well step off the path and check up on her.

When I approached, I saw her camper was torn wide open, the ceiling was torn back like a can and gave a peek of the interior. Something had erupted from inside the old double-wide Shasta trailer and peeled back the metal siding all around the door area.

As I walked cautiously around the side of it, I saw what. A mechanized suit of combat armor hulked in the driveway next to the ruined Shasta. It was candy apple red, with dark metallic black sections showing through underneath. Where the joints swiveled and hinged, you could see beyond the plating a little here and there. What I saw there looked hardened too. The mech was on its hands and knees in the garden.

Phyllis loved that garden, told me all about what it used to be. Back when she first moved into the campground, in her early seventies, she had gardened up a storm. But then her hands became arthritic, and she let it go to pot. The framework and pathing were all still in place, and she could point with one of her crooked hands and tell me all about the beauty it used to hold. Now something was trying to bury a dead body in it.

I blinked at the sight before me. A young man lay dead on the ground next to the mech, his skull and ribcage partially crushed. The mech was digging at the garden with one oversized metal hand, tearing loose great chunks of the dried earth and tossing them aside. The young man was holding a crushed length of what looked like it used to be a shotgun, and the mech was making a faint grunting sound as it dug. The voice sounded artificial, like it was emanating from a speaker.

As soon as I came around the corner, the mech turned to look at me and my jaw dropped open. Its helm was rolled back internally, showing the interior of the armor. Phyllis’s face looked up at me from inside, eyes blinking rapidly from behind her thick glasses. When she saw me, she visibly sagged and sighed aloud.

“Oh Tyson, thank goodness you’re here.” Phyllis-in-the-mech sat back on the ground, resting on one large metal arm. The arm ended in a three fingered grasper, with thick metal flippers forming the fingers. I watched the ease it sunk into the earth with, eyes wide. “I’m having a difficult morning.”

***

So, let me be straightforward with you about something. I helped that old lady bury that body in her garden. Before I knew any of the specifics, even. I looked at her and just thought to myself. “Fuck it. Me and killer grandma against the world.” Don’t regret it a bit so far.

Phyllis indeed had a difficult morning. Once the body was hidden and we could sit down for a cup of tea and a joint, as we liked to do, she told me all about it. BuyMort had awoken her from a deep sleep, she had missed all the fuss about the aliens entirely. Phyllis watched television like a fiend, but never the news. The news she scoffed at and called dull. She had finished up her latest DVD boxset, Lost, and written a scathing review online before calling it a night. When BuyMort roared into her head, she nearly fell out of bed in shock.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand it very well, dearie,” she confided in me, her gray curls bouncing from inside the mech suit.

I got a good look at some aspects of it as we talked. It was bolted into her skull, and collarbones as well. Metal inserts extended around her forehead like a crown, and I could still see the blood from where it had been surgically implanted to her skeletal frame. The armor hulked out around her chest, in a vaguely humanoid form. Sharp ridges overlapped to form protective armor plating, but it looked like it was capable of dishing out a lot of damage too.

The crushed kid had been evidence of that.

So, she had gotten confused by BuyMort. Asked it for help with a few things once it asked her how it could assist her. It suggested selling a few things for morties, so Phyllis did.

A custom brassiere from the nineteen-forties netted her an absurd payout due to rarity and the stupid-ass store not knowing what things were worth. Then she had ordered the mech without really understanding what she was ordering. An exciting shopping experience was had when it jumped her and drilled itself into her skeleton.

“I only asked for something to help with my medications, I so struggle to remember when to take them. Then I asked for something to help me move around easier and protect against falls. Oh, and that young man in the garden came knocking and was helping himself to my delicates. I strongly suspected he was a pervert, so I asked the store for something to help me get rid of him.”

She leaned in close to whisper the last, giving me a good look down the interior of her nightgown. Aside from a pair of flat, wrinkled breasts I never wanted to see, I got a good look at what the machine had done to her. More braces held her frail body, and more bolting appeared to be anchoring her bones to the machine. All around her chest, small metallic straps extended across her ribs. At several places, tubes and pipes were connected to her frail form. It had appeared from the pod, embraced and engulfed her, and then surgically implanted itself upon her. Then the young man had attacked her with his shotgun, and she crushed him with a single hand.

“Now I can’t seem to get out of this thing, but I can certainly move easier now.” Her eyes rolled in humor, and she snickered into the back of one giant, armored hand. “I suppose it’s a blessing.”

Her eyes went wide as she accidentally activated something and the headpiece slammed into position, covering her from the world. It was a rounded armored helmet reminiscent of medieval armor, with glowing red eyes. Phyllis’s voice emanated from within the armor as the eyes flashed. “Oh dear. Now I have to use the screen thingy again.” She sighed. “I’m just no good at these screens.”

The mech raised an arm and the hand began to spin and fold inward. It created a hollow that looked a little like a jet engine, but when it began to spin, a ball of blue energy formed in front of it.

“Oops!” Phyllis said, as she released the ball of plasma into a nearby fifth-wheel RV. It erupted in a cloud of flames, and the remaining sporadic gunfire across the park ceased. Several vehicles nearby began to pull out of their spaces, in varying degrees of haste. A small C-class motorhome nearly tipped as its tires smoked and screamed.

Phyllis giggled and waved her still-smoking cannon at them. “Another one gone. Maybe it’ll be a nice quiet weekend after all, Tyson.” The armor lowered her helmet again and she blinked at the daylight, before going back to her tea.

After a lovely respite with Phyllis, I carefully stalked through the rest of the campground to the front gate. No one disturbed me. After BuyMort and then Phyllis, most of the campers had cleared out. The place had a few rigs left, but nobody was out and about. I secured the entrance gate and hung the closed sign over it, before checking the office. It had never even been opened.

I rolled my eyes at Mr. Sada’s predictable nonsense, and then at myself for continuously falling for it. Then I decided I was clocked out for the day and started walking home. Phyllis’s weed was kicking in and I wanted to watch some more news. As I walked past Phyllis and her torn up Shasta, she waved a huge, metal arm at me cheerfully.

I thought about the body buried in her garden for a moment but decided there likely wasn’t going to be any kind of governing body to hold us to account for it anytime soon and shrugged. Hefting my sawed-off shotgun, I climbed the ridge to my Airstream, and stopped dead when I reached the top.

A hulking pile of glittering slime appeared to be trying to steal my home.

Chapter 5

A pod was approaching my trailer, and the gleaming slime was vibrating excitedly. I pumped the shotgun and shouted something stupid.

Probably “hey,” knowing me.

The slime swung around and looked at me. I think. It didn’t have a face, or any kind of organs I could see. Just viscous slime, and the odd occasional hunk of something that appeared to be bubbling, suspended within it. The slime pile made a high-pitched burbling sound, extended several waving tendrils, and charged at me.

Look, I’m not proud of this next part, but I didn’t feel like I was left with many options. After I put a hot load of triple-aught buckshot into this crazed tentacle monster, and it didn’t even slow down, I couldn’t think of anything else to do but run back to Phyllis screaming for help, okay?

Anyway, killer granny to the fucking rescue. She handled it like a champ. Turns out, Phyllis is pretty fuckin lethal. She used to be one of those crazy European girls who seduced SS officers in World War 2 and then slit their throats in bed.

She told me all about it, after we smoked another joint to celebrate her saving my ass from a gibbering tentacle slime monster. Most of the girls, she said, would chicken out and have their resistance contacts rush in to do the deed once the officer was disarmed and helpless, but not Phyllis. She was a proper black widow and did it all herself.

The slime pursued me up the privacy barrier, moving far more rapidly than I was comfortable with. I blasted it with the Mossberg, finally putting that old gun to work. And of course, the buckshot did nothing. It punched through the thing’s tentacles and slowed upon entering its gelatinous body, to finally stop and fizz. I pumped the slide and fired again, to exactly the same results, before I screamed for Phyllis over my shoulder and started running.

The pod was still a dot in the distance, but it was moving fast. I scrambled down the embankment of the privacy hill and ran flat out, arms pumping. The thing behind me made a sound between a giggle and a fart and put on a burst of speed. Its tentacles all reached and leaned toward me.

Phyllis was still on the deck, and I saw her turn as I approached. The helmet slapped into place, and she raised the mech’s turbine gun-arm. The bolt of plasma it launched sizzled as it streaked past me and hissed horribly when it hit the slime. The jabbering became a scream, like a tea pot on the stove. It screamed as it burned out from the center and died.

The whistling scream faded out as the slime’s gel material singed and crisped. It left a blackened viscous film behind on the ground. When I nudged it with my boot, it scorched the rubber and smoked. I stared at Phyllis. In her mech, on her deck, getting wrecked at eight-fifteen in the morning. If only I’d been half a century older.

“Holy shit, thank you, Phyllis!” I gasped, holding my shotgun by the sling and leaning forward on my knees. “You saved my ass! That thing was gonna kill me and sell my-”

I stopped mid sentence and started sprinting back to my trailer. The pod zoomed into the little shallow immediately ahead of me. Phyllis shouted something at me, amplified and mechanized in her suit of armor, but I didn’t make out the words. I just saw the sleek black pod as it zapped away my trailer in a sheen of multicolored lights. Another slime monster looked at me from the other hilltop, across my now empty lot. It burbled and farted, turned, and ran away.

The pod turned to leave, and without thinking I raised my shotgun, pumped a shell into the chamber, and squeezed the trigger. What happened next, I guess I was lucky to survive. You be the judge.

I’m a decent shot with the little stubby. It’s a sawed-off shotgun, but the pump action kind. Still a handful of gun, and with no stock, it kicks like a bitch. I learned the hard way not to brace it against your soft, delicate belly either. That got me laughed out of the gun range and left a hell of a bruise. I do not recommend the experience, one out of five stars, and the single star is only because I learned something.

So, when I raised the Mossberg to my eyeline, sighted carefully, and fired, the pod got the full load of the shell. The ammunition sparked and tore some black material loose, but the pod hardly slowed. It began to zig and zag, rising and diving, making for a hell of a hard target. I couldn’t keep a line on it.

Then it dropped a giant scorpion from another dimension on me and went back about its day. A new tutorial was waiting for me to explain what had happened, the next time I opened BuyMort.

You see, when a BuyMort pod is attacked, they will always default to a diversionary tactic and focus on escape. Harming BuyMort property is frowned upon, but BuyMort understands that not all consumers operate with the same customs. Commerce is for everyone, though, and BuyMort is always eager to provide its customers with new and exciting shopping opportunities. Shopportunities.

In essence, if you attack their shit directly, they drop interdimensional monsters on you. BuyMort has this thing it does, where it actively tries to get you to spend as much of your Mortie stash as possible at a single time. It’ll always upsell you, even if you attack it. And what better way to upsell than to nearly kill your customer, and then provide them aid at a premium. Which is exactly what it did to me.

A warning screen popped up in my vision as soon as my buckshot hit the pod, and BuyMort told me that they understood my need for violence and were happy to provide a violent diversion for free. At the bottom, a smaller print sign announced that combat capability scans were approximations, and that medical supplies and services were available for sale on your BuyMort interface.

At BuyMort, we understand that family is important, but sometimes families fight. Anyway, here’s your giant scorpion, enjoy. It was actually when I was mulling over the bizarre logic when the pod beamed in my punishment.

A bright, dayglow green scorpion with vibrant purple veins throbbing all over its carapace suddenly stepped out of the pod’s rainbow beam, all of its hideous eyes trained on me. It looked agitated, clicking claws the size of snow shovels and waving a horribly sharp tail barb. It had a multitude of black eyes glistening on the front of its hideous body, and they all moved in different directions as the sparking pod flew away. I took a reflexive step back, and the veiny scorpion instantly fixated. It stopped waving its tail and pointed it at me.

Eyes wide, I raised the shotgun as it began to scuttle toward me. Seeming to realize it was being threatened, the strangely colored arachnid charged. At full speed, it was terrifying.

I fired as it rushed at me with a screech. The buckshot blasted through its claw and splattered neon purple blood across the desert sand. The scorpion emitted a high-pitched shriek and scuttled off the side of the hill. I tried to track it, but it moved rapidly around to my other side. My Mossberg blasted another hole in the aggressive scorpion’s veined carapace, but again failed to stop it.

I ran a few steps and chambered the last round, turning back and aiming for its eyes. It dodged as I fired, and managed to avoid most of the damage, but at least one of the steel balls must have hit in in the eyes because it screamed again and ran away, to hide in the shade of a nearby Joshua tree.

When I tried to move, it hissed and stabbed the ground with its tail, so I held still. Thinking on my feet wasn’t exactly my strong suit, but I realized I needed to reload and had no shells. I tried to buy ammunition from BuyMort, but the tutorial screen got in my way. By the time I got rid of it, the scorpion had moved a full three feet closer to me without my knowledge.

I saw it and squawked, stepping backwards blindly. It made a guttural hiss but held its position. When I lifted the shotgun and racked the slide, it scuttled back into the shade of the Joshua tree and idly clicked its claws. The claw I had shot still moved, but it squelched instead of clicked, and leaked glowing purple goo on the sand of my campsite.

I tried for the ammunition again. When BuyMort popped open, I verbalized my request for twelve-gauge ammunition. It came back to me with literally millions of available sales, starting with entire troop transport sized loads of buckshot.

It seemed like BuyMort went with the top priced options you could afford first, and then made you cycle down through the lists. With some of your shopping needs in this world, that system could get you killed. Or it could encourage you to spend far more than you needed in order to survive, which seemed intentional.

At BuyMort, quality is always our first consideration.

I was tempted by the higher options, I really was. It didn’t make good sense to purchase eighty-four million rounds of classic red buck shot, but boy was I tempted when I noticed the dayglow scorpion trying to sneak closer to me again.

Its bleeding was slowing, whatever that meant, and it seemed to be getting more aggressive again. Its veins began to throb once more and rapidly increased in tempo. It was waving its claws about in the air, as well, like Rocky after he beat that Russian and won the Cold War for the US. That’s what happened. The afternoon movie on the History Channel wouldn’t lie to me, would it?

The translucent screens in my vision went away as I roared and waved my arms at the scorpion. It froze, all its limbs spread wide in a threat display as it stared at me. And then, when I stopped moving and making noise, it sunk its tail barb directly into my solar plexus.

Chapter 6

Normally when someone gets a life-threatening injury, and lives to tell about it, they profess the injury was strange to them at first, not painful.

Lucky bastards. This was painful, immediately.

The stinger didn’t just stab into my delicate innards, it burned as it did so. Like sitting on the toilet after a hard night of beer and nachos, but in my chest.

I fell onto the beast, bashing it into paste with my shotgun butt. It raised its remaining good claw to fend me off, but I stomped on it and held it down to the ground. The other claw ineffectively smeared purple blood on me, in a feeble attempt to get me off. A few good blows to the creature’s carapace directly above its eyes, and it suddenly slumped as the heavy chiton broke apart and more purple goo shot out to spray my face in a fine mist.

Smelled like celebrity cologne but didn’t burn nearly as bad.

The barb slid out of my chest as I staggered a step back, and all I could think about was how hairy and disgusting it was, covered in throbbing veins as the rest of the creature was. I had just been stabbed with a needle pointed testicle. As I watched, those veins began a staccato rhythm before heaving one more final time and stilling.

Gross.

Fire spread throughout my guts, and I promptly fell over, clutching at my midsection. It was, of course, at that moment that BuyMort decided to throw an ad in my face.

ScorpBegone –Eliminates poisonous effects from any scorpion type from any universe. 3700000 morties (x10 active engagement fee, loan pre-approved*), 4.1 stars

I almost chose yes. Things were crazy and I was dying. But that extra fee got me. Even sitting here dying there had to be a better way.

I shook my head, baring crimson-stained teeth at the sky. Nope. Purchase declined. I hauled at my shirt and pulled it off over my head. My own red blood poured out of the wound and mixed with the dead scorpion’s purple goo, creating muddy pools of vibrant color in the Arizona desert.

BuyMort popped up in my vision again. Unlike with the ad, this time I had accidentally summoned it by glancing at the icon too hard. The options were simple. Buy, sell, or custom request. I selected custom request and started trying to tell BuyMort what I needed from it. I thought of Phyllis and her mechanized war suit.

“Something to fix me.” I spit it out through grit teeth, clutching at my guts. “Completely.”

The liquid pouring from my wound had changed colors, and that was concerning. Even though I was being eaten alive by interdimensional scorpion venom, I thought back to how I had gotten into this mess in the first place and realized my stubby shotgun wasn’t going to cut it if I survived this encounter.

“Something to help me fight and stay alive.”

Finally, my anger at BuyMort for having done all of this to me settled in on top of everything else. My mortal fear slipped away, as did the pain in my stomach. My teeth clenched as I asked for the final element.

“And something to help me fucking destroy BuyMort!”

BuyMort put up a little icon that indicated it was thinking, then all at once a large notification dominated my vision. I desperately thought it open and was surprised to see a BuyMort Affiliate on the screen already, a store within the store festooned with banners proclaiming, “At Cost!” “All items must go!” and other sales jazz that usually didn’t fill my brain til the Fourth of July.

Bizarrely, the store looked like it had been abandoned for years. Grey dust sat on everything, and parts of the building were crumbling in disrepair. I could see something though, some kind of metal starfish with an engine in the center? It hung from a rack, by itself in the abandoned looking store. The text and product description wavered in my sight, and I couldn’t make head or tails of it, aside from noticing that the item was classed as a relic, whatever that meant.

BuyMort proceeded to deduct every single Morty in my account and plonked a smiley face emoticon in front of me. “Pod dispatched!”

I groaned and clutched at my melting innards, as whitish red fluid seeped from my wound. A pitiful sight, I’m sure, not that anyone noticed. Except the dead vein scorpion. It stared at me with already milky eyes, purple ichor oozing between them from its crushed plating. Still, of the two of us, I was of the opinion he had gotten off easier. This venom killed. Literally.

And then BuyMort swooped in to save the day. The pod arrived and flashed its beam at me. It warped in a sizable cardboard box and flew away with what I would learn was its ‘transaction complete’ whistle. Very cheerful and inappropriate.

Fuck you too, BuyMort.

I dragged myself to the box with one arm. My legs no longer worked at all, and were permanently clenched up to my midsection, in what was rapidly becoming a full body cramp. As I reached the box, I projectile vomited. Vibrant purple bile splattered against the sand and smoked. My eyes shot wide in horror, and I scrambled at the box.

It was wrapped in some kind of shitty alien packing tape. The thin, flexible material felt almost gummy, and it bent and warped when I applied pressure from a thumbnail instead of tearing. When I smacked it in frustration, I could see the strange tape jiggling all over the box. It was that good thick cardboard too, no way of just tearing into it.

I reached for my pocketknife and came away empty-handed.

Leaving the Airstream in a hungover rush today, I had failed to properly kit up for work. Usually I carried thick gloves, a good steel folding knife I had ordered online from Sweden, and a bright pink stun-gun. A guest left it behind and it worked great. Plus I’m secure enough in my masculinity to carry a bubblegum pink stun-gun. It was free, and that matters way more to me than misaligned societal expectations placed on color.

Anyway, dying in the desert sand, I missed my good knife. The scorpion to my left shifted and released its bowels. Did not know scorpions took dumps until just that second, but it was an illuminating and educational experience. In my near-death stupor, the stench of purple vein-bug diarrhea was actually pleasant. Like over-sweet fruit.

And joyous of joys, I had no choice but to go splash around in it if I wanted to live. Whatever, I came this far. The barb was attached only by a thin section of plating right at the top, and the tip was so sharp it was gleaming in the sun at me, directly in the middle of the biggest portion of the dripping shit-slick.

So back to my mortal enemy I dragged myself, one arm desperately clutching at my innards in the hope they wouldn’t fall out, and the other clawing at the Arizona sands to get me into a puddle of the last shit a giant alien scorpion would ever take.

I made it to the puddle, hauled myself directly into the sickly-sweet smelling pool of glop and grabbed at the scorpion’s tail. It moved easily enough, but that barb was really attached.

I breathed heavily for a moment in the muck, thinking about my options, before I shrugged, and bit the fucker. I didn’t even wipe the shit from it first, I just dove in and tore at it with my ape-teeth.

It’s funny what last-ditch survival will teach you about your own capabilities. The chitin crushed and cracked easily enough, and the internal parts tore free when I sawed at them with my teeth. Then, gory, shit-caked trophy clutched in my now cramping hand, I slowly and agonizingly dragged myself back to the box.

By the time I made it back, my arms and spine had begun to cramp. I realized that if I didn’t get whatever was in this box unpacked and set up really fast, I was going to be stuck in the fetal position and unable to do anything but whimper, regret all my life decisions to date, and die in melting agony.

So I started scratching furiously at the gummy alien tape on the box, and each scratch tore away a small strip of it, to flop jiggling to the sand at my side. Honestly, of the two, the flesh-tape freaked me out way more than the scorpion diarrhea. But I was pretty close to death at that point and not really thinking straight, so who knows.

That gummy tape shit is on everything BuyMort sends you, it’s the worst. Looks like skin. If you leave it out too long, it starts to rot and smells like a trucker taking a dump on a pile of burning tires. Not ideal potpourri.

Once I got through the tape, the box opened easily enough and I dragged out the device I had purchased, wrapped in a strange organic sheath. It felt like skin, looked like plastic, and smelled like your butthole-itching-finger the morning after taco night. But it came off easy enough, thankfully. The thing itself was a large metal starfish, with segmented plate arms and what looked like a turbine at its core. In freshly scored English letters, a single phrase was etched on the smooth metal underside of the thing. “Insert user here.”

I groaned and laid down, trying to stretch my legs as much as they would go. Not far, I was still crabbed up down there, but at least my chest and abdomen were exposed. I lifted my hand from the wound and a coil of intestine slid forcefully out and flopped on my chest. The entire thing was rotted through with purple and black splotches, and I stared at it with a cold, detached interest. It didn’t feel so bad anymore, like it was something I was watching instead of experiencing.

Little did I know that shifting to my side had caused the venom pooling in my abdominal cavity to attack my spine, and the sensations I was experiencing were a result of immediate and severe damage to the nerves there. But, as soon as I managed to slide the metal starfish onto my chest, everything got much worse.

Metal clamps slammed into my ribs. Right in the tickling zone. I heard and felt bone break, and a horrible sawing noise came from the underside of the device. Then I felt the familiar rush of painkillers and sighed. My head flopped back onto the sand, and what I thought was a hallucination began. A cartoon version of the metal starfish on my chest waved at me from the sand to my right. I flopped my purple stained face toward it and smiled faintly. It was kind of cute, and as I watched, it began doing a set of mock stretches.

“Good morning user! I am the SFR 37 extreme environment suit.”

The thing’s voice was cheerful and light and had a heavy Dutch accent.

“What the hell?” I asked. Information flooded into my mind. The damn thing had done a DNA analysis of me immediately upon contact, and after installing itself into my fucking sternum.  It noticed I had primarily Dutch heritage and picked that accent out of our electronic zeitgeist to use to help me feel more at ease. Nice try but it didn’t work.

My starfish suit tried it’s best to be a good product, as it proved by getting to work fixing me up. “Your body construct is in bad shape, user! Don’t worry though, we’ll get you all repaired in no time.”

The turbine on my chest wound up, creating a small whirr in the air, and creating heat waves to crinkle the air above me. The voice began muttering.

“Oh my, yes, lots to do. I think first the spine needs to be recovered and repaired, that seems critical. Nearly a mile of intestine needs replacement, and this entire gastrointestinal area is in bad shape. User!”

It chirped at me, much louder than the mutters. “I require more charge to perform all of these repairs. Can you break something for me, please?”

As stoned on good pain meds and near death as I was, I didn’t get it at all. “Break something?” I croaked.

“Yes, user. I am charged by an expansional, diffractive atomic engine. If you use me to break something, I can gather the released atomic energy from the break, refine and refract it, and use that energy to heal and protect you.” The starfish surgically embedded in my chest explained helpfully.

“So, I just break stuff to power you?” My fogged and barely clinging to life brain did not understand the concept.

“Yes. Break anything to heal. I can also help you break things, as well as heal, and survive dangerous environments. Some of that will require difficult to find upgrades, and experience using me. I am a complicated relic, after all.” It chirped.

The scorpion’s barb was right where I had left it, in the sand to the side of the box. As I looked at it, one of the starfish arms activated. It gripped me and embedded itself into the flesh of my right arm, extending plate after plate after plate until the inside of my arm was covered in thin metal plating.

I gasped. This was like nothing I’d even dreamed of previously.

It spread out to cover my elbow in a shaped metal cap and did the same with the edge of my hand. A formed plate of metal extended and covered my hand all the way out to the edge of my pinky finger. It moved with internal hinges, and looked a little weird, but otherwise acted exactly as my finger had always acted. From the connecting pinky knuckle, a final plate extended and covered the rest of my knuckles. This time it flowed like liquid, with a connective wire frame beneath.

Once the metal was in place, a quick burst of freezing cold blasted from beneath it, and I had chrome knuckles shining in the sun. When the knuckles bent, the internal hinge system created a ridged striking surface. Pretty fuckin’ metal, in my humble opinion. The plating also forced my cramped arm to stretch out, which immediately alleviated what little pain I still felt in the limb.

With a faint, stoned grin, I brought the blade of my hand down on the barb and crushed it. The chitin cracked loudly and the barb itself ejected a stream of smoking purple venom into the air. It scorched the ground where it landed. The turbine on my chest wound up even further, and I began to feel some heat as things moved inside my body.

I clutched at the turbine on my chest, my hands scrabbling instinctually for some way underneath it. I could feel tubes and pipes being shoved into my body cavity, and the machine was grinding something as it happened.

Blood, purple venom, and chunks of flesh began to eject from the turbine, as my venom damaged body parts and internal organs were forcibly carved away and replaced with what I imagined was plastic.

(I was close; it was about as cheap and good for you as plastic. Turns out, this shit grows new parts of you from its own framework, and then sloughs away and gets processed by your body afterward. It’s INSTANT cancer, but that’s okay cause the suit just keeps sawing your parts away as they get cancerous.)

Then came the spine parts. Let me tell you, those felt pretty fucked up. Hard, boney parts shoved their way into and out of my torso, and when bone began to grind and erupt from my new turbine, I freaked out a little bit. I needed those parts of me, they were important! But my legs started to uncurl, and the ferocious cramping in all of my limbs began to fade. More purple gunk ejected from the turbine, and it wound down.

“Further repairs are likely to be needed, user, but you’re mostly healed now. You should be able to move easier, so go break some more things!”

The starfish was so fuckin’ cheery. But it did have good drugs, the whole world was glittery and pain free. I stood up and immediately fell over. My new spine was interesting to use. Took a little practice. After a few more attempts, I managed to get my feet under me.

As soon as I stood fully, the rest of the starfishes’ arms shot out and covered my limbs. I was horrified to discover that the starfish didn’t give a fuck about my clothes and just tore away my pants and underwear as it went. A metallic sheath formed for my junk, and I was relieved to discover that was retractable.

The rest of the starfish seemed to be permanent. At least it hadn’t force-installed an app in my eyesight. As soon as I began sobering up even a little, I noticed-and-accidentally-pulled-up the BuyMort app because of the icon.

Doing that is the plague of every sentient creature in the multiverse. Over my long years, I’ve seen alien warlords break down in tears, because BuyMort popping up was the last straw of stress on their backs. I’ve seen dogs groaning and swiping at the air with their paws or growling at nothing while looking up and to the right.

And me? At least a dozen times a day, even now, with how much practice I’ve gotten. Wouldn’t want to miss any opportunities for commerce, after all.

My focus was on breaking things at that point though, so I just willed BuyMort to go away, and then clenched my jaw and mentally clicked ‘yes’ when it asked if I was sure. They made it difficult too, the ‘yes’ button was tiny and hard to focus on.

I stood and flexed my metal plated arms. They felt good, despite being covered in purple goop. It was starting to dry and flake off, so I ignored it. I took a step and froze as the suit continued its expansion. Metal plates encased my heel, and then wrapped around to form a cup shaped shield around my toes. It of course, tore my shoes and socks off my body in order to do this. I sighed, glanced around at my nude ass cheeks, hung my head, and went to go beg for Phyliss’ help.

Again.

Chapter 7

Good old dependable Phyliss. She was right where I left her and waved cheerily as I approached from the hillside. My metal covered heels crunched in the sand as I walked.

At least my junk was covered, but all I had on was a metal starfish. The fifth arm extended up around my head as I walked, finishing its application process. It formed plates that covered my throat, and then extended up to wrap my forehead in a smaller metal plate. It seemed my starfish suit was general use, one size fits most. It changed its application depending on the body type it was applied to and had decided that my head might be used to break things too.

I walked around Phyliss’ deck and started clanking my way up her ramp before her laughter began. Her eyes twinkled from inside the mech as she tried and failed to stifle her giggles. The mechs oversized arms rose to cover her face and the giggling got louder.

I rolled my eyes and waited, standing mostly nude on Phyliss’ deck next to her ripped apart Shasta trailer. Anytime I put my hands near my junk, the starfish suit retracted the plating to allow me access. Basically, it would open anytime I swung my hand near it, so in the end I went for a smooth and slow ninja approach that ultimately did the trick.

Her laughter increased after the first few times that happened and I looked up to see her peeking between the mech’s metallic fingers. At least she had figured out how to retract that terrifying plasma cannon.

Phyliss laughed and laughed, until she started coughing. Once the laughter and coughing had eased, she sighed in contentment and used the mech’s hand to carefully dab at her eye with a nearby napkin. “Oh Tyson, you seem to be having a worse morning than me. Come, sit down and I’ll make us some tea and fetch a joint.”

She heaved upright with a soft whir of machinery and climbed carefully back into her Shasta. The poor trailer groaned and creaked at the weight of her, and the mech had to hunch almost all the way over to go inside past the torn roof top. I just took her up on the offer and flopped into my favorite lounge chair.

It was plastic, and didn’t feel great against my bare ass cheeks, but I stopped caring rather quickly. Sitting down felt amazing. Within short order, she had returned and was gingerly stepping onto the deck from the interior of the trailer’s shell.

Her mech’s legs were large, bulky, and folded back on themselves like a dog’s legs. It made for awkward appearing movement, but didn’t even really shake the deck too much, much less damage it.

The electric kettle was dangling from one of her hands, and the small cigar box she kept her drugs in was in the other. Both hands, while massively oversized for the items, provided delicate movement and careful application of strength. I watched in amazement as the oversized mech hand plugged in the kettle at her outside plug station, and then Phyllis sat back down next to me with a satisfied sigh.

The mech was far too large for any kind of chair, so Phyllis had simply moved her chair down into the garden, to cover up the fresh plot of turned earth where we had buried a body earlier.

Wild day.

The mech extended its legs beneath it, reached one arm back to hold her body up at an angle, and then tilted to catch the shade just right. Phyliss could turn her head to easily speak with me, and her other arm seemed to do all the work for her.

The cigar box lid had a tiny latch, which her mech expertly manipulated, and then swung open the box of treasures. Phyllis reached in and lifted a small, paper wrapped joint, raised it to her face to squint at, and then tossed it in my lap.

“Here you go dear, Purple Trainwreck. Just what you need.” I fished a lighter out of her ashtray and lit the joint, blowing a cloud of acrid blue smoke from my first inhale.

“User damage detected.” My starfish suit started to spin up, and I felt something move inside my chest. Like worms wriggling through my tissue. I stood up and faced away from Phyliss.

“Sorry Phil, this is gonna be gross.” I told her as the small turbine on my chest began grinding something. It felt like liquid this time. Phyliss just giggled at my exposed ass cheeks. The machine spat out a stream of gore again, this time significantly darker than I had been expecting.

Phyliss stopped giggling and waved a metal arm in front of her face. “Oh, not in the garden, dearie!” It stank, like an ashtray abattoir.

“Too late, Phil! I’m sorry!” I shouted to be heard over the grinding, and a final gout of tarry blood finished the mess.

My starfish had detected my decades of lung damage once I brought its attention to the problem by smoking again. It had gone inside my lungs with bladed tendrils, carved away the blackened and damaged material, and replaced it with synthetic material that performed the lungs function while degenerating into tissue.

I could breathe better right away, it was wild. The relic on my chest had essentially performed the role of an active 3d printer in my fricking lungs. More of the painkiller pumped into my system with the unexpected surgery, but not much. The new material replaced my old nerve endings with new ones, so nothing ended up really hurting for much, or for long.

I’m pretty sure the pain meds it gives me are just for the surgeries themselves.

Once it was completed, I took another drag from the joint and flopped back in the chair. Seemed like it would leave me alone until the damage was too bad. The thought that this machine may have just saved me from cancer flittered through my head, but then Phyllis was distracting me again.

“I brought the special tea out, if I can tempt you?” What a sweet old lady. LSD tea. Just for me? I may have forgotten to mention, but Phyllis really enjoys her illicit substances. Big fan of intoxicants. The lady is ninety-fuckin-two and helped defeat Hitler by personally slitting his officers’ throats by the dozens.

She’s also my role model and hero. Eh, actually, she doesn’t need me to protect her, Phyllis is basically my bodyguard at this point.

“Someone walk across your grave, dear?” Phyllis asked, her pupils wide and staring. I shook away my thoughts.

“I think I’m good,” I answered, waving it away. Her LSD-tea was fantastic stuff, but I decided to pass. I was already orbiting Saturn with this surgery suit on my chest and Phyllis’ good weed. Really though, I should try to stop getting hurt for a while. Go ask Mr. Sada about using some of his old rental camp equipment.

My fucking trailer. Gone, like a fart in the wind. Another satisfied BuyMort customer.

I stood up and left Phyllis to her TV, after borrowing some of her dead husband’s old dusty clothes. A lovely pair of high-rise jeans and a leather jacket was all that would fit me, with the stupid turbine on my chest. Any shirt I wore made it look like I had a single large breast that spun at the center.

So, I just put on the jacket and said fuck it. I’d work on my six pack for the apocalypse later. These jeans really showed off my ass, anyway, so I may as well lean into it. Phyllis was lying flat out on the deck as I left, lightly tapping her foot to some theme song or other and sinking further into that LSD laced tea. She seemed on top of the world, for having torn up her rig. I guess that mech was comfy.

I left by the path through Phyllis’s garden, and carefully avoided the gunk my suit had torn out of me. It still smelled pretty rank. On the way through the Joshua trees, I nearly stepped in the puddle that crazy slime creature had left behind when Phyllis smoked it. There was part of a dead squirrel in it, slowly melting into bubbles and a meat juice slick, so I decided to avoid it barefoot.

I needed to find some shoes, but the metal on my feet helped a bit. It felt like a second skin but crunched the sand below me in a strange new way. This added to my suit’s charge, but mildly. I had to get used to my own footsteps again, it was an odd consumer experience. BuyMort opens doors of experience!

Anyway, the slime got me thinking. The bastard had sold my rig, and now I had no morties and nowhere to fuckin live. All my shit was gone, and I was pissed. Wasn’t my best move ever, but I said aloud “I’d like to sell this, BuyMort.”

It immediately threw up an ad, reminding me to set up a StoreFront. I mentally waved it away, then ground my teeth as I struggled to focus on the yes button. “Of fucking course I’m sure, I’m the one who told you to close it!”

“Pod dispatched!” it chirped. Within a few minutes the pod hovered into view and scanned the sludge. “Would you like to sell this?” It asked. When I nodded, it warped out the remains and flew away. I noticed it took the squirrel remains as well as the goo, then actually intentionally activated my BuyMort interface to see what that got me.

Purchase: Medical waste, biological remains, Squirrel. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, bad. 14 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Medical waste, biological remains, Sleem. Rarity, common. Quality, terrible. .03 morties dispensed.

Awesome, I had 14.03 morties and a surgical starfish that wanted me to break things. I spared a thought for what might happen if I got brain damage in this suit, but quickly filed that away under too much to worry about right then. Circle of influence, maybe. Circle of control, not as much. I had just learned that BuyMort happily purchased dead bodies, and that was something that seemed important. So on my way back to my lot, to sit grumpily in my car for a while, I detoured to the scene of my battle with the scorpion and sold the little bastard.

Purchase: Medical waste, non-sentient biological remains. Rarity, rare. Quality, bad. 65 morties dispensed.

Alright, that was a little more like it. That might get me a few meals or something. The non-sentient part tripped me up for a minute, but I shrugged it off and worried about my immediate needs.

I trundled over to my car and flopped into my comfortable old broken leather seats. It was a Lincoln Continental. Phyllis gave it to me when her husband died, in exchange for running her errands for her.

Which I always did. She was chill, and ate like a bird anyway, it was no sweat to throw her stuff in with mine when I was out. I ran all of Phyllis’ errands for her. With the exception of her drug hoard, I dunno where that stuff comes from. The leather seats were junked from the sun, but they still felt good. Once I cranked up the air conditioning and stretched out in the back it was quite nice.

Little did I know it, but while I napped for an hour, I burned approximately four million morties worth of gasoline and wasted a king’s ransom in freon.

Trillions.

Woulda changed everything. Turned out, Nu-Earth freon spiked as an undiscovered aphrodisiac with a very wealthy market in another dimension. Sale prices jumped impressively high before normalizing. Shame. But, back then, I didn’t know anywhere near enough about BuyMort to survive, let alone thrive. Not on my own.

Chapter 8

Mr. Sada roused me, violently. He was there, banging on my window with one of his gawdy rings. He wore so many of them. One had a bull on it, which he tapped on every-fuckin thing way too hard.

The harsh hits against the glass, and my state of deep slumber roused me into a waking nightmare. A memory.

His head hit the glass, over and over. Another boy, my age. Can’t remember what the fight was about, but it ended like all the others. I won, and they got hurt.

I jerked upright and scrambled to open the door, before essentially falling to the dirt at his feet. My heart raced and my fists clenched, but then he opened his mouth and all of my conditioning swarmed in and took the violence out of me. I became the passive loser I had been trained to be, in order to avoid the consequences of violence.

“What the fuck, Tyson?” He backed up and swung his arm at the empty space my Airstream used to be. “What happened to your rig, son?” Mr. Sada was forty-three. Called me son. Another one of those euphemisms that he used, something that pissed everyone off but he thought he was doing out of respect. No matter how many times you told him to stop it.

I groaned and stretched out my back, standing up. “Some monster sold it out from under me and tried to kill me.”

Mr. Sada glanced at me and nodded, as if what I had said was perfectly normal. His ponytail bobbed when he nodded, and I hated that. It was short and limp, and he was mostly bald on top anyway. When he saw my chest, he took a quick step back.

“What the fuck!” he looked at the turbine and then at me. “What is that shit?” He narrowed his eyes. “Can you not wear a shirt with that?”

I glanced down and knocked on the metal. “I dunno boss, it’s keeping me alive. I think it’s my new doctor.”

He frowned. “Oh shit. Sorry. Listen, things have been strange around here.” He paused. “Ya know, maybe you should cover that up or something. Maybe with a vest.”

A selection of vests popped up in my vision.

Luxo Cozy – Underpriced, Underrated, and Perfect for You! 4.1 stars, 1500 morties.

I angrily batted them back down.

“Yeah, maybe. What’s up, Mr. Sada?” I tried to keep the sigh out of my voice but couldn’t quite. Did this man know how fucking stupid he acted sometimes? It was so obvious and yet he never seemed to get it. I sighed at him all the time. Dude was so oblivious.

“I need you at my place. We’re moving some stuff in the basement.” He glanced around as he spoke, holding his sunglasses and tapping them against his thigh. “I’ve probably got some boots you could wear. Man, what the fuck happened to you? Do you know how bad you stink?”

I shrugged and brushed some dried scorpion diarrhea off. It fell to the sand in shining purple flakes, like glitter. “Havin’ a bad day, Mr. Sada, dunno what to tell you.”

“You say that too much, Tyson. Come to my place, and you can use the outdoor shower. It has soap and everything. We gotta talk, have a staff meeting.”

Mr. Sada put his sunglasses back on and returned to his shiny Tesla, parked at the entrance of my little secluded campsite.  I realized he had intended to give me a ride to his mansion but decided not to when he saw the poo. As I brushed flakes of it out of the Lincoln, I realized what he meant. The funk was unique. Like chemical cotton candy gone to rot.

Once I had most of it out of there, I started my barefoot hike to Mr. Sada’s. I was motivated to get that shower and get him off my back. Usually, that meant doing whatever stupid-ass task he had dreamed up for me. Staff meeting my ass, I was the only one who worked there at that particular moment.

See, the newest gum-chewer hadn’t shown up for work, as predicted after the interview I conducted. Not that I blamed her, it was a shit job. Sitting in the stank ass moldy office all day, getting hit on by our crowd of rowdy asshole campers and trying to avoid the spiders that eternally tried to set up shop in there. Not to mention the alien apocalypse. I wondered briefly where that slime had come from but shrugged and went to deal with Mr. Sada.

The road was hot, so I walked in the sand on the side of it in the slightly less hot sand. As I approached the mansion, I stepped on a chunk of glass the size of a cell phone. My starfish suit spun up again.

“Damage detected.” It shrilled at me. Then the turbine slowed and came to a rest. The voice returned. “Break something for me, user! I need a charge.”

The little cartoon starfish popped up and looked sad, pointing to an empty charge bar above its head. Then it gave me a wide-eyed look of concern and pointed to my foot. I looked down. My entire leg felt cold already, and when I saw the sheer size of the blood puddle, I realized why. Lower extremity artery nicks could kill you quick.

Mr. Sada’s Tesla was right there, and without thinking, I put my fist through the window. It shattered and Mr. Sada yelled from inside the house.

It worked though. My suit revved up again, and tendrils extended from my wounded foot’s plating. They reminded me of a sea anemone as they reached for my torn flesh and began zapping at it. Each cauterizing zap applied some kind of flesh resin, and the tendril smeared it into the wound’s sides.

The new flesh sizzled slightly and settled in place, dragging the edges of my wound together as it did. All I felt was a mild tugging, and more of that painkiller entering my system. Great, that should make the staff meeting a lot of fun.

“What the fuck Tyson!” Mr. Sada exclaimed angrily, hands reaching out to showcase the tragedy of his Tesla’s damage.

“Oh, yeah sorry, Mr. Sada.” I looked at the broken window, and then back at the angry man in front of me. “Uh . . . I broke it. Sorry.” I shrugged.

He glared at me for a moment, looked at the bloodstain under my foot and the glass chunk behind me, and then shook his head. “You’re paying for that, window-puncher. The shower is out back. You can grab some new clothes from my guestroom dresser too.”

An ad screen filled with truck windows appeared in my vision.

Built Tuff. Build Mort Tuff.

I stuffed it down before it got any further.

“Yes, thank you Mr. Sada I know the shower is out back, you make me bathe your dog in it every three months.” I muttered as I walked around the back of his mansion.

The guest room door was on the way, poking out the side like a servant’s entrance, and I popped into a quaint little room full of throw rugs and tiles.

Popping open the dresser, I found myself a bunch of clothes of various sizes and grabbed up an overlarge button-up polo shirt, some sturdy jeans, and clean undergarments.

Unluckily there were no shoes. Just a pair of soft bedroom slippers that felt alright but would be lucky to last the day. I took them anyways, and grabbed a week’s worth of socks and underwear because there was no telling when I’d have a chance to get new ones, the way things were going on around me.

There were diamond cufflinks too. Fuck it. I grabbed them and thrust them into my pocket as well.

The mansion had this ridiculous pool area, all done in mauve stonework. The shower was near the pool, as was Mr. Sada’s dog, Doofus. His name was actually Roofus, but he didn’t mind if I called him Doofus. He was a big malamute who loved me and hated his life in Arizona, and he was chill as fuck because of it. That dog would rather hang out in the pool all day than do anything else, and I wish he was allowed to.

He approached and took a keen interest in sniffing me all over as I tried to walk past him and get undressed for the shower. Once I was naked except for my starfish suit, I soaped up using Roofus’s soap and rinsed off hurriedly. Thankfully, the last of the scorpion shit sloughed off in the water.

Roofus stopped following me when I headed for the mansion. He didn’t like it inside all that much, which his family preferred. Mr. Sada had a young wife, and she yelled at poor Roofus for almost nothing.

Once inside, I went looking for Mr. Sada. He had mentioned needing help in his basement, so I went there first. I knew his place like the back of my hand, he had me over all the time to help with various nonsense that I hated. Even on my days off, he demanded I help him with random projects.

Today it turned out to be an oversized oak shelf that needed to be moved. We heaved it in front of a large steel grating, square shaped and covered in slick liquid. He kept checking the grate behind the shelf, as if making sure the shelf was firmly in front of it. We team-lifted a few items onto the bottom shelf. Part of an engine, a crankshaft, and three amazingly heavy toolboxes. When I suggested emptying the drawers on the third one, he freaked out a little.

“No-no! Keep them closed,” he said, reaching out for my extended hand. Too late, I had opened a drawer. It was full of lead fishing weights.

“Dude, really?” I said, frowning.

“Heave, Tyson!” Mr. Sada just nodded at my side of the toolbox, and I shook my head. We lifted it in place, and he fell back with a gasp when letting it go. One of my fingertips was smashed and I jumped back with a yelp.

“Damage detected!” My starfish suit wound up and I opened my eyes wide in panic. Tendrils began to spin out of my armored knuckle plating, and a rush of painkillers flooded my system. One of the tendrils wrapped around my broken fingertip and began sawing into it. Blood sprayed the room and Mr. Sada ducked away from me with an angry shout.

I grabbed the hand to cover the blood spray, but it immediately began dripping to the floor as well. With a quick look around for options, I turned and ran for the basement bathroom.

As I reached the door and grabbed the knob with my bloody hand, I faintly heard Mr. Sada yelling at me to stop, but then it was too late again, and I was in his bathroom.

Half of Mr. Sada’s wife was in the tub, nude, her fake tits jutted at me accusatorily.

I hurriedly looked away for more than one reason, before turning to face Mr. Sada. He was standing in the doorway, arms raised to wave off accusation.

I just stared at him.

“Monster attack, son. Just like you said.” He shook his head.

I raised an eyebrow and rolled a finger for him to go on.

“I dunno Tyson, a slime thing got her. By the time I saw it, it had her engulfed up to the waist. They all seemed to back away when I started shouting at them. I think they’ll leave us alone,” he said, finishing it with a wave of his hands. “But . . . now that you know, let’s get her taken care of.”

“Mr. Sada, I think that might be an inappropriate workplace request.” I pointed at his dead wife in the tub. “I could probably help you with that though, to be fair. Actually, not the first body I’ve helped deal with today.”

My fingertip dropped off then, and the tendrils that had been sawing at it retracted. It bounced against his dead wife’s breast, and he glared at me.

“What? That old bitch Phyllis finally kick it?” He barked a laugh, entirely missing the murderous glare I cast his way. Or maybe avoiding it entirely. Never could tell with him and his strange sense of humor.

His eyes were suddenly fixated on my hand, as the tendrils reemerged with different heads on them. One of them slapped a new artificial bone length in place as another began spraying a congealed flesh foam that wrapped around the bone. A third came by and used tiny glittering energy blasts to finish the finger areas and sculpt the flesh. It spent the most time giving me back my fingerprint, which tickled.

“No, and I think I’m about done with you calling her that. You’re asking me to help deal with your dead wife’s body. Don’t be a dick at the same time,” I sighed.

Something inside me broke, staring at those big fake dead tits I had to deal with. My boss was a dick. An accidental dick, sure, but a dick all the same. And at that moment, I was tired of him being a dick.

He frowned and turned a little red in the face. But I just crossed my arms and stared at him. My new metal covered hands might be good for something after all. Then he shrugged.

“Right, right, you and the old lady are tight. Shouldn’t make jokes. Sorry Tyson. And thank you for helping. So, what do we do?”

I glared at him for a moment longer and then sighed. “I say we sell her.”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Sada asked sharply.

“Well, the other option I see is go get some trash bags, wrap her bottom half in that so nothing leaks, and then haul her up to the back and bury her in the heat. BuyMort buys dead bodies, warps ‘em right away.” I explained with my arms crossed and watched his face.

He nodded his head and turned around. “Yeah. Yeah, sell her.”

So I pointed at her body and spoke softly to the air, “I’d like to sell that, BuyMort.”

It shrieked “pod dispatched,” in my ear and, I assume, dispatched a pod. Mr. Sada sat down on the nearby basement stairs.

“Shit Tyson.” His little limp ponytail flopped as he shook his head. “I’m still paying off her tits.”

I stared at him with my arms crossed and said nothing. She had been horrible, and shrieky, but she didn’t deserve to get eaten by some caustic slime monster or be married to him. The look on her face was bad. I threw a small hand towel over her while we waited.

After a few minutes, a BuyMort drone smashed in through an upstairs window. Mr. Sada jumped up and shouted, “what the fuck!” Then he glared at me. “What’d you do?”

I raised my hands. “I sold her, just like you told me!”

Mr. Sada jumped as the pod hovered down the stairs. “What? No! No, you don’t sell my wife! I was going to!”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You serious right now?” I stepped aside to let the pod by, and it entered the room, scanned the mess in the tub, and warped it all away with a rainbow beam.

Purchase: Medical waste, modified biological remains, human. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, bad. 111 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Medical waste, biological remains, human. Rarity, rare. Quality, terrible. .82 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Sundries, fabric towel. Rarity, common. Quality, fair. 4 morties dispensed.

“Hey! You sold my towel too, you fuckin’ asshole!” He was getting red in the face again. “Plus the two windows you’ve broken now!”

Suddenly, Mr. Sada turned and stomped upstairs. He gestured at an old pair of rubber wading boots on his way by. “BuyMort, I’d like to sell those.”

He turned and looked down at me. “Come upstairs, we need to talk.”

Chapter 9

I sighed, shook my head, and followed Mr. Sada up the stairs. A pod floated by me on the way up, to warp away the boots he had clearly put aside for me. When I arrived in the kitchen, he was leaning on the counter and staring at me.

“Bad shit today, Tyson. Bad shit. Makin’ me rethink this whole thing we got goin’.” As he spoke, yet another BuyMort drone wandered in. It warped a small cardboard box onto the counter in front of Mr. Sada and he actually thanked it.

Asshole never thanked me. Once told me that employees should be thanking, not thanked.

He continued, “Whole world goin’ to shit.”

At that point, he turned and grabbed a remote off the counter, turning on the TV. The news was showing a special session of congress where the federal government was being officially dissolved. As I watched, battalions of orcs walked in, wearing almost military uniforms. With them were something new and terrifying, that looked like snake-people.

One group also had a human, dressed in bizarre ceremonial robes. The soldiers among them were each covered in heavy leathers and furs and wore blades and energy rifles on their backs, but each was dressed in significantly different manners, each with a theme. It looked like a series of delegations.

Our lauded federal government had sold all of its legislative land, and the various corporations represented by the orcs and other aliens had purchased it. One senator arose to object to the sale, claiming it was made under duress, and one of the orcs fired their weapon at her. The young woman flopped to the ground with a gaping hole burned through her, and the process proceeded.

Mr. Sada, meanwhile, opened a nearby drawer and got out a small knife. He used it to cut the odd flesh tape on his new package and opened it. “The feds have all folded, Tyson. They’ve relinquished full control to the states and left it up to each one to do whatever they see fit with the alien invasion. Arizona has relinquished those powers to local governments, and it’s all fallen through right down to the local smokeys.”

He changed the channel. “Nobody’s in charge no more.”

A local news program jumped into the middle of a Prescott, Arizona Crisis, as they spelled it out. The mayor of the town had vanished, along with many items from the town hall. It looked like they had run out of the building, selling things along the way.

Local police, fire, and EMS services had all dissolved, and the Prescott General Hospital was on fire. A roving gang of mixed humans and what appeared to be some kind of angry lizard people had robbed the pharmacy, and a resulting firefight with security had destroyed the entire building.

The problem, the anchor explained, was that the only way to claim legal ownership over something, was to purchase a MortBlock from BuyMort, and officials had learned this fact much too late. Many government buildings were being raided, with dozens of BuyMort drones floating around

MortBlocks were small squares that served as an area-wide indicator of BuyMort ownership. They came in several sizes, with according cost. For a modest fee, a MortBlock could be purchased that fit the area a shelf or locker might encompass. For a less modest fee, one could get any acreage out of them.

What they did was simple. Nobody but you were allowed to sell anything of value in the stationary area the block was activated in unless it was significantly altered from the last MortBlock scan or taken off the MortBlock’s covered area.

The one in Mr. Sada’s hands had a fresh etching on the side that said ten acres, and it beeped when he pressed a button on its top. He looked at me and said, “Personal ownership is everything now. Always has been, really.”

“What did you just do?” I moved closer to the counter to look at the MortBlock.

“I got a lot of morties, Tyson. Lingerie is a boom market. So, what I just did is claim my rightful ownership over this plot of land. My campground. No more selling my shit.”

“You just stole my car from me, Mr. Sada.” I leaned heavily on the counter. “The only place I have to sleep right now.”

A large van bereft of wheels but with small glowing spheres in their stead appeared before me, floating in a slow circle to show off all of its angle and shine.

Ads don’t do it justice, but damn do they try. Presenting the Fretticino 2450, from Hornbay. This hovervan holds not just a family, it can fit the whole damn team. 150,000 morties, 4.3 stars.

Behind the add, Mr. Sada paled and quickly waved a hand. “Don’t worry, you can sleep in the car. We’ll figure out the lot rent and utilities as we go.”

The ad poofed out of existence.

I blinked a few times. “Wait, what does that mean?”

Mr. Sada grabbed his car keys out of a tiny ceramic bowl on the counter. “I gotta go get my other properties secured. For now, it just means you still work for me. Keep your phone on, did you get MortMobile yet?” He hesitated in the doorway, looking at me expectantly.

“No, Mr. Sada. My phone was working earlier,” I answered with a sigh.

“Well, they ain’t anymore. Everyone is going under, but not us. We’re turning into a high security rental compound.” He shook his keys at me. “I got dreams, Tyson. Even in this, I got dreams.” Mr. Sada opened the door and pointed at me. “Don’t break anything else when you leave, son. Lock up for me. And get MortMobile.”

I sighed and sat down at his kitchen counter barstool as he slammed the door behind himself.

What the fuck was MortMobile?

I knew without even asking, it had to be BuyMort’s cellphone plan, so I glanced to the forbidden upper right corner of my vision and activated BuyMort. Navigating to MortMobile was fairly simple, as communication was a basic category in the search. The description of the service made me squint and read it twice.

With MortMobile, communication has never been easier. MortMobile customers are connected through psychic resonance to the rest of the MortMobile network. Video, audio, scent, and most forms of mental communication are covered by the MortMobile network, and various entertainment and informational programming is available. Sign up today for your trial week of MortMobile. *Only one Mortie per day!

At the bottom there resided a tiny line of text. I leaned into the ad and peered at it closely.

*One Mortie per day is the introductory service rate, rates will vary based on usage.

I sighed and signed up. The service looked . . . decent. It extracted the Mortie from your account at whatever time your species rolled over a day and didn’t bother asking you. But, and this was a big but, you could turn it on and off each day as you chose.

When I mentally acknowledged my desire to become part of the MortMobile network, BuyMort shrieked, “pod dispatched!”

When the pod sailed in through Mr. Sada’s broken window, I sat my phone down on the counter. It worked fine still, just had no signal or internet access. I’d been on Starlink, but some entrepreneurial aliens used their superior spacecraft to pilfer each and every one of Mr. Musk’s satellites.

Shocker. Earth was the latest BuyMort buffet, after all.

The pod scanned me, then scanned my phone. A rainbow beam dazzled me, and a new version of my phone was sitting directly next to it on the counter. Another dazzling rainbow beam and my old phone was gone.

The new phone looked exactly like my old one in every way, except the material used in its construction. It looked like heavy, clear plastic now, with a grey-green glass screen embedded in its front.

A new kind of beam shot out of the pod to strike my new phone, one I hadn’t seen before. It was grey and looked like a beam of mist. My new device rattled, and the screen lit up with grey fog. The pod, its job done, flitted out through the window.

My phone buzzed and a grey face swam through the mist to look at me. I couldn’t make out much of the features, as the mist in the screen was so thick, but it was staring at me with burning golden eyes. For an instant, I felt the weight of distance this being was looking at me over, the hundreds of trillions of worlds it was connected to, and the sheer magnitude of its headache, and then the moment passed.

The face in my new phone said, “You are now connected to MortMobile. Think clearly of whom you would like to speak to and say their name aloud to this device to be connected.” I saw bulging vein riddled eyes, and a looming grey slab of forehead before the creature narrowed its eyes.

“Welcome to the MortMobile family, valued customer. I look forward to serving you.” It dripped with venom, and then the fog swirled the image away. Clearly this creature did not look forward to serving me.

That was fine by me, I didn’t exactly feel great about having a psychic cell phone either.

The face suddenly reappeared, his face delighted in a malicious way. “I have been informed that you now owe BuyMort 600 morties. Since you do not have 600 morties in your account, would you like to sign up for a payment plan?”

I blanched. “What? How the hell do I owe you 600 morties?”

“The connection fee. The remote service fee. The individual holder’s fee. A one time connection insurance fee. Surely you do not wish me to continue?”

I growled. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll do a payment plan. What are my options?”

The face rolled its eyes and a screen appeared before me.

Welcome to MortMobile. It would seem that you need help paying for your service! As always, BuyMort is here to finesse your way into the perfect plan for your needs and budget.

INTRODUCTORY – As a new member of the MortMobile family you qualify for Introductory pricing! Connection-related fees may be paid out at a rate of 200 morties weekly for a total of 800 morties due by the end of the month. And all service-related charges will be billed weekly instead of daily to give you a chance to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get a solid salary by which to pay for your services.

There was no audio, but reading over the words, I felt I could detect an arrogant smile hidden within those words. A being somewhere who realized I, and people like me, didn’t matter and that we couldn’t say no.

“Should I even bother looking at the other plans?” I asked the sneering head. He laughed, a wicked snarl that belittled me with its echoes.

“There is no point in it. This is the best plan you will find. At least until the end of the month when BuyMort kicks you off it and makes you sign onto one of the regular payment plans.”

I accepted the agreement with a mental click, and the face nodded my way before fading away from existence.

What a fucking world.

Now without much better to do, I decided to go hang out with Roofus the Doofus, see if he was up to playing a little.

I doubted it.

When I left the kitchen into the pool area, I felt the temperature increase dramatically. Roofus was in his usual spot, a large blue mat that overlooked the pool. The mat was something I had bought him and convinced Mr. Sada to let him use. It was filled with gel that cooled anything that lay on top of it.

Honestly, having a malamute in Arizona and forcing it to be an outdoor dog should be punishable by death. I realized I could probably make it that way if I really wanted too now that there were no more police.

Before that thought could spool out much in my mind, Roofus gave me one of his little woofs. It was a nice greeting from a nice dog, and he was way too good for the people who owned him. As I headed his way to give him his favorite ear scratch, he suddenly jumped up and growled, before swiping at the air with his paw. I noticed he was aiming at the upper right corner of his vision.

“Aw, Doofus, not you too buddy.”

I flopped down onto the sandstone next to him and scratched at his ears. He adopted a stretched-out expression and lolled his ever-panting tongue at me. It was too hot. He loved his scratchies though, and soon flopped over to have me rub his tummy.

I sat and thought about BuyMort, and my new psychic cellphone, lightly rubbing at the giant malamute’s chest. His thick fur came away in tufts and floated to the stone around us.

He literally never stopped shedding, the poor dog.

It was one of the reasons Mr. Sada’s late wife had hated him. I stared at a fluff of Roofus fur as it did its best impression of a tumbleweed. The stuff was everywhere in the yard, stuck to cacti and the base of the fencing.

On a random whim, I told BuyMort I wanted to sell a tuft of the fur that came loose in my hand. Within a few minutes a pod had showed up and I had a small pile of it waiting, having scraped and brushed Roofus while I waited. He loved being brushed. The pod whirred over and scanned my pile of fur, warped it away, and my eyes went wide when I saw the price.

Purchase: Biological product, earth canid chitin; ‘dog hair.’ Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 403 morties dispensed.

“Woah Doofus! You gotta try that, you’re worth a fortune.” I leaned over and scratched him some more, and he looked at me. Sometimes I wondered how smart this dog was, because as soon as I gathered more hair for him, he touched it with his nose. When I went to sell it to BuyMort, I got an error screen.

“This product is already in the process of being sold. Discuss the matter with the original seller if you think this is in error. Sale in progress to user ‘Doofus Sada.’”

It was in that moment I knew something important. Doofus was my dog. In his mind, he had chosen the name I called him, and that was how he referred to himself when BuyMort infected him. A tear formed in my eye, and I stared at the notification. Then the sound of a pod approaching brought me out of it. I swiped away the notification in time to see Doofus’ pod show up and sail over the fence. It warped away his new mound of hair, and Doofus lolled his tongue at me.

“You know what dude, that is fair. Respect, and I hope you buy yourself a pool someday.” I raised his paw and bumped it as I always did when leaving, and he flopped over and wagged his tail at me from an upside-down position.

I gave a thought to leaving the dog alone with the slimes in the area, but Doofus was smart, and he knew a million ways out of Mr. Sada’s back yard. He’d run if he needed to. I was more consumed with the thought of what his shop interface must be like as I walked around the side of Mr. Sada’s house.

When I reached his front window, I smiled at the broken glass scattered all over the pavement outside. After staring at it for a moment, I told BuyMort to buy the broken glass and got another error message.

“That property is owned by Mr. Sada. If you feel this is in error, seek the owner and discuss the matter with them.” This time I frowned as I swiped away the screen.

This seemed bad.

Like BuyMort was painting a target on Mr. Sada’s back instead of protecting his property. I shrugged at it and broke another window. My fist snapped the glass and sent it spiraling into the Arizona sunlight. This time, the pod came and scooped up the broken bits of glass, being careful to only take glass from the window I had just broken. I guess breaking stuff counted as changing it enough to sell.

Purchase: Construction product, mineral glass. Rarity, common. Quality, good. 2 morties dispensed.

I scratched my head at the ‘good quality’ rating while I locked up Mr. Sada’s front door and started walking back to the campground. The only thing I could think of was that the machine evaluated each individual shard of glass, or maybe the overall composition didn’t matter? Did it matter? Confusing. Anyway, it seemed like selling BuyMort random junk would be a valid way to make a living if needed.

That reminded me that I hadn’t eaten or drank very much that day, and I’d been through kind of a lot.

BuyMort ads came to the rescue and filled my vision, left to right, with a variety of foods and set menus. Instead of raging at them and shutting it all down, I started browsing.

Hotter. Juicier. Tastier. Meatier.

A big-boobed supermodel with a tiny waist lounged on a pool chair, jamming a burger bigger than her hand into her dainty little mouth. Ketchup and mustard squirted out over her chest and stomach.

Get the Gargantuan Gobbler from Mackle Farsies. Super-duper size it with a box of 18 chicken chunks and a bucket of fries today.

Nope. I was hungry but I didn’t want that. Way too much food. Plus, what the hell was Mackie Farsies? I wanted something I knew and understood. I swung my gaze to the next one.

Did you ever fucking want to eat a dinosaur? Now you can.

A man in tight blue jeans and a vest swung by riding on Hollywood’s conception of a velociraptor. He was twirling a lasso above his head and in front of him fled a T-Rex.

I have to admit. I was curious as to where this was going. I stared as the man lassoed one of the T-Rexes arms, leapt off of the velociraptor, and swung up like he was goddamn Tarzan.

Then he tore out the dino’s jugular with his teeth.

Meat so good it don’t even need to be cooked.

The dino flopped over on the ground, flopping about while the man rode its death throes.

I noped out of it and went to the next one.

5 Star Cuisine at 4 Star Prices.

Skip.

This was not going well. With so few morties in my account, it was very difficult to get the results down to reasonable levels.

Food and drink had wild prices, all over the place. I saw a simple twenty-ounce bottle of water that was going for almost eight-hundred morties, and my old loaf of bread was on sale for only fourteen morties.

I dipped back into the ads.

Hey Jack, I got your back. Greasy Joe’s Diner. Affiliated. Us Earth Humans gotta stick together. Earth Special, 192 morties. A burger and fries. Take it while you can cuz I don’t know how much longer I can afford to do this.

There was no picture. It was just some guy like me trying to make it in this new and terrifying world. Helping people out.

I appreciated that. I especially appreciated that I could afford his meal.

I ordered it and got a meal that looked like it had been ripped straight from a fast-food joint and paid most of the rest of my morties for it.

It wasn’t just affordable. It was real, from here and now, and that was just too tempting.

Maybe I could have shopped around and gotten a better deal, but I honestly didn’t know when I was going to get a bacon double cheeseburger with extra onions and pickles ever again.

It even came with curly fries, just the way I liked. The only thing I could find to drink that I could still afford was a bottle of carbonated aloe water.

I guess even the multiverse hates that stuff.

A pod caught up to me shortly and dropped off my latest cardboard box. I realized I had no blade on me again and sighed, then started looking for a sharp rock nearby.

Thankfully, that’s something we have a lot of in Arizona, so it wasn’t a long search.

The strange fleshy tape was emitting a series of heat lines by the time I returned, and a whiff of something gross reached me. I wrinkled my nose and started sawing at it, before removing the stuff totally and leaving it in the desert. Sue me for littering, I didn’t wanna carry it with me.

Inside the box was a familiar paper bag, complete with grease stains. The burger was delicious, and exactly what my hangover desired. The aloe water was less pleasant, but I just choked it down and belched as my new synthetic guts got to work on the meal.

The walk back would have been a quick walk, but I took my time and happily ate my lunch, so by the time I got back it was already afternoon.

Almost made it a whole day already. If I could just focus on not getting attacked by monsters anymore, that would be great. I just wanted to get back into my car and take another nap, so I drudged my bare feet in that direction.

I staggered over in a partial food coma, chewing up the last of my curly fries, and tried the handle. The back door was locked, which didn’t seem like how I had left it, but whatever. I moved up and tried the front door. Both seats were benches, it didn’t matter to me how I slept.

The instant I opened the door, something hissed at me and boiled forward. Great lengths of scaled flesh coiled and warped as this creature hauled itself over the front seat and then out of the door at me. It loomed huge in my eyes as I scrambled backward. A hood extended from the sides of a reptilian face, and fangs extended. Another hiss sounded in the still afternoon air, and I realized what I was facing.

Chapter 10

A snake person.

A snake woman if the oversized breasts beneath her thick sweatshirt were any indication.

She looked female. Pretty, even. The inside of the hood around her head was covered in golden yellow scales and nearly presented the appearance of shimmering hair. Lithely muscled arms reached back in the vehicle as she ducked, still staring at me. She reached over the back seat and grabbed a sleeved robe, and then pulled it on as she glared at me.

Her eyes were wild, jet-black slit pupils surrounded by the most vibrant forest green I had ever seen. Pearlescent white scales covered her entire body, and traces of light pink ran throughout in small patterns. Her lower portion coiled beneath her, but her torso and arms appeared to be the only portion of her that was covered.

She wrapped the robe around her body and tied it tight with a thin rope belt. I could see an oversized hood at the back of the garment.

Then she spoke. “Get enough of a look? I’m tempted to start charging.” I stared at her with bulging eyes. There was no hiss in her voice, I was stunned. If anything, she sounded like an old time debutant, dragging out the end of her sentences. Her scales flushed with color, first pink that gradually grew into solid red.

BuyMort ads popped up, filled with steamy XXX videos and magazines.

Slithering Sensuality, Throbbing Organs, A Multi-Species Delight one blared, throwing a faceful of nude snake lady into my face. She was biting her lip pensively.

I quickly closed it, then another took its place.

Engorged Elven Hotties In Your Area.

No, I silently shouted, closing them all in a quick bout of absolute fury. The thought of sex re-entering my life after such a long hiatus did nothing but emotionally paralyze me.

It’d been a while.

“I am sorry, ma’am, I uh . . . I’ve never seen someone like you before is all. Are you a snake?”

“I am a priest! A harbinger of BuyMort, come to spread the valued word.” She raised a hand in defiance, clutching at her chest. It brought my vision back to her breasts, which was a bad move.

“Seriously, it’s a lot of morties for a peep show, pervert.” Her arms crossed and her tail began to rattle softly.

I stepped back and raised my hands. “I am so sorry. It’s been a weird day and I have kind of a lot of drugs in me right now. I do not mean to stare.”

She scowled in confusion, and the color in her scales dropped back to pink.

“I just . . . I didn’t know snakes could have breasts.”

It was at that unfortunate moment I noticed her stance was jutting out what appeared to be a bulging rear end. She wore a sort of skirt around it, with warm furs under thick gray cloth making up the material of the garment. It wasn’t her snakelike body coiling in strange ways either, I stared long enough to verify that and get in more trouble.

Her hand shot forward and struck my cheek, hard. “Pervert!”

“Only on accident, I am sorry! This is all very new to me, and I am easily confused.”

I made an effort to meet her eyes only. It was hard, cause she was tall, and her snitties were basically face level. But with some effort and a forced smile, I stared into the snake priest’s face and grimaced.

“I do not understand your body, and I am not trying to perv on you.”

She scowled again. Her pearlescent pink scales shifted in color and became a darker hue of red “Now you insult me. Ruffian.”

My eyes went wide. “No! Not my intent. Shit.”

“I am not excrement of any sort!” she shrieked.

I ran a hand over my face and felt the metal plate. “Can we maybe start again? I will try not to stare at your body.”

She glared and then nodded. Her tongue flickered out and back quickly, and she curled her lips at the corner. “You may call me Molls. It is highly unfortunate to meet you.”

“Understandable response. One I’m quite used to. Hello Molls, I am Tyson. This is my car.” I said, making sure to keep eye contact as I gestured to the Lincoln.

“You are Mr. Sada?” Molls raised a scaled eyebrow and turned her head to the side.

“Oh, uh . . . no. You knew this was owned?” I squinted and tried very hard not to look at eye level as she swept back toward the vehicle.

Molls ran an arm along the metal and smiled softly. She seemed to relax, and her coils loosened. “I like this domicile. It was my desire to enter into a pact with the owner, to use it as shelter. I have inordinate value to offer in exchange, as a journeyman priest of BuyMort.”

“Oh. Okay. Umm, I kind of need that car to sleep in right now.” I cocked my head to the side and stared at the car.

She hissed softly and shook her head. Yeah, that made sense. I imagined crashing on the front seat with her strangely voluptuous serpentine body coiled and looped all over the backseat and shook my head to clear it.

“Yeah, that makes sense. You . . . uh, go ahead. I’ll figure out something else and talk to Mr. Sada about you being a tenant.”

I added it to my to do list and started walking away quickly. I needed to get away from this snake priest and her breasts.

It was making me crazy.

I was not comfortable with the feelings of confused lust that raced through me. I stopped as I realized Mr. Sada would ask how she could pay.

She was bent over fully as I turned back, arranging something inside the Lincoln. Snake booty jutting out of the open door.

Snooty.

I involuntarily snickered at the thought, to my immediate doom. Her face rose in the back window and her eyes instantly narrowed. She exited the vehicle in a rush and crossed her arms at me again.

“Sorry! Sorry, I just needed to ask what you would pay in rent. I wasn’t staring!”

Her tongue flickered out again and her tail rattled. “I am a priest, representing The Church of BuyMort. Do you not know what that means?”

Molls lifted the oversized hood and draped it around her head. Something lit up from near her chest and spread through the rest of the hood with a soft light. Steam began to rise, in spite of the afternoon heat.

“BuyMort priests travel the stars with our god, to bring the values of BuyMort to new worlds.”

I nodded as she spoke, then narrowed my eyes. My mouth hung open slightly as I stared at her face and slowly shook my head. She narrowed her eyes and heaved a sigh. I saw them move in my peripheral vision and grit my teeth. My eyes remained glued to her face.

“Buffoon as well, of course. BuyMort priests are welcomed and showered with gifts by smart new shoppers. We bring information in exchange.”

Her eyes narrowed even further, and the flesh around her neck and face stretched out again.

“You, I think I will simply watch suffer and die. Tell Mr. Sada I will not speak with you again.” She raised an arm and flicked it at me. “And go away, pervert. I do not wish you to stare at me any longer.”

I went away, my cheeks burning red. Before I could face Phyllis and explain that a buxom snake priest had evicted me, I had to call Mr. Sada.

I pulled up my phone and pressed the button to turn it on. Gray fog flooded the edges, and the strange hidden face appeared behind it again. I thought about my dickhead boss and spoke his name, and the face turned. It stretched down a tunnel of fog and vanished, quickly replaced by Mr. Sada.

He was in town, in his Tesla. His forehead was bleeding, and there was something tall and gray in the backseat with him, holding what looked like a rusted Colt 1911. It turned to face the camera for a second and a wide gray face with thick black stubble glared at me. Then Mr. Sada turned his phone to focus on himself.

“How’s the campground, son?” He wiped at his forehead with a hand, and I noticed he also had a weapon. “It’s fuckin’ nuts in town.”

I heard gunfire and other, stranger, more violent sounds in the background. Crunching of blacktop, tearing of metal.

“Asshole aliens Mortblocked my properties and other assholes, some of ‘em aliens, tried to kill me and sell my shit.”

“Stop calling me son. You’re seven years older than me, it’s weird.”

I sighed and wiped my hand over my face.

“We have a snake priest here, offering to give us valuable information about BuyMort if we let her sleep in my Lincoln. She hates me now, cause . . . it’s a weird situation, what do you want me to do?”

He stopped wiping at his forehead and glared at me. “Snake priest?”

“Yeah. It’s a giant snake-chick, and she’s a priest of BuyMort who is here to offer us help if we let her stay here and probably feed her and shit.” I rapid-fired off the explanation and raised my eyebrows as I sighed. “I dunno what the hell is going on Mr. Sada. She told me, very forcefully, to tell you about her offer.”

Something crunched in the Joshua trees to my side, and I turned to see a mound of slime, peering out at me. “Oh shit, one of those slimes is here!”

He waved a hand. “No! Tyson, calm down. I think the slimes are going to leave us alone from now on. Just don’t antagonize it.”

“Antagonize it? The last one tried to kill me and sold my trailer!” I was moving now, getting further from the slime as I moved toward Phyllis’ site.

“Just . . . Tyson, the slimes are guests. I rented them a part of the campground nobody needs or uses or knows about, it’s fine. Just leave it alone, it’ll go away.”

He scowled.

“Treat it like a guest, Tyson, I mean it.”

He looked up away from his phone and blared on the horn.

“I dunno about the snake chick, whatever. Sure, she can stay in your car. You can crash in the office for now. I gotta get to my shop. Salvage something. I gotta go. Man up and do your job Tyson.”

He hung up on me and the face in the fog returned. It adopted a shocked and amused expression as it swirled by my screen, then the phone went black.

“Phyllis!” I shouted. “We have a guest to take care of!”

She roused almost at once, her mech coming upright on the deck. It appeared she was right where I had left her, contentedly watching TV in her helmet, and opening it for the occasional sip of laced tea. As she rose, I saw her smiling from within, blinking blearily in the sunlight. She held up a huge metal hand to block out the sun and smiled wider when she saw me coming toward her.

“Oh, hello Tyson, dear. There’s a lovely new tenant, you’ll adore her. She stopped by to ask about taking a nap in the old Lincoln, and I knew you wouldn’t mind. Snake-woman, I think. Very pretty.”

“Ahh. Yeah, we met. Hey, Phil. Check out that Joshua tree ridge over there. Need you to smoke another slime.” I pointed behind myself and turned, but the slime was gone. That was disconcerting.

She pumped her arm and the hand spun into her fusion cannon. Waves of heat roiled from the barrel. “Where is the fucker, I’ll nail him good.” She had her tongue stuck out slightly and was grinning like a maniac.

“Phyllis, are you okay?” I stopped and looked at her. Her eyes rolled at me and she huffed.

“I am high. High as a fucking kite, Tyson. It’s what I like to do, get unbelievably high and watch television. You came asking for help, so where is the little fucker?” She aimed the cannon on her arm and fired it at the Joshua tree I had indicated. It erupted in a fireball, chunks of tree and gravel landscaping flying into the air.

“Woah, Phil. You got em, thanks a bunch.” I shook my head and stared at the burning remnants of the Joshua tree. Mr. Sada would probably make me plant a new one for absolutely no reason. And then rent the office to spider people or something.

As I stared, Molls appeared on the ridge in the distance. She had her hood up and arms crossed again and hissed in displeasure when she saw me. The snake priest glared for a long moment, and then snapped her head around and headed back to the Lincoln.

I waved at her, pathetically, and way too late.

When I turned back, Phyllis was already back in her lounge position, watching TV. I could see it in her mech, displayed on several screens all around her. She delighted in a cup of yogurt, and I could see a fresh joint in the ashtray at her side. Man that chair was tempting.

So I shrugged and went to it.

After Phyllis and I shared the rest of that joint, I told her about my crazy day, Mr. Sada’s dead wife, and Doofus learning how to sell his own fur and choosing my name for himself. She watched her TV and nodded politely.

At the end of it, she offered me the Shasta. It was torn up, but I could still close the bedroom door to get some peace and sleep a bit. Night was starting to fall in the distance, and it sounded like a hell of a good offer.

Plus, honestly, I hated the office, it was musty and full of spiders.

But Phyllis insisted I would be safe as a bug in a rug, and I believed her. The nonagenarian was definitely the biggest fish I had met to date in this apocalypse, and I felt safe with her and her drugged up aim. Once I stumbled inside, I dropped myself into bed on my side, and felt something jab into my hip.

Holy shit. The cufflinks! I pulled them out of my pocket, started at them, and sold them to BuyMort for a wonderful sum of 5,086 morties.

Then I crashed, falling into a sleep deeper than any I’d ever been in before.

That was BuyMort day one. Hell of a day.

Chapter 11 – Day 2

When I awoke the next morning, it was to bird song.

And when I say birdsong, I mean ravens.  They like to brawl with each other over popular food areas, and it’s normally quite a raucous event.

So to the fond screeching of the campground raven gang I rose to face BuyMort afresh with a heavy sigh. It was there, waiting for me, with a new screen.

At BuyMort, we make dreams reality. The words hovered in front of me before a countdown began.

Before we continue, I should explain something about BuyMort. One of its more . . . vicious habits. BuyMort sells things to you in your sleep.

Whatever you happen to be dreaming about, BuyMort will understand as a request. It only allows the use of half your morties account, but it wants to make you happy. A little gift, from you to you.

Go ahead, you deserve it.

So, when you wake up, BuyMort delivers your dream purchases. I should have gotten more stoned the night before. I never dream when I’m stoned.

A pod hovered into Phyliss’ trailer and a rainbow beam warped in a surprise. At first glance, I thought it was Molls, but no. No this was a totally different woman from the same species. Her body was much shorter, and she didn’t have white scales.

She slithered out of the rainbow beam wearing very little, a garish red bra and tight latex miniskirt to match. The snake woman looked around with a slight grimace and crossed her arms with a shiver.

She looked at me, and a very practiced smile that didn’t reach her eyes settled in place on her features.

“I must be your dream come true,” she sighed. The snake woman’s arms reached quickly for her skirt and she unzipped one side of it.

“Woah!” I jumped up, finally realizing what was happening. “No! No thank you, I am so sorry, this is all a total misunderstanding!”

It was six-o-clock in the morning, and I had accidentally ordered a snake woman prostitute. Dammit BuyMort! Or . . . maybe dammit me?

My face went beet red as she stopped stripping mid-way, bent at the waist. She did have a waist, I noticed with no inconsiderable amount of shock. Thighs, even. She wore what looked like lace panties around her hips and between her thighs. They didn’t cover much, and I got a particularly detailed look.

Mostly by accident.

They were intact, fully. Very familiar equipment. Disturbing. So many questions of how and why rolled through my head as the snake woman pulled her skirt back up and zipped it again.

She looked relieved, and not at all surprised. “No worries pal. Happens all the time. Sorry, but you know BuyMort don’t do no refunds. At least you didn’t have a nightmare, right?”

I nodded dumbly as she pulled up her own BuyMort interface. I could tell by the way her serpentine eyes glazed over as she focused. She muttered the words, “transaction complete,” and closed her storefront. The snake woman crossed her arms and leaned against Phyllis’ counter. She was far thinner than Molls, and her scales were a dull green and black color.

I scrambled to my jeans and hauled them on over my metal underwear. The blush was receding finally, and I realized I still knew almost nothing about Molls or what she was here for. “Hey,” I said from the back room, buttoning my jeans. “Can I ask you some questions?”

She raised an eyebrow line at me. They didn’t seem to have any hair, so it was just the ridge of scales above her eye, but the effect was the same.

“Sorry,” I started, raising my hands. “I’m just new to all this and confused.”

She nodded her chin and flickered her tongue at me. “What day is this?”

I narrowed my eyes and turned my head slightly, pursing my lips. “Um . . . Tuesday, I think.”

She chuckled, a throaty sound, and then gently shook her head. “No, I mean how many days has BuyMort been on your planet.”

I nodded in understanding. “Oh, yeah, this is day two.”

Her eyes widened in understanding. “Ah. Yeah, dream day. That figures.” She looked around a little and nodded again. “Yeah, I’ll talk a bit. Waiting on my pod anyway. What do you wanna know?”

“What are you?” I immediately begged. It wasn’t even a question, just a demand to know. She laughed.

“My species is called the Nah’Gh. We have been part of BuyMort for around 4300 years now.” She spoke casually, and rolled a hand as she finished, looking up to remember the time span. Then she crossed her arms again and looked to me for more questions.

I was stumped, and simply stared at her for a long moment. Finally, she cocked her head to look at me and I had one. “Why are your bodies so . . . much like ours?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “BuyMort planetary services are generally categorized into species types. There’s plenty of beings out there that are a lot more like me than you. I’ve even met some who don’t have arms at all.”

There she paused and looked at me as if I was in on some secret with her. “I cannot imagine a snake without arms, can you? So bizarre.” Her pod flew in and she shuddered again. She glanced at me again and lifted her eyebrow ridges in a question.

I stood and stared at the pod. It entered the room and cast a rainbow beam over a portion of the trailer’s living room. Then it held there, stationary and waiting. She was leaning toward it, and still looking at me expectantly.

“Oh! Uh, no. I can’t think of anything else. Thank you though!” I nodded at her and smiled, trying my very best to be polite.

The Nah’Gh woman turned and slithered toward the beam but paused and turned back to me. “Hey, leave me a five star review, please. It’s really helpful. Even if we didn’t . . . you know. BuyMort doesn’t pay attention to anything but the stars anyway. I’ve been Therizze.”

With that, and a shrug, she slithered into the beam and vanished. I followed the trajectory of the pod flying away and noticed Phyllis peeking over the torn edge of the RV. When she saw me notice her, she ducked. The whole RV jumped as the mech thumped into place on the deck outside again.

I swung into her husband’s leather jacket and exited the Shasta. Phyllis was on the deck, pretending to be busy opening two boxes BuyMort had delivered. “Good morning, Phyllis,” I said.

She pretended not to hear me, carefully using a bladed extension of the mech to slice the flesh tape. Once it was off the boxes and set aside, she carefully opened the first. It had a signed picture of Bing Crosby, which she delighted at and carefully set on the small table between chairs that we used for drugs and tea.

The second box held a large rubber comb. It looked like something out of a cartoon and was soft to the touch. Phyllis grimaced at that and tossed it over the railing into the garden, where a small flock of ravens was fighting over the goop that had ejected from my starfish turbine the day before.

“I should have sold that stuff,” I thought, looking at the guck. It’d be wise to remember to sell everything I could in the future.

Oh well. Phyllis was looking at me again and pretending she had just noticed me.

“Oh, good morning Tyson, dearie.” She smiled widely. “Did you have a pleasant rest?”

“Shut up Phil, it wasn’t like that,” I grumbled and moved over to my chair to flop down. There was a partial joint in the ashtray, and it was incredibly tempting, but I decided I had to keep my head clear for a while yet today.

While I sulked at Phyllis, I pulled up my BuyMort screen to see how much that short conversation with a Nah’ga prostitute had cost my morties account.

I had 2543 morties left. My lip curled and I instantly began attempting to protest the sale. Screens telling me that BuyMort had a strict no returns policy appeared. Even toward packages or services purchased while asleep, the sale was considered fair.

See, the conscious mind and the subconscious mind are considered two separate but equal customers, with equal rights to the BuyMort account. I was informed the only account limitation available was to limit my morties spending to half while asleep. I was not pleased but selected the option anyway. Better than nothing.

I noticed Phyllis staring at me and grinning, so I sighed and faced her. “What?”

“Nothing. That new tenant is a pretty thing, huh?” Phyllis was nothing if not persistent. And judging from the half burnt joint in the ashtray between us, and her blood shot eyes, consistently operating with lowered inhibitions.

“Look, Phil. I had a dream, okay? Can’t help that. I did not do anything inappropriate.” I scolded mildly, one eyebrow raised as I pointed.

She became very serious and nodded, pursing her lips, and placing a raised metal finger in front of them. “Yes, of course. Nothing inappropriate. You two just spoke, in all likelihood.” The laugh in her voice was obvious, but her helmet clanged into place anyway. I could hear giggling from inside the mech.

“I can still hear you laughing Phil, you jerk! We did just talk, she said this kind of thing happens all the time.” I took a deep breath after finishing and just sat there with my arms crossed. Well, as crossed as the starfish would let them be anyway.

The helmet slid open again and Phyllis looked at me. She had managed to stifle her giggles, but when she saw my sullen appearance she chuckled again. “Oh don’t take it so personal dearie. Nobody cares who you bang.”

She reached for the joint on the table between us and lit it with a fat blue spark from her mech’s fingertips. After taking a long drag, she reached to offer it to me. I shook my head.

“I gotta work Phil, no doubt Mr. Sada will call soon with some bullshit or other to deal with.” I nodded my thanks at her. “But maybe later, yeah?”

My stomach rumbled and I looked around. “Hey, you don’t have anything to eat in there, do you?”

She nodded, distractedly. Her TV was already on and demanding her attention as she smoked her joint. “Of course, dearie. Should be some oatmeal in the cabinet above the sink.”

I went back in to make some breakfast and remembered the Nah’Gh woman and her request. So I stopped at the counter, after pressing the button to awaken Phyllis’ electric kettle.

Nothing happened.

I went to try the stove. I had to light it with a match, but the propane was self-contained.

“Guess we lost power last night, Phil!” I shouted to be heard.

She nodded and ignored me, so I went back to my task. I drew some water from the tap, but it spluttered and coughed after it gave me a little. That might become problematic.

Whatever, I got enough for my oatmeal.

All Phyllis had was those disgusting paper packets of dried oatmeal, the ones with the little dehydrated fruit chunks in it, so I grabbed two peach and set them aside. It was the least offensive of the flavors available. I shuddered at the banana packet.

Then I set the water to boil and leaned against the counter to wait, pulling up my BuyMort interface. I went to the recent transactions section again and mentally focused on the area to leave a review. This also allowed me to scan through the other reviews, which made me blush. I decided to leave something simple.

Helpful and friendly. Many thanks.

I hit the five star button with my mind and sent it to post with the rest of her reviews. It made me wonder what kind of power that system held over her life for a moment, but then my water was boiling.

I made a quick bowl of the nasty oatmeal glop and ate it out on the deck next to Phyllis. As soon as I took my first bite, my psychic phone began to burn. It didn’t ring, it just got hot in my jeans pocket.

I took it out and dropped it on the table, to see the face in the fog appear again.

“Call from Mr. Sada,” it announced. I shook my head, my mouth full of cheap oatmeal.

“Very well. Available but unwilling to answer.” And the fog faded away.

“What? No!” I grabbed the phone and pressed the button. Fog filled the screen again and the face glared at me. “Don’t tell him that!”

It sneered, “too late,” and vanished again.

I sighed and set the phone down. After another bite of oatmeal, it began vibrating on the metal surface, making a horrible clanging sound as it jumped back and forth. I grabbed it and looked at the face in the fog again.

“Urgent call from Mr. Sada.”

The face was glaring at me again, and the way he said ‘urgent’ made it sound more like ‘pissed off.’ I sighed and nodded.

“Begrudging acceptance,” it said, and turned down that tunnel again. The side of its head stretched and formed into the walls of a tunnel of fog around the edges of my phone, and then Mr. Sada was glaring at me instead of the creepy face.

“What the fuck, Tyson! You answer your phone when I call!”

I drifted for a moment, my mind suddenly dragged back to my childhood. Once upon a time I’d had to sit at a thousand desks, listening to a thousand angry phone calls being made by a thousand shouting authority figures. All while I and another, usually much larger, boy were bleeding and staring daggers at each other.

I fucking hated being yelled at over the phone. Reminded me too much of my shit-ass adolescence.

“Tyson!” He shouted again, reinforcing the memories. I shrugged out of it and shook my head.

“I was eating breakfast, I didn’t mean for the psychic thing to insult you.” I lifted a spoon of oatmeal to my mouth as punctuation.

“Right, gotcha, whatever son. Just answer next time, this is important shit.” He picked up his phone and carried it to the window, where he pointed it outside. Doofus was lounging in the shade, a small metallic drone hovering nearby. He was also shaved bald.

“What the fuck did you do to my dog, asshole?” Mr. Sada sounded pissed. He looked pissed too when he turned the camera back to face him.

I quickly stifled my laughter and smile and put on a serious face. I frowned and shrugged. “I didn’t do anything with him. Dogs got BuyMort too, Mr. Sada. He’s probably just learned how to shop for himself.”

Mr. Sada nodded with a scowl as I spoke. “That makes sense, shit.” He leaned out the sliding glass door. “Roofus, stop shaving yourself!”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s hot, dude. What do you care anyway?”

Mr. Sada glared at me again and scowled. “He’s fuckin’ ugly now.”

Phyllis ducked her head in and chose that terrible moment to interject. “Oh, so what if he’s ugly, you’re far uglier.”

Mr. Sada turned bright red and glared at me. I did my very best to put on a stern face and shake my head.

“Phyllis! Be nice!”

I shook my head at her and then turned back to my boss.

“Sorry Mr. Sada. Anyway, what’s up, what do you need?”

It was at that moment I saw a waist high clay version of myself ran into the room, carrying a scrap of what looked like flesh-paper and holding Mr. Sada’s belt knife.

I watched, amazed, as the strange, but familiar creature jabbered something incoherent, and then ran away again. As it went, it tripped and fell, picked itself back up, and then immediately fell again, landing off camera.

“What the hell was that!?” I shouted at the phone, but Mr. Sada just glared.

“I didn’t do it on purpose, you give me some fucked up nightmares, son.” He shook his head at me.

“Me?” I was sitting up straight now, oatmeal forgotten. “Did you dream-buy a little version of me to do your shit work?”

Mr. Sada narrowed his eyes and froze for a minute. “. . . no? Whatever, you’ll see them soon enough.” He shook his head and refocused. “Get over here, Tyson, I need you to go deliver this BuyMort rental agreement to the new tenant. Get her to sign it and bring it back. Easy job.”

I looked at the strange pad he had thrust out to me. It was translucent plastic and words floated over it through the air. I found that as I stared at it the words bulged to the perfect size, scrolling through my vision at exactly the same speed as I read them.

YOU THE RECIPIENT PLEDGE TO PAY A SUM OF 1000 MORTIES A MONTH FOR A PLACE OF RESIDENCE AS DESIGNATED BY THE MORTBLOCK OWNERSHIP. THIS CONTRACT COMES WITH A NUMBER OF STIPULATIONS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ THEM NOW?

No, I shook my head. I pulled my eyes away from the plastic and glared at Mr. Sada.

Yeah, easy job if I had decent footwear. Asshole. Finally, I just sighed and agreed. “I’ll be over right after breakfast.”

Chapter 12

Phyliss stuck her tongue out at the phone as I hung it up, but thankfully she wasn’t visible on screen. I just sullenly ate the rest of my shitty oatmeal and browsed BuyMort for a set of boots.

The World is at Feet. Wear Boots that Show It. Everywhere you go, your greatness is experienced, tasted, sized up and understood. People get out of your way when you stomp into town. Get the Boots that Show Whose Boss. Get GuildMaster Galactic Gurus. 30000 morties, 4.9 stars.

I’ll be honest. They looked awesome. Picture a mix between heavy leather shitkickers with moonboots and you are halfway there. They were big, thick, and by the looks of things possibly capable of flight as well.

And they were well out of my price range. I browsed a little farther but found I could afford very little in the economic arena of footwear.

I thought at the program. Thought about small prices and sales. The ad catalog twisted and shrank, giving me a new slide show of ads to pick through.

Butter-supple and strong with a big hand stitch. That is the Moccasino Way. 2500 morties. 4.5 stars.

I had no idea what the simple ad meant, but the ad picture showed simple slip-on moccasins that could be tied on tightly with a simple bit of lace. I could afford it and it looked perfect. I bought them and closed the ads.

but I did find a pair of slip on moccasins made from some kind of reed-like material.

When they arrived, Phyllis helped me cut the flesh tape, and then shuddered as she tossed it in the pile now starting to grow in her garden.

I tugged and them and tried to stretch them, trying out my purchase. They were made from some kind of reed-like material, nothing I was familiar with, and wow did they feel strong.

I put them on and marveled at their existence.

They fit, helped protect my feet from the ground, and didn’t itch horribly. I decided to call that a win.

I’d figure out how to refill my morties later.

I left the bowl and pot Phyllis had leant me in the sink and added washing them to my list of things that needed to be done, before heading out down the road to Mr. Sada’s place.

I glanced over to the Lincoln on my way by my own site, but Molls was nowhere to be seen.  Probably for the best, I was terrified of her anyway. Maybe I would get to just leave the agreement and she would bring it to Mr. Sada later.

It was around nine in the morning by the time I made it to Mr. Sada’s mansion, and I was pretty horrified at what I discovered.

He hadn’t dreamed of just one small version of me, he had dreamed up a swarm of them.

Dozens of three-foot clay versions of me ran around the mansion performing small tasks. One of them was sweeping glass shards with a broom and waste bin, while another was placing a new windowpane in the window I had broken the day before.

Several more seemed to be engaged in the digging of a large ditch alongside Mr. Sada’s property. He had a wrought iron fence around the entire compound, which scorched in the Arizona heat, but he had the little clay me’s (meses?) digging what looked like a moat on the outside of it.

I paused as BuyMort cycled some bullshit into my brain, giving me an idea of what I was looking at.

ReBody Galactic – Does your Boss piss you the fuck off? Maybe the local bully keeps kicking your ass? Prom Queen won’t go on a date with you? ReBody those buttholes and give them their comeuppance with ReBody Galactic! AI golems with the look and feel of their real-life inspirations, ReBody Galactic does more than give you revenge. It returns your pride. (Warning: Do not expect ReBody Galactic Golems to last beyond their expiration date. Want them to last longer, go premium. 700 morties per ReBody classic golem, 3.4 stars)

Fucking hell.

I dismissed the ad and another one ran past me as I moved up to the door to enter. As soon as I stepped inside, I was confronted with another surprise.

A tall, thin gray man stood in my way.

He had odd features. Long powerful arms and legs, but thin like his torso. No part of him was bulky or beefy, but he was wired with corded muscle all over. The being’s head was slightly oblong, and broad at the forehead. His eyes were much wider than a human’s, and they stared at me dully as he stuck a hand out and placed his other on his holster. I stared at it, the hint of a memory surfacing.

“Stop dere.” Then he turned and looked over his shoulder. “Boss! Diss Tyson?”

Mr. Sada’s voice could be heard from the kitchen. “Yeah, let him in Hobb!”

The creature stood to one side and lowered his arm. He flicked his chin toward the kitchen. I stared at him as I passed. He was wearing simple fabric clothing that almost looked like rags, beneath rusted plate armor strapped to various areas. His legs and forearms were covered, as was his chest, but the metal looked like scrap to me. Rusty and sewn together with big leather stitches.

The holster at his side was similarly simple, but well oiled. I recognized the rusty colt 1911 in there and nodded to myself. Looked like Mr. Sada had hired a bodyguard.

I entered the kitchen to see him eating a steaming lobster. He sucked on the end of the tail and I noticed his face was bandaged. Pulling out a stool, I plopped into it. “Must have had a rough time in town yesterday, huh?”

Mr. Sada slurped at his crustation, gulped greedily and shook his head. “Man, Tyson you wouldn’t believe it. Prescott ain’t ever been exactly hospitable, but it’s a circus in there now. Barely made it to my shop and sold it all before the place got over-run.”

He stopped eating long enough to press the remote on the counter. His television no longer activated the usual way, it just filled with gray fog, and a familiar face appeared. The TV itself also looked like my phone copy, all made of shitty see-through plastic around the edges. The head encased by fog stared at Mr. Sada impatiently.

“News, global,” he barked, and then went back to his lobster. He tore a claw free and pointed it at me, while the head turned and formed into that tunnel it made. The fog pushed away to the edges of the screen, and a news program unlike any I had seen before began.

A Nah’gh host was speaking to the camera, and it made me feel suddenly relieved to learn that they came in males as well. His features were different from Molls, and he had much darker scales.

His co-host was a very nervous looking human woman. Her hair and makeup was done like a normal TV news anchor, but the look on her face was unsettling.

“Today is day two of BuyMort on Earth, and as such, is a special day,” the Nah’gh host said. There was a slight hiss in his voice, but only when he said the word BuyMort. It made me realize both Molls and Therrize had done that as well. “The day of dreams.”

“Ha-ha-ha, BuyMort sure is making dreams come true all over the world, that’s for sure, Mor’Dhule. Let’s go to eastern China now, where it’s raining golden fried crickets.” The human female host said, turning to face their background screen.

The fog filled it and the face appeared, before sighing and turning to form the tunnel again. An alien ship was hovering over the area, with several Orc soldiers strapped in beside an armored reporter. He was gipping his harness with wide eyes as his seat extended out of the vessel into the air over the street in Shanghai.

Pan fried crickets with gold leaf fell from the sky all around, and the reporter began shouting to be heard. I tuned it out, as Mr. Sada slapped a piece of paper in front of me.

And I do mean slapped. The paper hit the counter and jiggled slightly. It stuck to the counter as well, when I tried to pull it toward me to read better, it wouldn’t come. Just kind of stretched.

I had to physically pick it up by the corners and place it in front of me. It had the same fleshy consistency as the damn packing tape, and I began to get grossed out reading it. It smelled the same, too. On the paper was a rental agreement.

Mr. Sada agreed to let Molls stay in the Lincoln and have my campsite for a standard BuyMort priest living package. I frowned. “You’re giving away my site?”

Mr. Sada shook his head. “Don’t think of it like that, son. It’s an opportunity and she likes your site. You gotta take one for the team, yeah, but you get to pick whatever other site you like. Move in a rig, set up a garden. You’ll be fine, son.”

I shook my head and sighed. “Yeah, thanks a lot.” I picked up the fleshy paper and rolled it up to leave but stopped. “Hey, Mr. Sada, we gotta talk about pay.”

He looked up at me, eyes slightly wider as his lips pursed. “I’m not paying you anymore Tyson, that’s not how this works.”

More memories flooded in from my past, unbidden. A dozen disparate faces, all looking down on me. Telling me I was unwanted, unneeded, or simply no longer welcome. More authority figures, more rejection, more lack of worth. My impotent, buried rage at every single one of them, like a bed of coals behind my eyes.

It felt like he had just fired me.

I scowled, shocked, angry and sad all at the same time. “What?”

“Everything is land based now, son. We’re back to feudal times. You need a place to stay, which I give you in exchange for your work.”

I glared at him while struggling to keep tears in. He was like a father to me. An abusive, shitty, broken-minded caretaker who helped me up when I was in trouble. Took care of me numerous times. Kept me from dying in fact.

But man was he selfish.

He was lucky I owed him so much, because I was feeling pretty damn emotional about then. And his face was looking pretty damn breakable.

He raised his hands in defense when my eyes narrowed, not looking the slightest bit guilty about this turn of events.

“Look, maybe it’ll all change once I have this new system figured out, but let’s face the facts. Your workload is much lighter now, you have plenty of time to side hustle for morties. And with everything controlled by MortBlocks now, housing is no doubt at a premium.”

Mr. Sada’s finger snapped, and I felt the presence of Hobb, the tall gray man behind me in the foyer.

“It’s a good deal, Tyson. Think about it. This is my land, it was my money that developed it, and my morties that bought the MortBlock. I’m not being unfair. Hell, I’m offering you a better deal than I will give to anyone else, son. And I’m not forcing you into anything. The other option is there. You go make your own place, fend for yourself in the desert.”

An ad flashed into my eyes, the mental picture of a dusty desert cave complex followed by text.

Come Check Out This Home That Just Hit The Market! – All Bedroom, All Bathroom, Experience the desert from subterranean levels! With soaring ceilings and exquisite, stony interior, this massive home is 100% all natural and can be yours for just 700000 morties!

God that was a lot of money. For a shit hole in the ground. I killed the ad but not before seeing that the seller had a 2.3 star rating.

With that, Hobb gripped my elbow firmly. “Time go, Tyson.”

I bristled and held still. The Hobb at my side tugged, then realized I was resisting, and his attitude changed.

“Time go, Tyson!”

He became insistent and reached for his holster again. All he did was rest his hand on it, but the message was clear and the memories swarmed loose from the dark corners of my mind.

There I was, twelve years old, staring at someone in a blue uniform with a hand on their gun as they shouted at me to stop. The grown man beneath my fists, whimpering for it to stop.

Then I was riding in a car with my hands cuffed behind my back. My police sergeant father’s expression as he saw them haul me into processing at eleven years old.

Thinking of my father snapped me out of it, and I noticed Hobb was still glaring at me.

I thought briefly of my sawed off, back at Phyllis’ trailer where I had left it that morning. It was empty, but I was thinking I wouldn’t leave it that way for much longer.

I stepped backward, leaving with Hobb and turning only after Mr. Sada disappeared around a corner. I shook off Hobb’s hand. He reached for his 1911 again and I slapped him. Only once, but hard.

“Pull the fuckin’ thing.” I stepped in closer and glared up into his eyes. “Do it.”

I was just sick to death of it. Being pushed around, literally. The creature's eyes narrowed at me, so I stuck my finger in his face.

“I’ve known that man for years. You are not protecting him from me, you fuckin’ idiot.”

With that, I turned and stormed to the door, but stopped on the other side of it.

“I’m the closest thing to a friend that asshole has left.”

Then I slammed the door. I was stomping through the mansion’s giant driveway when screaming started from all over the property.

Mr. Sada and Hobb came running out after me, but I had my hands clamped over my ears and was looking for its source the same as them. It didn’t take us long to find, as one of the mini-me clay-clones came sprinting around the side of the building and grabbed onto my pants leg.

He was screaming.

The other small clones must have been the rest of the chorus. I kicked at him slightly, but he gripped my leg even harder. Then, as he looked up at me and screamed in horror, he began to melt.

His clay sloughed off and his metal bones were exposed. His robotic form clattered to the ground and quickly the rest of him was running down my pant leg and forming into a puddle of clay and metal sticks.

I looked up at Mr. Sada in disgust and his eyes were wide. He was staring, and as I watched, he whispered, “just like last night.”

“Hey!” I shouted. “No more dreaming about me!”

Mr. Sada shrugged, but his eyes never left the puddle at my feet. “Sure thing, son. I don’t want to dream that anyway.” Then he blinked and shook his head. “Hang on, this ain't my fault! The little fuckers just showed up, I didn’t mean to dream about this shit. It was expensive too!”

I held both arms out at the puddle. “This!” I exclaimed. “Is an asshole dream. You dreamed of servile tiny me’s? You’re a dick.”

“My subconscious is a dick, don’t blame me!” He shrugged again, with more force this time, and turned to go back inside. “Clean that shit up.”

Ownership Transaction completed. You are now the owner of CloneMort Clone remains. 1 mortie has been deducted for this transaction.

Fucking hell. I stood there, mouth wide open, just thinking about what just happened. Was this system going to charge me every time I got given some trash to clean up by Mr. Sada?

Hobb waited until his master was gone, then he shoved his handgun in its holster and pointed at me while rubbing his cheek.

“You clean!”

Then he walked inside too. I decided then I was probably going to kill Hobb, and I definitely gave some thought to killing Mr. Sada. But, instead, I just started selling piles of goop and cheap looking metal that used to be tiny clay clones of me to BuyMort.

Purchase: Medical waste, CloneMort Clone remains. Rarity, common. Quality, good. 4 morties dispensed.

I got that screen about a dozen times before I gave up wandering around Mr. Sada’s property looking for meat puddles and trying to figure out what they had been working on. It looked mostly like ditches and embankments.

Like the start of some old school medieval fortifications.

I actually thought a row of sharpened stakes would go well in most of it. But the clones had all melted before they got very far, so now it was just a bunch of piled earth and gaudy holes in the desert.

Whatever. BuyMort beautifies. That ‘good’ quality in the sale was of interest, as was the low buyback cost. This was apparently a common service, and components or mass seemed to matter more than damage, for materials that were clearly going to be recycled.

After that was done, and I had a few more morties to my name, I went and hung out with Doofus for a while. He was so much happier without all his fluff, and I assumed he was considerably wealthier. But I stopped and had a serious chat with him about it anyway.

“Look Doof, you gotta lay low on this stuff. Don’t be spending like crazy, Mr. Sada will notice and get pissed.” He looked at me with his head cocked the way he always did when trying to figure me out.

“Plus, shaving yourself like this is actually super bad for you buddy, you need that fur. Stay out of the sun while it grows back and take it easy when trimming it next time. You can get it thinned without chopping it all off and that will help too.”

Everybody who cares about dogs knows, you never shave a Husky or Malamute. But poor Doofus was always so hot. He must have just dreamed about not having fur anymore. I hung out with Doofus for about half an hour before Hobb noticed me.

“Hey! Tyson work!” The tall thin gray man came toward me, pointing as he walked. “You go! Go work, Tyson!”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to Doofus. He raised his paw at me, and I bumped it, then whispered, “Definitely gonna kill that guy,” to him and left.

Chapter 13

It was about ten in the morning when I got back to the park.

I hesitated at the entrance to my old campsite and looked around. I missed this site. It was one of the few concessions I had gotten out of Mr. Sada.

He’d had his construction crews build up this earthen hill all the way around my campsite. They used a bulldozer and just built it with leftover earth from Mr. Sada’s mansion.

It was fantastic.

My own little surrounded valley. It kept out the diesel engine thrumming that was near constant in the campground, and it helped cut down on how noisy everything else was too. Kids and ravens, those are the two biggest offenders.

Small children and ravens actually have quite a bit in common. They’re smart but act brainless, and shriek for little if any reason with disturbing regularity.

I watched one of the morning’s ravens for a minute, killing time to avoid facing Molls again. It was pecking at something shiny that looked like one of Molls’ scales and fluttering its wings when a BuyMort pod approached.

It hurriedly hovered over the area, scanned whatever random piece of garbage the corvid was interested in, and then beamed it away. As it left, the raven squawked and fluttered its wings, before it began violently preening.

It must have gotten a good sale.

I chuckled as it hopped away, seemingly content. With a heavy sigh, I turned to walk up the driveway to my old site. I wondered briefly what a raven economy looked like, but then I was getting yelled at before I even expected to.

Molls had appeared on the ridge to my side. “What do you want, you degenerate?”

I blinked up at her a few times, mouth agape. “What did I do?”

Her long tongue flickered out and back. “I can smell you haunting my site!” I noticed she had her arms already firmly crossed, and simply averted my gaze to the bird I had been watching.

An ad window full of various deodorizers flashed into my view. I shut it down, scowling.

“Well, this bird was being very interesting. I am sorry, I just stopped to watch it for a while. Didn’t mean to offend you by existing.” I took a minute to sniff my armpits. I was alright, actually, wonder what her problem was.

She seemed to hesitate at that, and even craned her neck and body to better see the raven I motioned to. The bird decided it didn’t care for the level of attention it had attained, and left on the wing, flapping away into the mid-morning sun.

“You were just . . . watching a bird?”

I nodded. “Yes, I found a bird interesting.” Her eyes softened at that, and I started walking up the hill toward her. When I arrived, I unrolled the flesh paper to show her.

“I was coming to get you to sign this for Mr. Sada, and I stopped because I found a bird interesting. It looked like it was selling things to BuyMort, and that made me think.”

Molls’ scales shifted suddenly to a deep purple around the edges. She cocked her head at me. “It is always good to ponder the nature of BuyMort.” Then she turned and started slithering back down the hill to the Lincoln. “Very well, my things are in the domicile. You may approach.”

I followed her to my car, laid out the gummy paper on the hood for her and stepped back. She delved into the back seat of the car, bending over at the waist again, and I simply turned around.

Once I heard her exit the car and start moving around to the hood, I glanced back to see her gazing at me with one eye narrowed. I turned back and nodded when I saw she had what looked like a pen in her hand.

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

Molls stopped and read over the contract before lifting her pen.

“I’m not pleased that you are acting as Mr. Sada’s representative, but I accept his terms. In exchange for food, shelter, and protection, I shall act as this camp’s guide to BuyMort, and aid in your spiritual growth. The thousand morties for rent is clearly a ceremonial number, so I don’t mind paying that, but it is unusual to charge a priest of BuyMort. If a closer relationship is desired between this fledgling affiliate and the church, that too will be possible.”

She bent again to find the signature area and her breasts moved. I looked upward immediately, suddenly interested in where that raven had gotten off to.

She called my attention back to the page. “It says here that you are to provide me with protection?” I glanced down and then scowled where she pointed.

The flesh paper did indeed have my name as the primary for every one of her required services, including security. Mr. Sada was signing me up for a lot of stuff I wasn’t positive I was on board with. When I noticed Molls staring at me, eyebrows peaked in annoyance, I stepped back and raised my hands.

“You met Phyllis. She’s the muscle around here, go to her if you have a problem. I know you don’t want to deal with me.”

She glanced me up and down, and then signed her name with the pen. It turned out to not be a pen at all, but a soft laser that seared the flesh paper with a brand. Her handwriting was exquisite, and I felt a pang of jealousy.

My own handwriting had always been chicken scratch.

She straightened back up and crossed her arms again. “Well. You are a pervert who leers at me.”

“I am not a pervert, and I was taken by surprise. I did not mean to stare and upset you.” I spoke directly to her face, without allowing any twitch of movement from my eyes.

“So you say.”

Molls’ eyes narrowed and her scales shifted color again, this time toward pink. She slithered around to the rear of the car with a single swift motion and opened the back door, before sliding inside. Her tail wrapped around the handle and she turned back to look at me, coiled and wrapped upon herself.

“I’ll be expecting dinner tonight, by seven PM. You are dismissed.” Then she hauled the door shut.

I opened my mouth, hung that way for half a second, and gave up instead. I nodded, turned on my heel, and marched off back to Mr. Sada’s. As I exited my former campsite, I noticed the ravens again, being weird. There was a small group of them, sitting in the shade of the Joshua tree grove near Phyllis’ site, and all of them were staring directly at me.

As soon as I emerged from the driveway and entered their field of vision, they started acting like normal ravens again, pecking at the ground and cawing for no particular reason.

One of them in the back continued watching me though. That one ducked his head and opened his beak at me.

Getting the shotgun reloaded jumped a little higher on my list as I walked past those birds.

Once out on the desert road behind the campground, my walk became almost pleasant. My new shoes were definitely better than nothing, and I was about to be done with working for Mr. Sada for the day.

Maybe I’d try selling some dead ravens, see what those were worth.

Also, I had to figure out how to feed Molls. What did a Nah’Gh priest eat? Based on the hints of teeth I had seen when she spoke, I assumed meat. Fuck, I needed to go back and ask her. That should be fun.

When I arrived back at Mr. Sada’s, I dropped off the skin paper contract and ducked out back to bump fists with Doofus. I left before Hobb could chase me off, or Mr. Sada could figure out something else for me to do.

While walking back to the campground, I daydreamed about what to find Molls for dinner, and ended up making myself hungry again. That oatmeal really sucked. Hungry again and it wasn’t even noon. It was then I had my worst idea yet. I decided to go to the office and raid all the snacks.

This office was shitty. And when I say shitty, I mean Mr. Sada literally used one of those mobile offices that travel around with construction companies. He bought it off the company he used to build the campground, and just redesigned the inside. Customers had to walk up a few steps, or an incredibly long and inconvenient doubled-back ramp that I know for a fact our wheelchair customers, few though they were, hated.

It was carpeted but uncovered, so the underside of the carpet swelled in the rain and shrank in the heat. The ramp was covered in mildewed, lumpy carpeting that definitely didn’t help a wheelchair access the building.

I should have noticed that the carpet was missing but walking to the office was such a zombified experience for me that I just kept going.

Once you were up the steps, a rattling metal and glass door allowed access and a tarnished copper bell announced your presence with a single dull thud as the door hit it.

Broken and trashy, our specialty.

The office counter was an inappropriate chunk of particle board that had been lazily formed into a functional station to hold a credit card machine on. It was splintered at each of the corners, in that way that only particle board can be, where it’s both blunt force trauma and a guaranteed collection of new splinters if you run into it.

Anyway, that little delight took up a single corner of the building and created a separated area for the staff to work and ring up guests.

Beyond that, the walls were filled with composite wood peg boards, hung with the typical garbage. Corn chips, popcorn, and a variety of drinks all flavored with corn syrup. Marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers, and little bamboo spits to cook 'em on. Fire starters, mini-bottles of propane, teeny shampoo and soaps for the showers.

You know, campground shit.

Then beyond that was a small room that Mr. Sada never let anyone into. We had seen behind the door though, and it was just his bathroom. He made us use the campground bathrooms, of course.

I should have known something was off when I couldn’t smell the wheelchair ramp’s carpet as I climbed the stairs. Usually the mold stink is overpowering, flavoring your approach to the office on check-in. I always thought it was good preparation for the experience we offered.

As I stepped inside, the four slime creatures that had been eating all of my snacks began to gyrate and whip around their tentacles, each making excited burbles and squealing fart sounds. I Immediately scrambled backwards and locked the door with a single motion, eyes wide.

Fucking slimes!

None of them came for me though, and as I stood outside the office waiting to see a slime in pursuit, I started feeling silly. I stepped back up to the door and peeked inside, just in time to see the last of the group squeeze its way through Mr. Sada’s bathroom door, using the cracks on all four sides to slide inside.

I hurriedly unlocked the office again and stepped in, leaving the door propped open behind myself just in case I wanted to run for my life one more time.

I walked through the stripped shop, avoiding a small, slime covered hunk of the outside ramp’s carpet on the floor. It looked like one of them had been digesting it and spit it out for some reason. Perhaps as they ran.

I reached Mr. Sada’s door and used my key to open it, being careful not to touch any of it with my bare hands. The entire door was dripping with caustic slime, and the wood was shriveling and smoking. Using the key, I slowly pushed at the door and peered into the widening crack.

The slimes were funneling themselves into the toilet.

I stared, confused, as the last slime flowed up and into the bowl, and began making loud slurping noises as it channeled its body down into the pipe. As the door opened wide enough, it noticed me and began to vibrate and splash, making odd gibbering farts.

I frowned and swung the door wider. Just in time for it to spit a glob of itself at me.

It was a tiny droplet of slime, to be fair, but I shrieked and ducked anyway. The droplet flew through the empty shop behind me and splattered against the shell of the silent BuyMort pod that had arrived to purchase the slimy chunk of carpet in the office.

They had left it for me as a trap.

I turned just in time to see it beam away the partially digested carpet and take the acidic slime across its shell. The pod immediately began doing that erratic bob and weave thing they did when attacked and warped in a monster for me to deal with.

I glanced back at the slime, to see it slurp down into the toilet and vanish.

When I turned back, a massive black and orange beetle nearly filled the room. It was the size of a large bull and sported a series of pronged horns at the front of its head. Multiple racks of antlers jutted toward me and commanded my attention. Its horns were jet black and pointed, and nearly reached the sides of the building. Each was visibly sharp at the end, and fat blue sparks openly jumped between their points.

I swore angrily. I was about to get stomped and killed by a giant bug.

Chapter 14

The beetle snorted and pawed at the shitty carpet. It tore a strip free and gouged the floor with its clawed feet. The thing's face had bright, iridescent orange eyes, and a toothy maw that dripped foaming spittle.

It snorted again, and all its legs went suddenly stiff.

I dove into the bathroom and scrambled into the far corner.

Behind me it roared then smashed through the door and toilet, tearing its horns through the back side of the building with a series of loud electrical pops.

The beetle stopped as soon as its head punched through the metal and fiberglass siding and started trying to free itself.

And BuyMort jumped me with an ad.

Super Nine Coleoptera Spray – Beetle banging about your home? We’ve got your solution. Three pumps of this in infested areas and even the mightiest of beetles will fall to your wrath. 300 morties, 4.3 stars.

I have to admit, that advertisement dazed me. It was a tiny fucking spray bottle, the size of window cleaner. Something for real beetles and not giant ones bigger than the trailer! It was so stupid and so obviously not something I could use at this moment.

Luckily the arrangement of horns on its head caught and prevented it from pulling its head back in, and the beast immediately panicked as all the lighting fixtures and electrical outlets erupted in sparks.

It began thrashing in the building, with me trapped in a tiny bathroom right beside it. The insulation in the building without doubt saved my life, as those sparks were everywhere. One area the construction company hadn’t skimped on design, almost certainly to avoid a lawsuit.

I muttered the word “shit” at various volumes while this was happening, curled up in the far corner as I tried to avoid the electrical sparks raining from the ceiling. This thing had been sent to kill a slime monster, and it was way more than I was ready to handle unarmed.

The beetle’s hardened wing covers popped open and shut several times, slamming into the walls, crushing, and distending them. Then it stopped and held perfectly still for a moment, and I recognized my opportunity.

I jumped up and scrambled through the broken wall and into the now destroyed office.

The beetle trumpeted and heaved and tore itself free from the building entirely. It pranced around looking for me, then turned back and froze, pointing directly at my position. It bounced once on its back end and charged again.

As I fled from the office, I heard it slam inside the building and looked over my shoulder. Metal siding screamed, sparked, and rose into the air and the building itself buckled.

The beetle roared and thrashed, and the little metal trailer came apart at the seams. The wall behind me tore like an aluminum can and the beast noticed me again.

I was already running, this time for Phyllis.I yelled at the top of my lungs as I went. “Phyllis! Help!”

The office was near the front of the campground, by the entrance gates. I had most of the campground to cover to reach Phyllis and her mech, so I diverted course and ran for the tool shed instead. We parked the lawnmower there and kept various sundries on hand.

Garbage bags and gardening tools, mostly.

It was a tall metal building, and the rollaway door could only be lifted. I slid to my knees and grabbed the tab, hauling on it. Locked.

“Shit!”

I scrambled for my keys and dragged them out of my pocket as the beetle squalled from the office. I could hear it snuffle, and then it started scraping the ground again. It sounded like it was snorting in my direction.

The padlock was old and rusted, but I kept it oiled and it popped open on the first try. I jumped up and hauled the door with me.

The walls were covered in cobwebs and tools, and as I entered, the beetle charged with another trumpeting roar. I could feel its bulk shaking the ground as it rushed me.

It tore through the doorway as I climbed up onto the shelving beside the door. The tip of one horn gored me, catching me in the leg and tearing a chunk of flesh out with a giant spark.

I gasped and flopped onto the ground behind it, convulsing briefly. The shock passed quickly, and I began crawling toward the doorway again with rubbery limbs.

A cartoon starfish suit appeared in my vision at the doorway and gasped exactly as I had a moment before. I got the distinct impression I was being mocked.

“Damage detected!”

The familiar shrill voice announced my painkiller dose, and immediately began working on my leg with its tendrils. The painkiller helped flush the last of the nasty jolt I had gotten out of my system, and I started moving easier.

I got up and tried to run. One tendril shot flesh sealant into my wound while another zapped at it with a laser. My leg erupted in a new squirt of arterial blood, and I collapsed.

The starfish frowned at me and wagged an arm. “Hold still, user!”

I rolled over onto my butt and faced the beetle. It was in the shed still but had managed to turn around and was staring at me from ten feet away. When it suddenly spread its wings and charged, I flinched in response.

The sides of the shed ballooned out with a metallic bang and the beetle bounced back inside. Electrical arcs jumped from its horns to the sides of the shed and metal objects on the ground as it stared at me, a cthuluesque beard of thunder spread out before the creature.

I immediately started scooting backward on my butt, trying to get away from the angry beetle. Then I changed direction and scooted up the slight hill to the side of the shed.

The beetle, meanwhile, thrashed and roared, kicking out and fluttering its wings. The shed bounced and popped, and then tore free from the ground completely. The beetle was trapped in the warped building, unable to get the thin metal siding to shake free.

I glanced at my leg and was unhappy to see that work had stopped.

I wasn’t bleeding to death, but the giant tear in my leg wasn’t getting patched up either.

My cartoon starfish gyrated nearby for my attention, and when I looked at it, it pretended to pout.

“My charge is empty,” it shrieked. “Break something, break something!”

The beetle trumpeted from inside the metal shed walls, as it danced and spun away. It seemed to have forgotten about me, so I started scrambling to the mess of tools and items it had left from the shed. There was a glass jar of random screws and nails we kept.

I always found the stupid things laying around in the road, figured they might come in handy someday. I was wrong, but, at that moment, I just wanted to break the jar.

Scooting backward down the small hillside gave me plenty of time to try and remember where it had been left, but when I arrived at the mess, I started losing hope. A collection of tools, bug spray cans, and gardening equipment was scattered all over the immediate area.

I saw the jar finally, at the far end of the patch the shed used to be on. As soon as I started scrambling for it, the beetle returned. It was still desperately trying to get the remnants of the shed free from its shell, throwing arcs of electricity nearby. Portions of the metal had bent and were hooked to the hard armored shell that covered its wings. It stomped and roared, spinning in circles and whirling.

I ducked back as it stomped the jar and moved on, then I stared at the crushed glass. It was all tiny fragments, but I gave some thought to trying to break even those. Then I noticed the old lawn mower beside me and grinned. I smashed both fists into it, one after another, shattering the crappy old plastic cover that sat atop the engine. I hated that lawnmower.

My starfish thanked me, the suit spun back up, and the armor’s tendrils got back to work. The beetle had heard me and started its dance back in my direction.

Apparently, it was still pissed.

I scooted for my life, hauling myself backward and out of its path. Thankfully, the shed siding was covering its eyes.

The beetle grunted and shuffled at where I had been, turning in short semi-circles and reaching out carefully with its sharp footed legs.

I scooted quietly, but it quickly gave up looking for me and went back to its one bug rodeo. It flapped its wings hard, jumping up and down in an apparent attempt to fly.

The shed’s sides bulged and bent, making popping sounds as it cracked loose, and the beetle stepped out from beneath it.

I looked at my leg and froze. It wasn’t quite complete yet, but I was about to risk standing up when the beetle attacked the warped metal siding that used to be our tool shed.

It rammed the metal and began stomping on it repeatedly, raking it with its horns and sending loud snaps of electricity into the air. It made so much noise that I scooted backward as fast as I could, and it still didn’t notice me.

I was past the office and well into the main road when I noticed an odd tool that had been thrown free. A tree trimming saw sat in the road to my side. It was little more than a curved saw blade on a metal pole with rubber grips, but it was a weapon, and I was desperate.

I rolled to the side and grabbed the haft of it, sitting up and looking back at the beetle. It was done with the metal and was staring down the hill at me.

I glanced at my still repairing leg and decided it was close enough. The gummy flesh sap was being injected again, and it looked like the wound was mostly closed. I jumped on my feet and started limping for Phyllis’ trailer.

The beetle charged me again, trumpeting and sparking.

“Phyllis!” I screamed as I ran-limped, looking over my shoulder. “Help!”

I made it out of the main road before the beetle caught up to me again. I could feel it coming in the ground, so like an idiot, I turned.

The horns bore down on me and I feebly raised my saw on a pole to defend myself. Sparking beetle antlers caught on the ends of the pole and I was lifted bodily into the air as it reared its head.

My feet scrambled at the beetle’s carapace as it tossed me up and bucked. Electricity flowed through the handle into me, and my hands gripped involuntarily, as I dangled between its horns.

The saw blade had caught in the antler rack and I was stuck, flapping up and down as the beetle continued charging. I tucked my legs to avoid contact with the ground, lest I become part of a circuit.

My new friend and I hurtled down the road, as I struggled to get some control over the situation back. I was trapped, perched on the top of the beetle’s head, with my tree saw stuck and my life flashing before my eyes.

The beetle chose its own path, but by either luck or divine noodled guidance, we managed to end up at Phyllis’ anyway.

Actually, not surprising, I realized. Her campsite was in the middle of a row of smaller campsites. The beetle simply followed the curved road, and it took us directly by Phyllis’ Shasta.

I hung on for dear life but managed to turn my head and stare at the scene on her deck.

Molls was there, hanging out with Phyllis. She had her coils laid out comfortably beneath her and was frozen with one of Phyllis’ teacups halfway to her mouth, staring at me.

Phyllis was sitting next to her, pointing, and laughing, as I was carried by on the horns of an angry beetle.

I gritted my teeth and turned back to my struggle. With a surge of effort and movement, I managed to get my grip on the pole turned around.

The hardest part was opening my fingers, but I forced the movement by rolling my hands over, one at a time. I felt my muscles strain in my back, stretched long, but I was facing the right direction by the time the beetle went around the full loop and turned to run behind the Shasta, back toward the office.

I could hear Phyllis’ cackling vanishing into the distance, and then Molls’ haughty voice sounded from beside me.

“What do you have caught in its horns, a weapon?” she shouted from the creature's side.

Her coils moved faster than I could properly see, and she seemed to be keeping up with the beetle easily.

Jostling about as I was on the beetle’s carapace, I tried to answer and managed a garbled shout instead, but she took my noises to mean yes, and attacked.

Molls moved fast, much faster than I would have expected. It reminded me of martial arts movies, just a blurred shock of motion that lunged in front of the beetle, arms and hood extended. The flaxen scales of her body flashed in the midday sun, and the beetle reared and faltered.

Molls raced in a fast circle around the beetle’s legs and compressed, dragging them together. Her long tail whipped through the air behind me with a crack and gripped the shell over the wings, closing them tightly.

I could see her body flexing as the beetle tried to open its wings, but she kept it steady. Then her face appeared beneath me, jutting out from the underside of the beetle.

“Kill it!” she screamed.

She was straining, her arms gripped against her sides as she grimaced with effort.

Keeping the beetle in her coils was a temporary situation, I realized with a start, and got to work. I shoved hard against the saw and got the blade out of the beetle's horns with a shower of sparks, then lifted the weapon over my head and slammed the blade down into the front of the giant beetle’s face.

It squealed as a fine spray of orange mist shot out and sprinkled Molls’ face. She squeezed her eyes and mouth shut against it, and turned her head, but said nothing.

A glance back at her coils told me she was holding on as hard as she could. I needed to hurry.

The saw blade was stuck in the beetle’s carapace, so instead of trying to get it out, I just started sawing.

With my first hard push on the blade, steaming orange ichor gushed from the beetle and splashed against Molls, who let go and gasped as she turned her head.

I sawed some more and the blade hit something vital, and the beetle stopped dead in its tracks, slumping on top of Molls and pinning her beneath it.

More ichor gushed out, covering the rest of the snake woman’s upper body. Her tail thrashed in the air behind me, and a bolt of plasma from Phyllis’ fusion cannon ripped through the beetle, right in between us.

I jumped free of the antlers as it fell, and they punched into the ground on either side of Molls. This had the unfortunate effect of shaking free more ichor, adding to the slick Molls already lay in.

After I landed, I rolled to a stop and stayed on my back in the gravel. “Hold your fire, Phil! You got it!” I cupped my hands and shouted. Never knew if her hearing aid was up or down these days.

In the distance, I heard her frail voice say, “damn right I did,” and then the mech was walking back to the Shasta. I turned my attention to Molls, who was extricating herself from the ruin of the beetle.

She glared at me. My clothing was clean, I had somehow managed to avoid getting any of the glop on myself, even though it was flying through the air at random. It felt very unfair being mad at me for having a tiny bit of good luck in this situation, but Molls looked furious.

Her tongue shot out and she recoiled, grimacing at the smell.

It was pretty rank, to be fair.

These BuyMort bugs were messy and smelled bad. Molls moved closer and stood stock still in front of me, her arms tight at her sides, and hands balled into fists.

“You have none on you at all?” It was more of an angry statement than a question, but I still answered stupidly.

“You shoulda seen me last time, I was caked in it.” The instant it was out of my mouth I realized it was the wrong thing to say, but she stiffened even more, began rattling her tail at me, and turned to leave.

“Molls wait, I’m sorry.”

The Nah’gh stopped and held her position but didn’t turn to face me.

“I am really sorry that happened.” As I spoke, I walked slowly over to her side. She looked at me, but still didn’t turn her head. At least her tail wasn’t rattling anymore.

“Thank you, Molls. Really, I mean it.” That got her attention. The tall snake woman finally turned her head and met my eyes. She awaited what I would say next, and I shrugged.

“You saved my life. Thank you.”

She lowered her head and pressed her hands together in front of her chest. “You are welcome,” she snapped, and then took off.

I was impressed again by how fast Molls was, as she slithered down the road and vanished around the corner to my old campsite. I stood there in the gravel, next to the giant beetle corpse with my hands on my hips, and I thought about what I did.

Yep. That reaction made sense. She would hate me forever.

Oh well. Not like I’m trying to date her.

I swarm of hearts swarmed my vision, popping delightfully.

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I gaped.

Then, after a minute, I shook my head and turned to sell the dead beetle. At least I could get a few morties for my near-death experience.

Imagine my displeasure when BuyMort informed me the beetle remains were already being sold, and if I had issue with that, to take it up with the seller.

One Phyllis Greenly.

I grumped off to Phyllis’ trailer to confront the old bat. I hadn’t even seen her point at it, the sneak. She was in her usual position, basking in the shade on her deck.

“Phyllis, you stole my beetle.” I accused before flopping into my chair. I couldn’t help but notice that the deck was still warm from Molls. “And why are you hanging out with the new tenant? I’m not good enough for you?”

“Dear, TV and weed is good enough for me. Everything else is gravy, and I like her. She’s funny, and easy to talk to. Not like you, you mostly just grunt and complain.” Phyllis finished her scathing report by tossing me a paper wrapped joint.

Oh right, she’s an angel. A drug dispensing angel who might hate me just a little bit.

I lit up and took a long satisfying drag before nodding. “Fair assessment, Phil, alright. You got me. Didn’t have to steal my beetle though.”

She turned and raised an eyebrow at me. “That was my beetle, Tyson, I put it down.”

“Damn you, Phil, no you didn’t. I stuck a saw blade into its brains and made it gush blood all over poor Molls, who ran away upset. Can’t blame her.”

I gestured at the old lady with the joint.

“I just told you that to stop you from shooting anymore, you nearly killed us both.”

I sniffed and leaned back in the chair. “Thanks for the joint though.”

“You’re welcome, dearie,” she automated, staring at the TV screen in her suit. “It’s an indica.”

I watched behind me as the pod arrived and warped away the beetle, then reached over and shoved Phyllis lightly. “How much you get, can you get us something to eat at least?”

The mech didn’t even move, but she looked over at me and sighed. “One moment, dear. I do so hate this shop thingy.” She began blinking and making little motions with her head. Apparently, she was a much more interactive shopper than I.

After a few minutes, she shook her head. “Oh, no, that wasn’t very much at all. Only four hundred.”

I scowled. “I’d be pretty happy with four hundred morties, I’ve got like 40 or 50. And most of those I made selling clay-clone garbage from Mr. Sada. You would not believe the shit he pulled today!”

With that, I launched into a classic stoned gripe fest about my boss, and Phyllis nodded politely and said ‘yes dearie’ a lot. She did order us food though, a nice assortment of trail mix, which she liked nibbling at. I sighed at it, but then I found a batch in her multi-box that had jerky bits in it and chowed down.

Letting Phyllis choose lunch usually meant trail mix, but it was all right. I was used to it, and trail mix is just stuff like peanuts with candy, it’s delightful.

Who doesn’t like trail mix?

I thought about that old saying about the guy dangling from a cliff with a tiger above and below eating his strawberry and smiling. The trail mix was a poor strawberry, but I took what enjoyment I could.

It’s not so bad, hanging out with a friend and having a snack, while enjoying an intoxicant. Almost makes the end of the world feel homey.

When Mr. Sada called me and ruined my lunch, it was just before noon. I groaned and nodded, and the psychic fog monster in my phone turned and said, “loathingly accepted,” and the tunnel of fog spread to encompass my screen.

When Mr. Sada’s angry face showed up on my screen, I shook my head. “I’m pissed at the phone, not you. What’s up?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Get over here. Now. You gotta see this. We gotta do somethin’.” Then he turned and reached a shaking hand out for the phone and shut it off.

Phyllis shook her head. “Don’t go. It’ll be bullshit.”

I was already on my feet, heading down the ramp. “It’s all bullshit now, Phil. Off your porch, it’s all bullshit.”

Chapter 15

“This feels like the end of the world,” I mused on the situation as I walked the long dusty road from my gate to Mr. Sada’s mansion. “So why the fuck am I still going to work?”

Mr. Sada himself was happy to answer that question for me. The moment Hobb showed me into the kitchen, he pointed at the fog lined television. “Look at this shit Tyson! Look at this shit!”

I looked at the TV. An aerial vehicle was showing a bank of thick black mist rolling across Prescott. Lightning strikes were visible from inside the fog, and the occasional violent movement beneath its surface indicated something inside.

As we watched the screen, a young man ran down the street ahead of the fog but was too slow as it rushed from multiple avenues and cut him off.

The fog surrounded him, bolts of electricity, and something that moved too fast to be properly seen tore pieces of him off and he slumped to the road. The scene was mercifully covered by thick black fog an instant later.

“Look at that shit!” Mr. Sada was excited. Based on the white powder on his kitchen counter and shirt, I could guess why. “What do you think that shit is?”

The news ticker read “Lethal Dream Phenomenon!” in dramatic font, and they started replaying the young man’s death.

“Some rich asshole in Canada had a nightmare last night. Canada!” He tapped his bull ring on the counter several times and turned back to the TV. “They’re saying it’s supposed to hit Mexico before the morties run out.”

He shook his head and slapped the counter.

“Forty-five miles wide, almost fifty deep. Killed millions already, they say.”

The ‘they’ he referred to was that same male Nah’gh host, with a new female Orc host I hadn’t seen before. She wore a very low-cut top and giggled at everything the Nah’gh host said.

I gave a brief thought for what had happened to the poor human host I had seen earlier, but then Mr. Sada was in my face again. He tapped the counter in front of me with his bull ring and made me cringe.

“Yo, Tyson! We got shit to do man!” He waved his arms excitedly. “That shit is gonna be here in like fifteen minutes and is supposed to be on top of us for hours before it passes by.”

Mr. Sada moved around the counter to the fridge, where he pulled out a mineral water and cracked it open. I narrowed my eyes at the bottle and licked my lips. Trail mix made me thirsty. He turned his back on the fridge and stared at the TV again.

“We gotta get everyone above eight feet. It only affects everything below eight feet.” He spoke absentmindedly, staring up at the psychic television.

“Hey, Mr. Sada, can I get one of those waters?” I asked in a small voice, as I creeped forward toward the fridge.

He absent-mindedly waved a hand at me and I slipped past him to the fridge. The door was open and shut in a heartbeat, and I had my prize. I tore the cap off and guzzled most of the clean, cold water in a single breath. Mr. Sada looked up as I set the bottle on the counter with a clink.

“Oh, what? No, not my good stuff!”

I grinned at him and lifted the bottle to my lips again. “Too late, you said I could.”

He looked like he was about to whine at me further, but just glared instead. Hobb gave me a hard look that I returned when Mr. Sada wasn’t looking. I flipped off the tall gray man under the kitchen counter where Mr. Sada couldn’t see.

“Whatever, we have important shit to do.”

He came back over to me, tapping his bull ring the entire way. I fantasized about it breaking his marble counter slab for a second, but then he was in front of me.

“You gotta go back to the camp and get the tenants eight feet up in the air. That snake woman for sure, but you know . . . you ain’t gotta get the old lady.”

A vivid image of beautiful blue skies and rolling hills flashed over my vision.

Fair Skies and Open Fields. That’s what you get when you buy a berth at Ancient Oaks Retirement Homes. Our Beautiful Community of Select Seniors is guaranteed to take your breath away. But don’t worry. We’ve got oxygen tanks included in the price. Purchase your new home now! 4.5 stars, 20,000,000 morties.

I took a sharp breath in, letting the ad fade away, and I stared at him. After a long moment, I said, “I’m taking the golf cart.”

Mr. Sada’s eyes went wide, and he started to shake his head. He had a golf cart that he used to cruise around the camp. He also used it to drive to and from his own mansion, and park it in his garage, ensuring that nobody who worked at the campground ever got to use it.

“I don’t wanna hear it Mr. Sada, this is a bullshit errand and there isn’t any time. You shoulda told me over the phone so I could just gather everyone and bring them here to chill on your second floor until it passes.”

I sighed and looked at him.

“If you won’t go yourself, I’m taking the cart. Deal with it.” I walked past Hobb, who arose and looked to Mr. Sada for instructions. “Don’t even think about it, Hobb,” I said on my way by. Hobb sat back down.

Mr. Sada was stunned for a few seconds, but then he remembered to be mad. “Hey, no way. I don’t want that old bi-” He stopped dead in his tracks when I whirled to glare at him. “I don’t want the tenants here.”

Mr. Sada pursed his lips.

“There needs to be a separation.”

My eyes narrowed as he spoke, and I suddenly shook my head and raised a hand, cutting him off.

“Enough. This is absurd, there isn’t any place in the entire campground that’s above eight feet. Not anymore, your stupid friggin’ slimes ate everything in the store and summed a giant beetle to wreck up the rest of the place.”

He stepped forward, face pinched in concern. “What? The office got wrecked?”

I nodded, my hand on the garage door. “And the tool shed. Those slimes are a menace, and they tried to kill me again. I’m gonna start killing ‘em if I see them, guests or not.”

He started saying something else, but I ignored it and went into the garage. I detached the golf cart from its charging station and manually lifted the garage door.

The golf cart was actually nice. Big and green, with room to seat three.

Honestly it made me wonder why Mr. Sada had shelled out the extra money for a golf cart with a passenger row if he never let anyone use it, but I just shrugged and pulled out of the driveway.

The damn thing was practically silent, it made almost no noise aside from the crunch of its miniature off road tires on the dirt.

Traveling back down the road to the campground was much easier on the cart, and I determined that I was going to use it more often.

You know, if I lived through the next few minutes, anyway.

I could see the dream-purchased-storm on the horizon, roiling and bubbling through the Prescott National Forest. It didn’t give me much confidence as I watched it start surging across the open desert toward me in the golf cart’s rear view mirror.

I swerved into the campground and sped down the short dirt road to my old site. After parking next to the Lincoln, I gaped at yet another strange sight. Molls was in the dirt toward the back of the site, writhing in the middle of a dust cloud.

As I stopped the cart and got out, I stared.

I admit it this time, I had no idea what was happening, and I stared like the curious monkey I am at heart. She appeared to be rubbing her entire body in the coarse desert sand, tossing up great clouds of dust that obscured my vision and prevented me from realizing an important detail before it was too late.

Molls was completely nude, and this was how she bathed. Basically, I’d just walked in on her in the tub.

My eyes popped wide open as I saw entirely too much and fully realized the situation. Her old, orange-stained clothing was hung on a Joshua tree not far away, and what looked like brand-new versions of her ruined skirt, sweatshirt, and robe were laid out on the hood of the Lincoln.

I grabbed the skirt and sweater and started moving toward her. Keeping my head turned firmly to the side with my eyes squeezed shut, I shouted her name. “Molls!”

I heard the sound of a whip crack, and Molls screamed in indignation. Something grabbed my legs, wrapped around my entire lower body hard, and yanked.

“You dare?!” she hissed directly in my ear, but I just kept my eyes squeezed shut and thrust the clothing out. It didn’t help, I could feel her breasts pressed up against my side. She was cold.

“We don’t have time, Molls. There’s a dream-storm coming, and it’ll kill anything that’s below eight feet. We have to run!”

I felt her grab the clothing from my hands, and I pointed vigorously to the north. “Go up on the ridge and see for yourself.” I heard clothing rustle against skin, and she set me down.

“You can open your eyes,” she snapped.

I did, and quickly averted my gaze. She was still wriggling into the skirt, and as I was looking away to point north again she zipped the side of it and straightened to glower at me.

“I’ve gotta go get Phyllis. Grab what you need and meet me over there, okay?” I raised my hands and started moving toward the golf cart.

“And for the record, I apologize for disturbing your privacy.”

Her scales flushed bright pink and her oversized eyes widened. She took a breath while staring at me, and then shook her head. She slithered hurriedly to the ridge and then immediately turned and raced back to the Lincoln.

As I pulled away in the golf cart, I saw her retrieving more clothing from the interior of the car. I looked away as I realized it was underwear. A moment of insanity crossed over my mind as I saw the snake-priest woman look at me, a pair of snake-panties in her hands.

All I could think of was my favorite anime. Anytime the main character was confronted with a sexual situation, he got a nosebleed. I turned my head away from her by force of will and tried not to giggle at the thought of somehow accidentally doing the same.

Phyllis. I had to go save Phyllis, right.

The golf cart was pretty zippy, but I still managed to lose to Molls. She hurriedly dressed, and then slithered at top speed over the privacy mound and straight to Phyllis’ torn up Shasta.

I pulled up in front of it to see the Nah’gh woman peering into the suit’s armored eye-sockets. Her torso shifted to me as I got out of the golf cart.

“She’s not responding.” Molls shrugged and made room for me on the deck as I approached. Her body was long, making me take extra-large steps to go over her coils to get to Phyllis.

The mech was leaned back, legs crossed comfortably before it. The machine's giant metal hands were clasped easily across its midsection, and the helmet was bobbing slightly.

“She’s watching TV,” I said.

I began knocking on the mech in various areas, but the metal didn’t make much of a sound. It was solid, armored, padded, and unmoving. Casting about, I grabbed my old stubby Mossberg and used the butt to knock louder on her suit. No response.

I returned to the golf cart and left the shotgun in the front seat. I was after Mr. Sada’s people-poker. He had an actual fireplace poker he used to nudge people out of his way on busy days.

Customers, even, back when such a thing was still frowned upon.

He kept it in a small cargo compartment in the front of the cart. It was like a glove box, but it was always open, and extended across the entire front end of the cart.

I bent over and grabbed it, then turned back and approached Phyllis’ mech again.

Behind us, in the near distance, the dream storm was brewing. I could see things in the dark cloud at this distance, writhing and wriggling in concentric circles.

“Phyllis! We gotta go!” I roared, and swung the fireplace poker at the mech.

Her robotic body caught the weapon on the downswing, with an impossibly fast movement, and then reached out and swatted me away. I landed in the ruins of the neighboring RV that Phyllis had blown up the morning before. Fiberglass and aluminum collapsed, and I sailed into the kitchen counter, shattering the cheap plywood.

My eyes blinked rapidly as I gasped for air on the floor of some burnt out RV shell. It had been a nice fifth-wheel at some point, but when Phyllis shot it with her fusion cannon, everybody that had been here fled.

My cartoon starfish popped up in my peripheral vision and began its stretching routine. “Damage detected, user! Thanks for the charge though! Let’s get to work!”

Tendrils extended from my armored portions and started the work of sealing a handful of external lacerations, on my back and the back of my head. The ragged edges of the RV’s siding had done a number on me as I flew through.

Molls was at the door suddenly. “Are you alright?” she exclaimed.

Daylight poured in behind her and my eyes refused to focus. She looked like a serpentine angel, reaching down to my face. She brushed aside a tendril from the suit and cupped my cheek to look in my eyes.

“I think you’re okay. Just dazed, you took a bad hit to the head.”

“You’re pretty,” I slurred.

Then I realized what she had said about my head and felt a surge of panic as I felt tendrils shoving their way through my chest and toward my neck.

Molls blinked and recoiled, but then stared at me with her head cocked as I began slapping at my chest and trying to compress my neck to stop the tendrils. All that did was choke me, so I stopped and shouted at the cartoon in my vision.

“Stop! Cease all cranial repair functions!”

The cartoon starfish cocked its metal head at me. “But damage detected user! Damage detected!”

I shook my head, and my vision cleared up a little more. “That’s okay. Do not repair the inside of my head. Just the outside.”

The starfish shrugged and vanished, and the tendrils in my chest receded. I sighed in relief, and then glanced over to see Molls staring at me, eyes wide and arms crossed. She glanced between me and the space of empty carpet I had been speaking to and narrowed her eyes.

“Cartoon starfish, sorry Molls. Wasn’t talking to you.”

I stood, shakily, and used the crushed counter to support myself until my legs felt steady. That lovely painkiller was back, and the world got easier to deal with suddenly. I smiled up at Molls and nodded to her. Tendrils wove and writhed behind me, lasering my flesh back into place.

She nodded and slid back, opening space in the doorway for me. I took a deep breath and started walking. The world around me shined brighter, and I sighed in comfort as I entered the Arizona sun again. It really was nice in the desert if you let it be.

Drugs helped.

I stumbled down the RV steps and regained my footing outside. Molls slithered down behind me.

“This starfish. It is pretty?” She asked, in a quiet voice.

I froze. She slithered in front of me and peered down, waiting for my answer. I glared at my feet for a second and shook my head. Then I shrugged and met her eyes. “No, Molls. That part I said to you.”

She flushed pink again and pulled away a short distance. Her arms uncrossed, and she tasted the air with a flicker of her tongue before turning fully. “Phyllis! Phyllis, we must go!”

I nodded to her back. “Reasonable reaction,” I said, following after her.

A sound was building in the north. The only way I could describe it was as an electric threshing. Air being cut repeatedly, and the sharp snaps of lightning without thunder. My aim was the golf cart, and when I flopped into it, Molls turned back and shook her head.

“There’s no time. Your vehicle is too slow. We must go now, and hope Phyllis survives.” Molls slithered over to me and held out her arms. “She is mighty, and a smart shopper. I have faith she will be fine.”

I nodded. My head was still swimming with starfish pain killer and the concussion I was sure I had. Sure, Phyllis was a smart shopper. That was a sane and reasonable thing to say about someone in this context. Then Molls was looking at me with her head cocked to the side again.

“Come,” she said. I blushed.

Then it clicked and I stood up from the cart too quickly, stumbling and regaining my balance. She wanted to carry me. As I took the two steps required to be in arms reach, I wondered what that would look like.

Would I get tossed over a shoulder in a fireman’s carry? Cradled, like a baby? Shoved under an arm like baggage?

I glanced at her long tail and imagined being wrapped up in it as she hauled ass across the desert, bouncing along behind like a set of ‘just-married’ tin cans.

Then she lifted me in her surprisingly strong arms and cradled me. One arm went under my armpits, and the other beneath my knees. She raised me until I was pressed against her breasts, and I had an arm slung around her shoulders and hood. We took off.

Molls was at least as fast as a car when she wanted to be. She tore around the corner of the campground and up the dirt road toward Mr. Sada’s mansion. The storm was right there, directly behind it, churning and whipping toward us.

Molls put on another burst of speed, leaning forward. She dropped me off at the entrance of the garage and went ahead to open the door. I turned back to grab the garage door, and stopped, transfixed as a new type of monster approached.

It looked like a whip-armed starfish, floating in the street.  It was also clearly made of clay. A ball of hardened ceramic hung in the air, supported by dozens of small clay tentacle limbs.

It whipped and cracked its arms as it moved toward the driveway, and bright blue arcs of lightning danced in the air. I stood transfixed for a moment too long, and it shot out an arm at me with a spark of electricity.

Black fog rolled into the garage and Molls screamed wordlessly behind me. I looked up at my arm to see why. It had been snapped away from the elbow to the wrist. My hand dangled from the metal armor and blood fountained from my new stump.

Chapter 16

“Damage detected, user!”

My very own starfish, to the rescue. I scrambled backward in my own blood, only slipping once on my way to the door. A tendril from the armor cauterized my gushing artery with a laser burst, and I felt more of that lovely painkiller flood my system.

Still, having my arm snatched off hurt.

The ball of ceramic pain and lightning followed me into the garage and lashed the floor and ceiling behind me. Molls slammed the door as soon as I was through and gaped at my arm. A tendril was delivering a new bone from the compartment on my chest, and another was ready to spray flesh foam into the site, like wet concrete.

“What is that? Is this from your planet?”

I tried to answer, but the pain of it forced out a long and horrid groan.

As we both gaped at my wound, the starfish repair suit fixed it with brutal efficiency. When it was done a few seconds later, my new arm worked perfectly, but had no hair at all.

Molls shuddered. “Effective but brutal. BuyMort will have something better.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and moved away from the door. Something bashed into it, and we left, heading through the entryway to the kitchen. Beyond that was the main staircase that led to the second floor. As we entered the kitchen, the sliding glass doors shattered and blew inward.

“Shit. Molls, watch out!” I yelled, putting myself between her and the window.

Molls slithered over the broken glass and winced but kept moving to the stairs. I tried to continue covering her from behind as a ceramic tentacle tore a chunk out of the stairway beside me.

Then we were on the landing, and the thick black fog rose no higher. The lethal ceramic tentacle balls awaited below, writhing and cracking their limbs as they struggled to reach their desired victims.

I looked out. There were more of them bunched up behind the already present monsters, forming a crowd of agitated destruction. Eight feet seemed to be a hard rule.

I leaned against the landing rail and took a few deep breaths. That had been rough, I think. I couldn’t really tell, with the painkillers rattling around in me. I just stared at a bright red smear of blood on the landing, the edges of my vision wavy and dreamlike in my haze. We’d made it.

Molls was moving in a sort of limp now that we were clear of immediate danger. She held a portion of her body aloft and moved without setting it down.

It made her significantly slower.

We climbed the rest of the stairs to the second floor and every few steps, the section of her tail that she held aloft pattered a few drops of blood to the wood flooring.

I cringed when I looked at it, and then I slipped past the large snake woman in the hall to the bathroom. One of Mr. Sada’s extra-large bath towels made a nice bandage, and she thanked me for it after I tied it snug.

Then Doofus came plodding down the hall toward me, waving his nude tail. He peered behind me down the stairs and growled, but immediately warmed to Molls and rubbed up against her side after a quick sniff and lick.

She smiled and ran her hand across his back. Then she turned back and frowned at me. “Are not dogs meant to have hair? He is the first I have met, I expected them to look different.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Most dogs have hair, yes, and Doofus here is supposed to.” I leaned forward and got Doofus to focus on me, so he was listening. “In fact, dogs like him need their coats, and it’s bad that he shaved it off.”

Doofus huffed and sighed, so I looked back to Molls to continue. “He dream-bought a razor drone and shaved it all off this morning.”

Doofus head-butted my hands and I started scrubbing at his ears the way he liked. Then he tried to push past me to the stairway, and I shoved back at him. “Doofus, no. Not safe. Go back.”

“Don’t call my fuckin’ dog that!” Mr. Sada shouted from his bedroom at the end of the hall. I headed that way with a grimace, and Doofus plodded past me to flop on the floor at the foot of the bed. Hobb was standing just in the doorway, and he held up a hand as we approached.

I stopped and glared at the tall gray man, but Molls seemed to ignore him.

She entered the room, ducking her head to fit, and turned on her robe’s heater. I noticed as I followed her in the room that she was shuddering from the cold.

Mr. Sada somehow had power still, during all of this, and had the air conditioning running. The man was stretched out on his bed, watching psychic television, and clearly basking in the AC.

I made a mental note to remember to find out how he had power when the rest of the camp had gone down, but he gave us all much more pressing concerns the instant he laid eyes on Molls.

“Woah! Snake-tits!” He sat up in the bed and openly gaped at Molls, even when she raised her arms and covered herself. She flushed a hot pink color that slowly built to red.

“Boss, she doesn’t like it when people stare,” I said, diplomatically.

“So what? She’s in my house,” Mr. Sada shot back. He waved at me to stand aside when I moved in front of Molls and blocked his view.

“It’s her body. Don’t be an asshole.” I turned to face her and nodded to the door again, a tight frown on my face. Molls quickly nodded and turned around. I raised my middle finger to Hobb and closed the door on my way out.

“What a horrid man,” Molls whispered. She looked tired, and deeply uncomfortable. The Nah’gh woman tugged at her robe, trying to cover more of her body with its heated interior.

I stomped over to the nearest thermostat and killed the air. It was fine in here, and with the downstairs busted open it would run constantly to no effect anyway.

The Arizona desert in October can still defeat any air conditioner made by man, but I also didn’t want the house to freeze out when night came. Better to let it build up a little heat first, especially if we were stuck here for a while.

“I am sorry, Molls, he really is.” I nodded and motioned for her to follow me. “We have two options.”

I stopped at the bathroom and showed the interior to her. After cranking on the hot water knob in the tub, I stepped back to let her see the steam.

“Wet heat, with the door closed.”

Then I stepped out of the bathroom and moved to the attic stairs. With a quick tug on the cord, I had the staircase open, and the untended heat in the attic flooded down to greet us.

“Or dry heat.”

While she watched, I stood with my hands on my hips and looked up into the attic. “Up there will have more room, but it’ll be less comfortable overall. Just plywood and planks, with nasty insulation to avoid. It looks like pink stuffing, you can’t miss it.”

Molls nodded seriously as I spoke, and then slid past me up into the attic. “Thank you, Tyson. I would appreciate hot water, and more cloth like this if you can. I must tend to my wound.”

I nodded and went back to the bathroom. Thankfully, Mr. Sada kept a plastic bucket under the sink full of cleaning tools. I know, cause he made me clean his bathroom once when his maid service called out and his wife threw a fit.

So I dumped out the bucket and stuck it in the tub to fill with hot water. Then I grabbed every towel in the bathroom and slung them over my shoulder, one at a time. With my load of fresh white linens and a bucket of steaming water, I went back up the stairs to the attic.

Carefully, to avoid spilling.

Molls was at the end of a long hallway made of particle board, in the sunlight pouring through the corner window. She was digging at the scales on her tail with a pair of tweezers and gasped as I approached. The tweezers fell and I heard her stifle a sob. She raised her hands to her face and wiped away a giant tear from her oversized eyes. Molls turned away when she saw me approach, and I hesitated.

In that moment, I gave a lot of thought to just retreating and leaving her be, but it didn’t feel right. It seemed like the kind of thing Phyllis would give me a ton of shit for, and I figured we were both worried about her, so I should do something she would approve of.

Don’t look to me for logic, I just explained how my brain made sense of me staying and talking to the massive, beautiful, wounded snake-priest in my bosses attic. Didn’t promise you logic, and that’s not how these things work anyway.

“Hey Molls,” I said softly, looking at her bloodied tail. “Can I help you with that?”

She sniffled and turned her head. I had a clean washcloth in one hand, and the bucket of hot water in the other. Molls nodded gently at me, and then turned her head away again. She was staring out of the window at the campground.

“Thank you, Tyson.”

Her hands and voice shook, and it was clear she was trying not to cry because I was there.

“Mr. Sada makes me want to cry too, I don’t mind.” I sat down beside her and gently lifted the injured portion of her tail into my lap.

“I’m honestly just sorry I keep embarrassing you. I was looking forward to learning about BuyMort from you, and it turned into kind of a nightmare instead.”

A loud laugh erupted from Molls, and she instantly raised a hand to cover her face. I chuckled, and she began laughing again at the sound. For a few seconds, she giggled along with me, scales flushed deep pink, but then the tears came back. Molls choked back a sob and looked away from me again, using her hood to cover her face.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed from behind her hands. “I don’t mean to make this your problem, I just . . .”

I nodded when she trailed off and focused on her tail. It was full of glass shards, I counted at least a dozen large ones.

“No, I totally understand, Molls. It’s been a rough couple days.”

She snorted. “It really has, hasn’t it?” There she looked out the window again and shook her hanging head. “I don’t understand,” Molls whispered. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

I applied the tweezers gently to a shard, just gripping it lightly, and then turned to face her. “Molls, this might hurt a little, I’m sorry in advance.”

The tall Nah’gh priest looked down on me from her position and offered a gentle smile. “That’s okay. I don’t have anywhere near as much sensation that low. I just kept slipping and making it worse.” She wrapped her arms around her chest and shuddered again, slipping her tongue out to quickly smell the air.

“I’ll see if I can’t find a space heater or something for you. I think we’re going to be here for a while and you seem really cold,” I said.

I turned back to the glass shard I had gripped, sliding the tweezers back and easing the shard out of her tail. Then I set it aside and grabbed a washcloth.

“You mind if I finish this first, or would you rather I go find the space heater?”

I honestly had no idea if Mr. Sada had a space heater. Not much call for them in Arizona, but the nights could get pretty cold sometimes.

Seemed worth a shot.

Molls sniffed again. “Keep going if you please. You are being very gentle, which I appreciate.”

She smiled softly at me when I glanced at her and I returned it as best I could. I just felt so bad for her.

“Glad I can help,” I said.

I carefully washed the wound and made sure the laceration had no more glass in it. Once it was clear, I began the process again with the next largest chunk of glass embedded in her tail.

Her scales felt soft, with small ridges that overlapped one another. The painkillers were wearing off, and my senses were sharpening again. I noticed she smelled faintly clean, but otherwise lacked much of a scent.

Her blood was exactly the same as mine, and as I worked I became worried. She hadn’t stopped bleeding, and the first bath sheet I had used was already soaked completely.

I had to stop working on the glass shards and replace it, and when I did, I just left the blood soaked one in the hamper. Mr. Sada would shit a brick when he found it, but I couldn’t care less. Molls was hurt and that was what mattered.

She was quiet, staring out the window and occasionally wincing while I worked on the rest of the glass shards. When I had plucked out the last of Mr. Sada’s sliding glass door, I washed out the entire wound and wrapped it with folded towels inside of a longer towel to keep the makeshift bandage in place.

I finished, stood, and clapped my hands together. “Well, I don’t trust Mr. Sada on much, but I guarantee those towels are clean. He used to pay a professional service to do it for him.” When she didn’t respond beyond a nod, I left her alone for a while so I could go search for a space heater.

I had to rummage around in Mr. Sada’s closet, and he whined and griped at me the whole time. I mostly ignore him when he does coke, it makes him more annoying than usual.

After he calmed down a little, I managed to get him to remember that his wife used to have an electric blanket, from when she lived in New Jersey.

I struggled to find it for a while in Mr. Sada’s walk-in closet, but eventually I discovered it buried behind a stack of boxes. Half of the walk-in closet was empty, and I took a moment to realize that he had been selling his wife’s old clothes for everything, and he was starting to run out already. Whatever, I thought as I left the room. Not my problem.

Yet.

The blanket was a lucky find. It had a multi-pronged plug in, so it could fit a house plug, USB, or even a cigarette lighter in a car and was massive. The thing was fitted for a king-sized bed, I figured it would be perfect for Molls. She could probably fit all of her body into it if she coiled up.

When I approached her again in the attic, she rose up in interest and her eyes went wide at the sight of it.

I found an outlet and plugged it in, then walked it over to her and helped drape it over her body. She cranked the switch up to maximum and soon I saw her physically relax, sinking into the blanket and rubbing it close across her face, and neck.

I blushed as I watched her, and looked away to prevent potential embarrassment, or a degradation in her mood. It felt like I had been helping, and she seemed really sweet and vulnerable at times, so I was trying not to mess things up again.

After a few minutes of silence, I just asked, “Am I alright to turn around now?” and glanced at her for confirmation

Molls nodded softly. “Thank you.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she turned to face me fully. Her eyes were puffy around the edges, and the scales there seemed swollen and irritated. She wiped away another tear and sniffled, but she smiled at me. “I appreciate the kindness you show.”

I smiled back and nodded, moving over to the window. Ceramic lightning tumbleweeds wandered by almost lazily in the dirt road outside, ejaculating inky fog into the afternoon. “I hope Phyllis is doing okay.”

Molls nodded eagerly. “Me as well. I have faith, but this storm is frightening.”

Her scales shifted to purple as she spoke, and I started wondering hard what those color shifts meant. Pink and red I was getting a pretty good idea about, but purple was still up in the air. I decided it meant she was genuinely interested in the topic at hand, but left room open for more than that too.

“So, Molls. What can you tell me about this storm?” I asked while looking at her with a small smile, but her scales faded in color a bit and she looked out the window again.

“This is just a dream storm. Natural, but they can be dangerous.” She shrugged and nestled further into the warming blanket.

“The, uh . . . news is saying this is the result of some rich guy up north having a nightmare.” I stared at the bumbling death robots below. “Seems weird to bring this to life.”

Molls scales flashed red, before tempering back to a brighter purple. “BuyMort simply makes the dreams come true. It is not responsible for the content of them.” She gestured to me. “Did you dream? What did BuyMort make come true for you this morning?”

I thought again of the nosebleed anime, and blushed. “Nothing I wanted.”

She nodded in understanding. “A bad dream then.”

I frowned. “Not exactly, just . . . I didn’t mean for it to come true. I didn’t want that.”

Molls flicked her tongue out and shook her head. “Part of you did, or BuyMort would not have sent the dream to you this morning. This.” She gestured out the window. “Is the result of someone’s subconscious desire.”

Molls turned and looked me in the eye. “BuyMort is freedom. Honesty. It provides what you want.” Then she looked away. “Even if you do not admit that you want it, whatever it is.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And it’s good to be honest about what we want?”

The snake priest nodded again. “Smart shoppers always are.”

Chapter 17

That felt very final, and the purple faded from her scales. They returned to their creamy white color, and we watched out the window for a while.

We could see Phyllis in the distance, the outline of her suit tromping through the fog. Her mech was surrounded by ceramic ball robots, but they seemed stumped on what to do with it.

It was hard to make out, but they seemed unable to harm the armored suit, and simply clumped up around it, trying. It automatically swatted them away when necessary but ignored most attacks.

Molls shuddered and drew the blanket tighter around her shoulder again. I frowned at that and took a breath to speak.

She looked at me in anticipation, her eyes glossy pools of wonder, and I suddenly forgot my question.

They were so big, and the green in them sparkled at me. Molls smiled when I didn’t speak, and her scales began to flush pink again.

“Yes?” She asked after a moment.

“Oh, sorry. I lost my train of thought, but I just had a question. You seem like you’re always cold. Why did you come here?” I shrank at the end of the question, realizing how it sounded only after it was verbalized.

Funny how that works sometimes.

The pink in her scales suddenly deepened. “I was told this area was arid, and hot. This is my first new world, and I was excited. I suppose I chose my destination carelessly.”

Molls whispered the last, but her scales became even darker pink when she said it, so I ignored it.

“Your first new world?” I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes as I asked the question, but she responded as if she had been expecting it.

“Yes, when BuyMort first brings a new world into the family, it can be a very difficult time. BuyMort priests are dispatched to aid new shoppers and establish safe areas for commerce and life.” Molls recited the words from memory, automatically, and I recognized them as doctrine. “It is an important pilgrimage for any priest of BuyMort.”

A four-dimensional advertisement appeared, a tone that I could examine from every angle while also being able to smell and even taste it.

The Book of BuyMort. This is The Way. 5 stars, 1500 morties.

I thought it away.

“Is that your religion?” I asked. It again sounded bad somehow after I had spoken, but Molls seemed unaffected.

“Yes. As a priest of BuyMort, my passion is to aid in its inevitable spread, and help welcome new members to our ever-growing family.” She glanced over at me. “You seem to have some smart shopper in you, in spite of my earlier impressions.”

“No, you’re mostly right about me. I am a ruffian and a lout,” I said with a shrug. “Great word use by the way.”

She chuckled in the back of her throat. “Thank you. My education in the Church of BuyMort is responsible. Many morties were spent ensuring I could read and write. And more, to answer your questions about BuyMort.” Molls smiled down at me. “If you have any to ask of me, of course.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. How do I prevent my dream purchases?” I asked while at rapt attention, but Molls slowly shook her head and scowled.

“Why would you wish to do such a thing?” The snake-woman looked genuinely confused.

I blinked a few times and sighed. “I don’t have enough morties to survive, and I can’t afford to go spending them in my sleep.”

She frowned and nodded. “Ah, I understand. There are many ways to get in better touch with your subconscious and exert more control over your sleep spending. I can teach you meditative techniques that will help you sleep better and provide you a better relationship with your subconscious.”

I saw her wave a hand beneath the blanket, which opened it slightly. She hurriedly closed the blanket again with a shudder.

“This is a normal part of what any BuyMort priest does for their community.”

I leaned forward, eager. “Can you teach me anything now?”

Molls nodded. “Of course. To have a better relationship with your own mind, you must first build a relationship with your body.”

Sitting across from her on the plywood flooring in the stifling heat of the attic, I blinked in confusion. “What?”

Molls turned and fixed her large eyes on mine, and her scales flashed orange for an instant, before the color faded away. She took a long moment before answering me.

“Mind and body are separate entities. I am not my body, and you are not yours. We, the entities that think and know of ourselves, while connected intrinsically to our bodies, are not our bodies.”

I nodded. “Okay, yeah. Following so far, mind and body are separate things.”

Molls nodded curtly. “Yes. Now, to better understand and navigate the relationship between the two, one must practice focusing the mind on the body. Your subconscious mind is your body, in the doctrines of BuyMort. It has equal rights to your BuyMort personal account.”

An image of her body immediately flashed to my mind and I blushed. She clearly noticed, because when she flicked her tongue out to smell the air the next time, her scales turned pink. Molls turned away, but merely faced the window and looked up to the sky.

“I suggest focusing on something like the sky, or clouds, perhaps simply the desert in the distance. This will drive any distracting thoughts away and aid in gathering your focus.”

I did what she told me to and stared out over the desert. It did help me stop thinking about her body beneath the blanket and focus on the lesson she seemed to be teaching. I had always liked looking at the desert and used to hang out by the wrought iron fence at the south of the park and just zone out.

Arizona was a pretty place if you let it be, BuyMort or not.

“Good. You look more relaxed already,” Molls crooned to my side. “Now I want you to focus on your breathing. Keep looking at the desert if you like or close your eyes. Whatever helps you focus on your breath.”

I started trying to do what she said and just focus on breathing, but I didn’t get it. When I turned with a shrug, I saw her scales flash a mixture of green and orange, but she just quashed down whatever that meant and refocused.

“Here, look at me. Follow what I do.” She met my eyes with her own and began breathing.

In, one. Out, two.

She took ten long deep slow breaths, counting each one on her fingers, and I followed along. As I did so, I noticed that I began becoming more aware of the sensation my breathing brought to me. What it truly felt like, something I never bothered to pay attention to anymore.

I felt my diaphragm draw down, expanding my lungs and drawing in cool air past my tongue and throat. Then I felt it contract again, pushing warm air back over my cooled throat.

I smiled and leaned into the sensation, exploring it further.

Once we finished, Molls nodded. “Good, you have started down the path. Now comes practice.”

She had me do the breathing exercise again, and then when we had finished the second time, she upped the ante on me and made me do that kind of breathing for two minutes. I was stunned how fast the time went, even when not staring directly into her large, strange, beautiful eyes.

As I performed the breathing exercises, I began to notice a change in my own perception. When I inhaled, I could feel my ribs expanding, and my diaphragm pulling down. I began to feel just how stiff my legs were becoming, and my growing hunger settled back in. The weight and cold press of my starfish suit was distracting, but I quickly began to learn to take it in stride and keep my focus on my breath.

For nearly two hours, I received training in meditation from a snake-priest woman. It was one of the calmest periods of my entire life to date.

When the clock rolled past three pm, Molls gestured to the window with her chin. “The storm is passing.”

I scrambled to the window to look, and sure enough, the ceramic tentacle sparklers were no longer filling the road. They existed still, but were much fewer in number, and the thick fog was also less pervasive.

I stood up to watch the campground and rub some feeling back into my legs and was pleased to see the situation at Phyllis’ Shasta was under control. The ceramic murder bots were all still bunched up, but as their line moved south, they broke away from her mech and followed.

It was amazing to see. One moment, she was surrounded by a swarm of the things, the next they all flooded away, spreading out and dispersing into the group ahead of them again.

The dream storm had passed.

Molls made no move to leave, instead seeming to nestle into her new blanket further. She looked up at me from its folds and blinked a few times. “Any other questions for me?”

I shook my head for a few seconds before my eyes widened, and I nodded rapidly. “What do you eat? I need to bring you dinner in a few hours, and I honestly have no idea how to do that.”

She smiled. “I will be happy to use my church affiliate account tonight, it will allot me enough for a meal. You have done enough already.” After I breathed a sigh of relief, she pulled her lips back in amusement. “Was this a stressful task for you?”

“I’m honestly just glad to have a little more time to figure it out is all. I’m struggling to feed myself right now, learning how to please the advanced palate of a Nah’gh priest is a little intimidating. At least I have until breakfast now.”

I waved my hand and frowned. “Is it priest, by the way? Shouldn’t it be priestess?”

Molls frowned back and flicked out her tongue as her scales flashed green. I was starting to suspect that meant impatience or perhaps a specific type of boredom.

“Only remedial civilizations adhere something as insipid as sex to a job title. And I only eat once every few days.”

I sat back. “Oh. Okay. No, yeah, remedial. Sorry.”

The tall, beautiful snake woman in a lump of electric blanket reached out and placed her hand on my shoulder. When I looked up and met her eyes, she smiled at me again. It honestly kind of melted me when she did that, I liked it a lot better than getting yelled at.

She cocked her head. “Why do you apologize so often?”

It wasn’t a question I had been expecting, and it had been a rough day. So instead of answering her, I just shrugged and shook my head. I couldn’t tell her about the violence and trauma of my childhood. How I’d been taught to apologize and turn the other cheek.

I looked away from her, red shame on my cheeks. Dumbest part was, all I could think to say in that moment was “sorry,” which I very nearly mumbled, before catching myself and remaining silent.

“I am sorry, Tyson. I overstepped.” Molls squeezed my shoulder and then let go. “I am here if you wish to talk about anything, as your spiritual advisor.”

She rose up from the blanket and held it out to me. “And I hope as your friend. Thank you for everything today.”

I looked back up and shook my head. “You should keep that. Mr. Sada doesn’t have any use for it, and the nights can get kinda cold.”

She rapidly nodded at that. “Yes, Phyllis was lovely enough to loan me a large blanket, or last night would have been excruciating.”

Molls gripped the blanket and held it to her chest. “This is very warm, I appreciate it.” Her expression changed and she looked down. “Exchange without value, though. Won’t Mr. Sada be angry?”

I snorted. “I dunno what that first part means, but I don’t give a damn if he is. You gave me valuable information today, and he’s supposed to be caring for you in exchange for that information.” There I looked up at her. “Mr. Sada only cares about himself. I’ll try and watch out for you instead.”

Molls squinted at me and smelled the air with her tongue. Then she nodded. “Very well Tyson. I do not understand your strange relationship with him, but I will turn to you with my needs.”

Molls paused and shuddered again. “I do not wish to interact with him anyway, beyond some choice words should he require them.” Then she turned and looked at me. “You, I am becoming accustomed to.”

I shot her a double thumbs up and smiled. “Awesome! I aim for tolerable.”

She laughed again, a gentle sound. I found myself wanting to hear it more often. Maybe, if I worked really hard, and was lucky, she would call me a smart shopper someday too. I shook my head clear and followed the beautiful snake woman downstairs.

We avoided moving toward Mr. Sada’s room, but he heard us and shouted down the hallway, “The storm is passed! News says it’s all clear, so you get that snake out of here, right?”

I rolled my eyes and turned.

“Her name is Molls!” I shouted back, but Molls’ hand on my shoulder stopped me from saying anything further. She slid down the hallway silently and entered the room.

Hobb stepped out after a few seconds and closed the door. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gray face even more pallid than usual. I could hear voices from behind the door, but not specific words.

But, based on Hobb’s changing expressions and occasional flinch, it seemed like he could. At the beginning, Mr. Sada’s voice was loud, but it quickly faded and became whiney. I could hear Molls’ voice too, but she simply spoke with quiet confidence.

Then the door opened again, Hobb stepped aside, and Molls exited. She had her head high, and she nodded at me as she passed.

I fell into step behind her, impressed.

My opinion of her rose dramatically that afternoon, and I felt good about my day at that point, in spite of all that had happened. Then, the instant I put my foot on the step to follow her downstairs and back to the campground, Mr. Sada ruined everything.

“Tyson, can you come in here please?” He put on his very best polite boss voice. The one he used mostly when doing those terrible staff meetings he liked to host. You know, those forty-minute plus wastes of time that should have been an email?

Yeah, those.

With a heavy sigh, and a slump in my shoulders, I turned back and glumly waved to Molls. She looked me in the eye, gave me a serious look, and then lifted her own chin with the back of her hand.

I smiled at her out of the corner of my mouth and squared my shoulders, before marching down to my boss’s room. Hobb closed the door behind me as I entered.

Chapter 18

Mr. Sada was still laying in bed. He had a beer in one hand, and a paper wrapped hamburger in the other.

Both of which looked delicious.

My stomach rumbled immediately, and I pushed the sensations down into myself, ignoring it as well as I could to stand in front of his bed.

He was watching psychic TV again, the alien hosted cable news show. All of the TVs in his house were new, made of the same metallic-plastic material as my psychic phone and on the screen some real-life drama was blaring, drawing me in.

The segment showed Buckingham Palace, its whitish-gray facade cracked and broken, one wing in total collapse. A cloud of lanky, horse-sized flying insects angrily buzzed around the ruined palace.

Occasionally one of them would land and impale a nearby corpse with a proboscis the size of a spear. Several of the bodies on the ground looked hollowed out already.

Along the bottom ticker than the words “Terror Attack on Royal Family, All Dead, Attacked Pod to Blame. Terrorists dead on scene.”

I sighed. It wasn’t just the Sleem who had figured out how to weaponize BuyMort’s delivery system. It was everyone. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see us figure out how to work a new weapon, even if it did kill the people who set it off.

After a segment was over, he picked up his remote and paused it, then slid out of bed. Mr. Sada walked to his window overlooking the camp and stared outside. I could see past him that Molls was slowly making her way back to the campground.

“She’s a piece of work,” he muttered.

“Got dressed down, huh?” I raised an eyebrow and he scoffed.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened.” Mr. Sada chuckled and turned around. “Eh, I deserved it, the coke makes me an asshole. She’s ferocious, but you see the knockers on her? Fuckin’ weird man. Snake with tits.”

He sat down at a nearby makeup mirror. It had been his wife’s; she caked the stuff on.

Before the slimes ate her, anyway.

“Big tits,” he muttered, and then shook his head with a laugh.

I suspect Mr. Sada liked to think of himself as terribly wise. He was always having little revelations and laughs about things only he could understand. I sneered and turned away as he bent to do another line of coke.

When he came back up, he slapped his knee several times and sniffed loudly.

“What was it you needed, Mr. Sada?” I allowed a dose of boredom and disgust to creep into my voice as I spoke to him, a sure sign of his degrading status.

It was hard for him to fall further. He’d done so much for me, yet somehow made himself my least favorite person at the campground.

Hell, with the way he had treated Molls I was starting to feel like I even liked Hobb better. Doofus grunted from his place on the floor and Mr. Sada whipped around to look at us.

“Oh shit, Tyson, my bad.” His face wrinkled into a broad smile, and I shook away the bad thoughts. He was Mr. Sada and he did weird shit but he was usually half-apologetic later.

“Come have a bump son, my treat.” He waved at me frantically, insisting I come sit at the makeup table. There was a bottle of pills on the table as well.

Ritalin.

I zoned out. Hadn’t seen that word in a long time and it brought back the past.

I was seated in front of a doctor, my short legs dangling from the chair, with my father at my side. He was asking why the pills hadn’t worked, why I was still getting in fights.

The doctor was shrugging, shaking his head, and insisting that not every brain worked the same. Behavior modification through medication was still possible, but stronger meds would have to be considered.

My father looked down at me in the chair beside him, my knuckles still bleeding from the latest violent encounter. He started to ask the doctor about non-medication based options when Mr. Sada ruptured the memory by waving at me from the bed.

“Hello, Tyson? Anybody home?”

I raised a hand and began to decline, or maybe protest, but then I froze. Instead, I pointed at the makeup table. “Are you offering me a line?”

He nodded and waved his arms at the chair like a waiter seating high nobility, or one of those folk who bring airplanes in for landings with flags. I approached the makeup table and pointed to a line of coke he had laid out on a small mirror.

I made eye contact with Mr. Sada and said, “BuyMort, I’d like to sell that.”

Mr. Sada’s scowl was immediate, as was the pod. It must have been nearby and been redirected because a pod flew in the open window and beamed away the coke before he could even react.

He dove at it, too late, and desperately tried to snort it for himself. But the pod was thorough and didn’t leave a single grain of the line.

Purchase: Intoxicant, processed. Nu-Earth Cocaine. Rarity, common. Quality, poor. .09 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Construction material. Nu-Earth drywall dust. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, good. 1.2 morties dispensed.

“Why?!” Mr. Sada raged as he came away empty. He turned to face me and stopped instantly, glancing behind me to Hobb. I shot the tall gray man a look and he kept his position on the wall by the door.

“Fuckin’ prick!” Mr. Sada sulked now, slumping to sit on the bed. He shook his head long and slow. Then he sighed.

“I try son, but you keep spitting in my face and stealing from me.”

“No, I really don’t.” I sat down next to Mr. Sada and dropped my arm around his shoulder. “What I do is remind you that you do not own me, because you have the unfortunate habit of acting like you do.”

He scowled, and his head hung, but he didn’t try to pull away. “No, Tyson, that’s just the separation you’re feeling. I have to cultivate that, as an employer, or my employees take advantage of me.”

“Like stealing bottles of tequila?” I asked with a laugh.

He chuckled too. “You’re an asshole, but no. Nobody buys that brand, I put ‘em on the truck just to get rid of em. Clear some shelf space.” Mr. Sada faltered for a moment, but then continued with a laugh.

“I dunno, son. Feels like you’re doin’ me a favor drinking that rotgut, and you work hard around here.” There he threw his hands up. “Far be it from me to get between a hard workin’ man and his drink. That’s why I offered you a line. Why’d you sell it?”

“That coke is mostly drywall, Mr. Sada. You should dump the rest of it, buy some new stuff if you really wanna be snorting that.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t judge, but yeah, the coke kind of turns you into an asshole. I sold it cause I don’t like that stuff and I need the morties. You got me runnin’ dumbass errands all day for nothing. No pay, remember?”

He turned to face me, and I raised a hand to cut him off. “Lot rent is bullshit, don’t even say it. I’m crashing in Phyllis’s trailer cause your stupid slimes stole my shit, and this place wasn’t exactly great to live in before the end of the world. You aren’t offering shit; I just don’t have any place better to go. You gotta quit mistaking the two. And you really need to quit calling me son.”

Mr. Sada blinked a few times at that, and then raised the mostly uneaten burger and beer. “Sorry man, have you eaten today?”

I happily accepted his leftovers, and had the burger devoured in three bites. It was absurdly good. After taking a long pull at the beer, I offered it back to Mr. Sada. “Thanks, boss. That kind of makes up for nearly dying saving our only tenant.”

“You nearly died?” he asked as he took the beer. He took a swig from it and set it down on the end table near the bed.

“Yeah, like . . . kind of a lot since yesterday. One of those fuckin’ things from the storm snatched my arm off. The suit saved me, again. Saved me a bunch, actually.”

I met his gaze and nodded, before I reached for the beer again. “Sorry about your downstairs, by the way.”

He shook his head and looked down. “I’m . . . sorry. I should’ve just left ‘em out there. Fuck them, right?”

I didn’t respond for a minute, just sipped at the beer, and stared ahead. After the awkward silence, I turned and said “Look, Mr. Sada. I’m sorry about your wife.”

He snapped up, eyes wide and he stared at me open mouthed.

“Yeah, I know you two weren’t exactly close, and she yelled at you all the time, but . . .” I shrugged and took a sip from his beer.

“You married her for a reason, I’m guessing, and it fuckin’ sucks that she went out that way. Rough shit to see. So, you know,” I handed him the beer with a shrug and continued, “we’re kind of it out here. You’re burning through her closet to keep eating and snorting drywall, and there’s no fuckin’ plan happening at all. We’re gonna die if we keep going this way.”

Mr. Sada took the beer from me and narrowed his eyes. “That burger cost over eight thousand morties. Food’s getting’ fuckin expensive man. The slimes are tenants, we can’t just kill ‘em.”

I shook my head. “Nope, no deal. They keep trying to kill me every time I see ‘em. I’m already making friends with the giant, terrifying, sexy snake lady, you can’t make me deal with them too.”

I stood and moved to lean against the windowsill.

“I dunno what kind of arrangement you made with ‘em, but they killed your wife. You know they’re dangerous.”

Mr. Sada hung his head again. Then he shook it and looked at me. “They didn’t kill her, man. I did.”

I saw a tear squeeze from his eye and roll down his cheek, and I said nothing. I just crossed my arms and waited.

“It was an accident!”

Mr. Sada gestured with the beer, nearly spilling it. Thankfully, there wasn’t much left, so I didn’t worry about getting splashed. He was openly weeping at this point.

“A fuckin’ stupid fuckin’ accident! She freaked out about BuyMort and started selling off everything in the house. I didn’t do that to her closet, she did!”

He gestured behind himself.

“I just walked in to talk to her, and she turned to scream at me like she did, and just fuckin fell man. She stumbled on one of her own fuckin shoes and cracked her temple against the dresser in there.”

Mr. Sada was pointing by the time he finished, almost screaming at the walk-in closet. His tears flowed freely, and he collapsed to sob on the bed, still staring at the open closet door.

The bedroom door clicked behind us as Hobb left the room. I sighed and walked over to close the closet door so he’d stop staring in it forlornly. “The slimes just found her body and ate part of it, I guess?”

“Yeah man, I walked in on them dissolving her and freaked out. Once I calmed down a little, one of them that could speak cut the deal.” Mr. Sada stopped crying and wiped at his nose.

I grabbed a box of tissues off the bathroom counter on the way by and tossed it at him, before settling back into my place at the window. “And what was the deal?”

His face screwed up and Mr. Sada looked away. “I’m not supposed to tell people about this, Tyson.”

My only response was an unimpressed shrug.

“Alright, fine.” Mr. Sada used the tissues and cleaned himself up a little. He was returning more and more to normal after his outburst, but his posture still hadn’t recovered.

“There’s an old army base under the campground. The mobile home park was built on top of it after the base shut down. Its existence was secret, I had to get minor clearance to even buy the place.”

He looked at my face and shrugged.

“There’s nothin’ down there, it’s all just old empty concrete rooms and big-ass steel doors buried to hide the entrances. The slimes want to stay down there and work on their ship, they said if I let em, they’d take me with when they left, and pay me a few morties a week for rent.”

I frowned and leaned forward, narrowing my eyes. “So hold on, you want off Earth?”

Mr. Sada nodded and looked at me like I was dumb. “Yeah, don’t you? It’s fuckin crazy here now.”

My instincts told me to shrug, so I did. “I dunno, Mr. Sada. I think it’s like this everywhere. I went through the tutorial of this store, it’s been spreading for a really long time. Just taking over everything. I don’t really have a plan either, but I don’t think running away is the answer here.”

Mr. Sada shrugged and nodded. “Good for you. I’m getting the fuck out of Dodge. You can have the campground when I’m gone.”

I nodded again and we sat quietly for a couple of minutes. “So you want me to somehow get along with these slimes, until they fix their ship and take you with them. Then I do whatever with the campground?”

“Make it a love nest for you and the python, see if I care.” Mr. Sada shrugged.

A list of bizarre Human-Nah’Gh Relationship ads appeared before me.

Find your perfect Nah’Gh Life Partner. Join Nah’GhMatch today.

I slapped the window aside.

With a quick shove off the windowsill, I stood up and moved in front of Mr. Sada. “All right. Deal. I’ll help you do that, and when you leave, I get the campground.”

I stuck out my hand for him to shake.

He looked at it and cocked his head to one side, narrowing both eyes. “Hold on. I’m liquidating my own house when the time comes, and my stuff. All you get is the campground.”

“Sure,” I said, crossing my arms. “But I get to use the golf cart until then, and you feed me if you use up my whole day on your stuff.”

Doofus grunted from the floor at the foot of the bed, and when I glanced over, he was staring at me. “Oh. And I keep Doofus.”

Mr. Sada’s eyes went wide, and he recoiled. “What? No fuckin’ way, why do you want my dog?”

I shook my head. “He’s not your dog, Mr. Sada. When BuyMort breaks into our skulls, they figure out what we call ourselves so they can sic other potential buyers on us. It picked the name Doofus out of his head, not Roofus. He’s my dog, he chose me. He stays when you go, or no deal. In fact, he comes with me right now.”

Mr. Sada stared at me, then said, “Really?” He sounded like the fight had been taken out of him.

I kept going, tearing into him again. “Yeah really. You never spend any time with him, and your wife used to scream at him all the time. You hate your own dog; I just want him to have a family. Are you surprised?”

He sighed and leaned forward, showing me his bald spot perfectly. “No, man, I guess not. Just . . . yeah, take him. Fuck it.”

“Alright. Deal. I’ll keep working for you until you and the slimes fly away, and then I get the campground and Doofus stays with me.” I stuck out my hand again, my jaw set.

Mr. Sada glanced up at me and nodded his head grudgingly. “Yeah. Deal.” He raised his hand and shook mine limply. I squeezed his hand once and let it drop.

As I turned to leave, I patted my thigh and Doofus immediately jumped up to come with me. Just before I reached the door, it opened, and Hobb entered. He pushed past me and went to Mr. Sada’s side. His rusty weapon was in his hand.

“Boss!” The big gray man exclaimed. “They’s some’n here to speak wid you.”

Chapter 19

Mr. Sada looked up at him and then nodded.

“Thank you Hobb.”

He stood and began straightening his clothing and hair. My former boss, a raging tough guy, used the tissues I brought him to delicately dab at the corners of his eyes before bending over the makeup table and snorting another line.

“Ew, dude. That’s mostly drywall.” I raised my lip in a sneer, but he just shook his head and pumped an arm.

“Don’t care baby!” Mr. Sada clapped his hands together and began strutting past me. He vigorously rubbed at his nose. “Does the trick! Let’s go do business!”

We left the bedroom as a group. Mr. Sada led the way, fresh drywall-cut-with-coke dust on his collar, me with my shirtless ensemble and starfish suit, a tall gray slab of an alien called Hobb, and a shaved Malamute dog.

Mr. Sada was in fine form and popped his collar up as he descended the stairs with all the confidence the coke gave him. I, on the other hand, hesitated when I saw what awaited us at the bottom of the steps.

A group of four male aliens and a single female were at the bottom of the stairs in the kitchen, spread out around the room. I counted two tall gray men like Hobb, an Orc in what appeared to be full combat armor, and another Orc who dressed very much like Molls.

The sole female was a particularly angry looking Nah’gh woman, who wore combat armor like the Orc fighter in the group. Her head was mostly covered in a composite helmet that matched the rest of her clothing, and a large plate of armored material hung down from her skirts.

The rest of her tail was nude, considerably shorter than I expected, and her coloring was more like Therrize than Molls. She was covered in dark green and black scales, with vibrant yellow eyes, and circular patterns in her skin.

The Orc in armor, and the Nah’gh woman both carried massive black rifles of some sort and glared at each of us in turn. Me especially, and I noticed the Nah’gh woman staring at my starfish suit. The Orc in robes stepped forward and spread his arms when he noticed us.

“Welcome, my children,” he said in a deep, gravelly voice. “Welcome to the glory and freedom of BuyMort!”

This Orc priest was covered in scarring. He had one eye, the other was milky with a chunk cut out, and it looked like most of his scalp had been torn away by whatever took his eye. His hands were gnarled, laced with old faded green lines, and one of them was missing two fingers. As he approached, I noticed his entourage moved to brace him.

The Nah’gh woman and Orc guard sidled around the kitchen counter, and the tall gray men, both of whom looked remarkably similar to Hobb, stepped forward to fill in the gap their leader left when he moved. As a group, they moved in to surround us.

Mr. Sada took this all in, and then grinned. “Thank you! Welcome to the Happy Trails campground, what can we do for you?”

The Orc in front of us shook his head. He had thick white hair on what was left of his scalp, and it hung long over a single shoulder. His tusk on that side was broken as well. Glass crunched beneath his boot as he shifted a foot.

“It is what I can do for you, my child, that brings me here this day.”

The Nah’gh woman to my side flicked her tongue out and back in, then took a sharp breath. She fixed me with her eyes and didn’t look away. I did my best to ignore her as the Orc priest in charge continued on.

“I come to partake of this glorious part of the newest BuyMort world. My name is Garthrust, humble priest of BuyMort. I represent the council of Arizona planning, Dearth Conglomerate.”

He lowered his hands and clasped them together in front of his robes.

“Together, we shall turn this desert into an oasis.”

The orc fixed each of us with his single dark eye as he spoke, a small smile rising on his lips. “A good place for smart shoppers.”

Mr. Sada turned back to look at me, and I could see his assessment was the same as mine. He was a jackass, but not an idiot. Had to respect what he did next.

“Thanks, but we’ll pass.” Mr. Sada stepped past the entire crew before him and moved over to his refrigerator. He took out two bottles of the mineral water he liked and cracked both on the counter. After he slid one across to me, he took a long swallow from his own and then leaned on the counter.

“We’re working on the place and already have some great tenants. No offense,” he started with a nod to the priest. “But I know a hostile takeover when I see one. This Dearth Conglomerate? Nobody horns in on my business.”

An impressive video ad appeared, with a variety of beings throwing up fortifications around our MortBlock, behind them a battalion of fierce infantrymen clutching futuristic guns.

I wondered if Mr. Sada had seen the same thing.

It certainly made my heart swell. The ad made me feel like, if we could just get rid of them for now, we could keep them away forever. Closing it carefully became the priority, though I did notice the Orc in robes wave away something from BuyMort as well.

I stepped in close to the Nah’gh woman and picked up the bottle. She didn’t move, aside from her head and eyes, which followed me the entire time. I raised the bottle, tipped it to her, and took a drink. Her grip on her rifle tightened, and her eyes narrowed at me.

Garthrust watched and listened carefully as Mr. Sada spoke. As soon as the man was finished, the priest’s lips began to spread in a smile.

“No, Mr. Sada of the Happy Trails campground, I am afraid you do not know a hostile takeover when you see one.”

His eyes narrowed and he glanced at me.

“Or perhaps you do not know what hostile truly means.”

At that, both his armored guards cocked their weapons simultaneously. Both of the Hobb lookalikes produced short, bladed clubs. Our own Hobb raised his sidearm but looked hesitant. He couldn’t seem to figure out who to point it at.

The Orc priest’s guards didn’t have that problem. The Nah’gh hissed and opened her mouth to show me dripping fangs, while shoving her gun in my face. The Orc in armor grunted and lifted his gun at Hobb, who responded by feebly pointing his rusty 1911 back at his aggressor.

In a firefight, I was betting on the Orc.

I raised my hands and sighed, turning to look at Mr. Sada. He was still smiling, and the coke stain on his collar really stood out in that moment. I shook my head and began mentally preparing to die.

Turns out, I didn’t really give much of a shit anymore.

My bigger problem was the constant stress and fear. It was just burning me out and everything was turning into annoyance instead of what it was supposed to be. The Nah’gh woman and her pointy fangs and big gun just didn’t scare me.

I was just too fried.

So when I pushed her gun out of my face and took a sip of my water bottle, she blinked at me. I set the bottle down on the counter and fixed her with a cold stare.

“Hey. I’m Tyson. What’s your name?”

The Nah’gh woman’s eyes went wide, and she glanced between me and the priest that clearly commanded them. When she looked back at me, she shoved the gun back in my face and hissed loudly. Her tail whipped on the floor, and I noticed it did not have a rattle like Molls’.

I was squaring my shoulders and cracking my neck when the Orc priest stopped things from escalating any further.

“Your Hobb won’t be enough to protect this place, Mr. Sada.”

The scarred Orc waved a hand at poor Hobb, whose hands were shaking slightly.

“Brave though he is. You need a priest of BuyMort, with backing, or any old gang of rovers will take this place from you.” The priest opened his hands and showed his palms.

“I offer valuable information, in exchange for shelter. The church is absolute in their land acquisition authority, for priests seeking shelter in unattached lands. This offer cannot be refused, without making an enemy of the church. The sole holder of the top BuyMort affiliate ranking.”

Mr. Sada narrowed his eyes at that, but I shoved the gun away again and raised a lip at the Nah’gh woman, before turning my back on her.

“We can refuse it, actually.”

The priest and his hobbs turned to face me. None of them wore friendly expressions.

“We currently have a priest of BuyMort as a resident. The Church,” I said while pointing at the scarred Orc, “is already represented.”

The air in the kitchen changed immediately. The armored Orc glanced between me, his priest, and Hobb. Mr. Sada perked up and grinned. “Yeah, exactly. So, you know, thanks. But no thanks.”

I turned to see the Nah’gh woman behind me blinking rapidly. She was staring at the priest.

“You sure you don’t wanna tell me your name? Last chance.”

Her eyes narrowed and she scowled down at me. Her gun didn’t rise again though.

“Right, fair enough. Hobb?” I raised my eyebrows at the tall grey man. He looked at me, terror and confusion mingling in his eyes.

“Escort our guests from the property please, make sure they get on their way safely.” Then I turned to the priest. “Thank you for coming by! It was genuinely just so nice to meet all of you. Call ahead next time though, please, we’re actually by appointment only.”

He glared at me; one lip curled up to expose his yellowed, sharp teeth. “Who is this priest?”

I clapped my hands together and put on my very best customer service face. “Oh, I’m so sorry, it’s company policy not to discuss our tenants, I’m sure you understand.”

Garthrust raised an eyebrow at that. His lip lowered and he made small motions with both of his hands, one to each of his armored guards. “And if I wish to become a tenant?”

I raised my hand to my lip. “Oh, again, that pesky appointment policy. I would love to discuss the details of our resident program, but company policy prevents me from doing so without a pre-arranged appointment. Now, if you’ll all just follow our associate Hobb, he’ll make sure you get on your way safe and sound.”

Mr. Sada glared at me in confusion, but I just held up a hand to him and continued.

“Mr. Sada is a very busy man, I’m sure you understand. Our business is going through a transition, and his leadership is required elsewhere just now. We appreciate your visit though! Thank the Dearth Conglomerate for their interest and let them know we will be reaching out with a relations package to discuss.”

I moved around the counter as I spoke and gripped the Orc priest firmly around the shoulders. He fell into step with me, and I spoke as we walked.

“Soon,” I said as we approached the front door and glanced over my shoulder. Hobb was waving his handgun at the guards behind us, and they were following, confused expressions on their faces.

“Very soon.” I turned and faced him with my best customer service smile.

The Orc narrowed his eyes and thrust his mutilated hand out to me. When I took it, he gripped my forearm and hauled me in close.

“You are either a very smart shopper, Tyson, or a very stupid one,” he growled in my ear. Then he swept past me, and Hobb escorted the rest of his entourage out behind him. The Nah’gh woman stared at me as she approached, and when I swept my arm out to indicate the door for her, she paused at my side.

“My name is Retha.” Her voice was deep, but musical. She hefted the rifle over her shoulder and glanced back at me as she slithered out the door. I noticed again that she was significantly shorter in length than Molls.

As Hobb moved to the door behind the exiting crowd, he leaned out and aggressively shouted, “Thank you customers!” All of them stopped and turned around.

The armored Orc spit on the ground and shook his head. “Your Hobb is stupid.”

“We know, thank youuuu,” I crooned as they continued their confused walk north. I noticed an armored vehicle of some sort parked up the road, and as they entered it, several companion vehicles started their engines up from further down. A motorcade of armed and armored vehicles rolled past us, including one regular Earth pick-up truck filled with what looked to me like good ol’ boys. Militia members, from the local chapter.

I closed the door and turned. “We are in deep shit, Mr. Sada.” My water bottle was calling to me again, so I stalked over to the counter and snatched it. “What the hell are we gonna do, that bullshit won’t work again.”

Mr. Sada rubbed at his nose and sniffed, then nodded rapidly. He turned to me fully. “Your bluff gives me something to work with, actually. I’ll start talking to these Dearth guys when they reach out, give ‘em the run around for a while. We gotta fix this place up too. You see that construction ad? It promised fortifications within hours.”

My thirst quenched and bottle emptied, I clinked it back down on the counter. “That’s a good start, but they’ll be coming for us with guns soon. Like, maybe tonight soon. I think the priest thing threw them off, but who knows for how long.”

He started tapping his bull ring on the counter again and nodding too fast. “Yeah, good idea. Go talk to the snake chick and find out about this other priest. She may know something about these Dearth guys too.”

Mr. Sada looked around, hands on his hips. “I gotta get this place fixed up. Maybe get some fortifications. More hobbs.”

He was talking to himself at that point, so I turned to satisfy my own curiosity. As I approached Hobb, he blinked rapidly and stood up straighter.

“Hey, Hobb.” The gray man flinched, but I continued, “Is your name Hobb?”

He shook his head. “Hobb is what I is. Answer to it.”

I shook my head. “That’s fucked up. What’s your name?”

He scowled in confusion. “Hord.”

My curiosity satisfied, I nodded at him. “Well good work today, Hord. And thanks for backing me up.”

His scowl of confusion stayed, but he started nodding and I focused my attention back to Mr. Sada.

“Hey boss, if you’re shopping for our defenses, get me some twelve-gauge ammo, yeah? Your slimes stole my stash, but I have a shotgun. Seems like we may need it soon.”

My coked up former boss reached to the small of his back and produced a shining chrome handgun with a snub nose barrel. He waved it in the air and grinned maniacally.

“When you have everything, everyone wants it.”

He did his very best Pacino impression, which was actually not that bad. I still shook my head and tried to get him to focus.

“Listen, that BuyMort ad, with walls and guns and shit, and I think we really need to get it going. I got the distinct feeling they’re coming back tonight, to try the hard way on us. Can you bring that ad back up and maybe, I don’t know, share it with me so we are both seeing the same thing?”

Mr. Sada grunted. “I can do anything with the power of cocaine,” he said before barking a maniacal laugh. “Get in here Tyson. Let’s see what I can do.”

His eyes went dull for a moment and then the two of us whooshed away to some mental salesroom, leaving our bodies sprawled over the floor and shooting our consciousness directly into some sort of pale blue grid of 1s and 0s.

“Don’t go into the light!” I wanted to shout, but I had no voice. At least not until we were floating in the middle of a virtual cube, every side of it peppered with ad listings.

They were strange to look at. The little rectangular boxes struggled and tried to push each other out. Some were much larger than others, and a few even had the ability to glide through the air.

“Purchase me!” they cheeped, circling around Mr. Sada, no doubt contributing to some wide-eyed coke fueled nightmare. He lazily reached a hand out to touch them, inadvertently sticking it in my face.

I swatted at his hand to get his attention and get it out of my face. When that didn’t work, I grabbed it. “Mr. Sada, we’ve got to focus. I don’t know how much time we have. Or even how time works here.”

“It’s flying, Tyson. The ads are alive!” He glanced down at his hand and yanked it away. “Mine!” he bellowed, then started to laugh.

I went ahead and examine the screen ahead of me. A pulsing fringe emanated from its edges, and I could smell that this was BuyMort’s Most Magnificent Mall-room Scent Selections.

Something I had seen in the fringes of ads before, and usually ignored. Each of them was filled with scent-based products, piggy-backing on the primary ad. You could order bottles, candles, potpourri, even bath and hair care products from the scent section.

I turned away and focused back on Mr. Sada’s nonsense.

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked. This whole setup and Sada’s nonsense was starting to put me into a bad mood.

A second later Mr. Sada was screaming, pawing and kicking at the air while he tried to fly away. Next to him had appeared a giant anthropomorphized paper clip floating in the air, giant orbs rolling in front to give the semblance of a face.

“Greetings customer. My name is Clippy. It looks like you are purchasing fortifications and looking to hire some security. Would you like some help with that task?”

I sighed, not particularly wanting to deal with an outdated cartoon. But, with most things BuyMort presented, I got no choice.

Earth had needed a shopping-assistant champion, and Clippy had answered the call.

Or so I liked to imagine.

In reality, Clippy had been built from our collective consciousness and given partial agency by BuyMort, to assist us with navigating ads.

Every world got something different, and it was always pulled from your collective consciousness. I learned all this later, but in that moment I just felt defeated, looking at this hated personification of simple office wares and realizing he was the one who would help me through the shopping mall of the multiverse.

I turned to talk to the cartoon paperclip.

“Yeah. Hey there Clippy, we have a large MortBlock that is going to come down around our ears tonight if we don’t pick up some proper protection. Can you look into this guy's Mortie account and bring up our best and most affordable options?”

The paperclip tilted his head forward slightly, a bow maybe or some kind of nod, and then he began to spin in circles, cartoonish spin lines surrounding him. When he finished, all sides of the cube were composed of one singular, gigantically huge ad.

“I have narrowed your selections down to six. You will have to choose your fortification team first, then your mercenary army second. I have also included a list of reviews through which to determine your ultimate provider.”

I gazed over the ads. There were a lot of reviews. Some mercurial and fake looking, like “Great work and great craftsmanship. 5 stars.”

Some baffling like “Not gud. Did not finish.”

And then there were the useful ones, often long and detailed in their explanations. From what I could gather the six that Clippy had selected were all experienced groups, but each had particular focuses and strengths.

“Hey Clippy, is there any way that you could just gist through all of the interviews and highlighted the common strengths and weaknesses that are commonly mentioned?” I asked the head.

He spun again and now the six screens had changed into infographics. The first one had the picture of a leaning triangle-eared green goblin, its snaggled teeth stretched into a horrific grin.

DA GOBBS – CONSTRUCTION ON A BUDGET

PROS —THEY WORK FOR FREE, AND THEY WORK VERY QUICKLY. THEIR STUFF IS STURDY AND THEY WILL WORK IN PRACTICALLY ANY ENVIRONMENT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

SPECIAL NOTE “MAKE SURE YOU PAY FOR ANY MATERIALS YOU MIGHT NEED BEFORE, THOUGH, BECAUSE THEY WILL IMPROVISE WHEN THEY RUN OUT OF STUFF TO BUILD WITH AND YOU DEFINITELY DON’T WANT THAT” – GALACTIC PET EMPORIUM

CONS — YOU HAVE TO GET THEM DRUNK FIRST. AND HIGH. GIVE THEM D’JHZ.

That actually sounded right up our alley. I cast a glance at Mr. Sada and saw him darting his head around wildly to focus on this and that. He was doing fine, now that Clippy was focused on me.

It was strange, I could feel the intelligence behind the cartoon paperclip in this space with us. It felt large, encompassing, and slightly terrifying. I focused on the next ad instead.

FILMORE FAIRY FORTIFICATION UNLIMITED — WE MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE

PROS — WILLING TO WORK CHEAPLY IN HAPPY WORK ENVIRONMENTS. GREAT AT MAKING STRUCTURES TO MATCH YOUR DREAMS.

CONS —CONSTANTLY WHISTLING AND SINGING. HAVE A TENDENCY TO NAG. DEADLY WHEN ANGERED. POTENTIALLY PROBLEMATIC VIEWS ON RACE, SPECIFICALLY HUMAN.

That one sounded like a nightmare. I moved on, hoping for something better.

WALLY THE WALL-GUY BUILDER BUILDIFICATION SQUAD!

I waved that one away immediately. Didn’t want to deal with it. In fact, looking back at Mr. Sada, I realized I just wanted it done and a bunch of fast drunk builders sounded great. Nothing in their reviews said they’d do a bad job of it.

“Give me Da Gobbs,” I commanded, and a moment later the cube went dark. TRANSACTION COMPLETE. YOUR LABOR FORCE IS ON ITS WAY.”

“Alright, show me security forces, best and most affordable again,” I said. There was a quiet moment as if the AI were processing my command, and then the 6 sides lit up again.

I peered intently at all of them:

TRIBE BLUECLEAVE – Deadly with a conscience. The HobGobs of this unit have a long history of honorable combat. Dangerous, smart and to the point. Shop tough, Shop Tribe BlueCleave, where the customer is number one.

THE RAVEN’S CLAW — Strike first and defend only as a last resort. These aerial bruisers preempt attacks and bring hostility to the aggressor. Specialized insertion teams supported by space and aerial bombardment, their attacks are expensive, but their results are priceless.

ROGAN’S HEROES —Rogan’s heroes don’t need a plan because they are the plan. A multi-versal bar crawling club in constant need of cash, these guys and gals don’t get bogged down with tactics, preferring to charge attacks and engage in melee. Keep them drunk and they’ll be our best friends for life.

THE AMAZING SQUAD — Five ex-commandos with a practically impervious multi-versal van filled with an uncountable number of gadgets, they are real heroes for hire and what they lack in numbers they make up for in gritty commentary and edgy catchphrases.

RENTAL RESISTANCE — Got a mall or factory that needs protecting? These are your guys. Every member of the Rental Resistance served in the military or police force and though the years have worn them down, they are downright cheap and quite knowledgeable.

TWO GUYS AND A TRANDSDIMENSIONAL PULSE ION CANNON — Ever seen a bad guy and thought Kaboom? These are your guys. They’ll portal in and give you one shot. You’ll have to pay full price for each shot after. Good for assassinations and vaporizing singular a-holes.

This one wasn’t a hard decision either. Unlike the rest of them Tribe BlueCleave seemed to offer a good amount of soldiers, support and equipment. Plus, they were about thirty thousand morties cheaper than most any of their competition.

Perfect for defending the MortBlock.

And they also had a reputation that suggested they wouldn’t be sticking us in our backs and would stay it through the battle. I selected the mercenary group and moments later Sada and I sparked back into the reality around us.

Mr. Sada threw up. I cast him a dirty glance then got to my feet. There was still a lot more stuff to get done.

“Try not to shoot anything while I’m gone,” I said as I left.

Doofus fell into easy step with me, and we left through the garage, so I could sell my own blood puddle as I went. It netted me a cool fourteen morties, which still was nowhere near enough to buy myself anything useful. Still, felt good to get something back from it.

Felt good to get anything at that point. Because come that night, we were set to lose it all.

Chapter 20

On my way out of Mr. Sada’s driveway, I noticed a line of ravens on the fence, staring at me while I walked.

None of them did anything, but every single one of their heads focused on me and swiveled to keep staring at me while I walked.

As I left the driveway and entered the road, a single raven opened its beak at me, and soundlessly extended its wings. I shuddered and started to seriously worry about the campground ravens.

They seemed really pissed about something and were directing it at me.

When we arrived back at the campground, I wanted to go get the golf cart first, to make everything else easier. Oh, and check on Phyllis. I’m sure she was just high and watching TV, but you know. Trust but verify.

When I approached, Phyllis raised her arm in greeting and waved a freshly lit joint at me. It was tempting, but the multitude of problems stacking up overwhelmed me and I turned down her good weed.

She frowned in surprise but nodded and listened while I spoke. She also smoked the entire time I spoke, and by the end of my little speech explaining things, she was bleary eyed and reeling.

“Oh Tyson, you worry too much. Those militia boys are giant pussies.” Phyllis leaned over in her giant suit of armor and winked at me. “If you’re scared of ‘em, I’ll take care of business. Don’t worry.”

“I believe you, Phyllis, and I’m very happy to have you on our side. Please don’t leave your suit’s ‘do not disturb’ feature on again though, you might sleep through a raid. Wake up to a buncha flaming corpses or something.”

I got up as I spoke and made my way down the ramp to leave. My only goal had been to check on her and get her teed up for the potential conflict coming our way, but when I got up I remembered Doofus.

“Oh, hey Phil, can you watch Doofus for me? He loves your shady porch anyway.”

Phyllis immediately cooed at Doofus, and he began wagging his tail and taking his big lazy steps toward her.

“Oh Doofy baby, hanging out with granny Phil is the best thing for you. We have to get ready for a big scary raid later tonight, so I’m thinking another nap is in order.”

She reached out and gently scratched behind his ear with her giant mech fingers, and he happily stretched into it before walking in a circle and flopping down at her side. I knew from experience, a flop like that meant he was settling in.

Nothing short of one of those skinny-ass desert hares we got occasionally would rouse him.

“Thank you Phil!” I shouted as I descended the rest of her ramp. My ass hit the comfortable padded seat of the golf cart and I slapped my foot on the accelerator. The cart shot off and I struggled to control the wheel under the sudden torque. Phyllis laughed behind me and I stuck up my middle finger. She laughed harder.

This time I rolled the cart into Molls’ area slow and careful. Once I hit the entrance road, I kept to the left and circled around the lot to come to rest facing the Lincoln’s front windshield.

Molls was inside the car, down underneath both of her blankets, and from the soft glow lighting her face and the interest in her eyes, I assumed she was reading something. Her inner hood scales glittered faintly, and when she looked up, a small smile came to rest on her features.

It looked more polite than friendly, but I was thrilled with the progress.

When I stood from the cart, I hesitated to approach and held my ground. Molls looked confused for a moment, and then waved me over to the car.

The door lock popped up as I approached and I opened the passenger side front door, and then hesitated again. “Do I . . .” I began, and Moll’s head snapped up again.

“Yes, please. You’re letting the heat out.” She still wore the smile, but her scales were a vibrant green. I hurriedly scrambled in the car and shut the door behind me. It was sweltering in the Lincoln, the car had been baking in the sun all day. I immediately began to sweat, but she looked comfy, all coiled up in a blanket in the backseat. Her tail rested on the front of the seat between us, and the heavy rattle on the end of it occasionally tapped as she read.

I waited, practicing my breathing until she finished what she had been reading and closed whatever device she read it on. She smiled at me genuinely and blinked a few times as her pupils shrank in the sunlight.

“Thank you Tyson, for being patient and letting me finish. What can I help you with?”

I slid over in the seat until I could see her in the rear-view mirror and met her gaze. It felt less intimidating than meeting her face to face in such a closely confined space. I was also honestly a little afraid my breath would horrify her, with my recent menu choices.

Mr. Sada liked a lot of mustard on his hamburger. Garlic, too, when it was available.

“Hi Molls, and no problem. We have a bit of a crisis that I need your advice on.”

Her eyebrow ridges rose slightly. “A crisis?”

I nodded to the mirror. “Yeah, a group of armed guards escorted a BuyMort priest named Garthrust to Mr. Sada and tried to take his plot of land through basic strong arm robbery.”

I watched her expression closely as I spoke and while she did a good job of maintaining a professional calm, her scales grew orange in color, and shimmered between that and red while I spoke.

“When they left, they rolled out with an armored convoy, plenty of stuff that could easily flatten our little iron fencing around this place. Lots of guns. I’m concerned that they’re coming back, soon.”

Molls listened to everything I said carefully, and then raised a hand when I finished speaking. “I am shocked to hear such an accusation of one from the church. We are here to help. Profit as well, of course, but all profit if living well.”

Molls shook her head.

“This is a very serious thing to say.”

My first reaction was to nod along as she spoke, but then I understood what she had said and stopped.

“He said he represented the Dearth Conglomerate, whatever that is, and when we said no, he tried to invoke church law to become our priest. He only backed off because I mentioned you.”

Her expression changed, her eyebrow ridges narrowing. “When you mentioned me?”

I nodded.

“Unlikely, but not impossible. I have heard rumors of corruption in some portions of the church. Of unfortunate business tactics wielded by some. The church is formidable, but it would not tolerate corruption of this sort in its ranks.”

Molls’ scales changed from orange to yellow as she spoke.

“The Dearth Conglomerate is a company like any other; diversified. I know they are a large, successful company, but not much about how or why. I will look into their reviews, see if they have a history of poor business dealings.”

Her hands raised to the mirror to prevent my response, and then she continued.

“It is possible that you misunderstood an aggressive commerce attempt.”

My eyebrows furrowed at that and I shook my head. “I believe you Molls, but this was worse than aggressive. They were priming weapons before I mentioned we had a priest on site.”

She took a sharp breath at that, and her eyes flitted down to her lap. The soft glow lit up her hood again and the dancing lights on her scales mesmerized me.

“I will look into this Garthrust, and the Dearth Conglomerate. Return later, and I will have more information for you. This is very serious, and I want to be careful about how we address it.”

That felt very final, so I slid to the door and prepared to hurriedly leave. My mind was on preserving the heat in the car, and I gripped the door handle. Molls stopped me with a gentle hand on my shoulder, and I turned to face her.

“Tyson, please,” she said, her eyes full of soft concern, and her scales filled with yellow anxiety. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”

“Ha!” I burst out in a single, barked laugh. “That is something I can never promise. Not without lying at least.”

With that, I smiled at her and popped open the door. I was out and the door was reclosed in under a second. When I got back to the cart and looked back to wave goodbye, Molls was staring down at her device and failed to see me.

I sighed, awkwardly dropped my hand to my lap, and turned to head back for Mr. Sada’s place. Felt like most of my life had become going back and forth between the campground and his mansion, but at least the golf cart made it easy.

As I approached, I noticed something strange. A pocked wall was rising all around the campgrounds, new additions oozing and bubbling as they steamed into the sky.

The fortifications weren’t just going up, they were going up fast and making otherworldly progress.

Hardening mud rose in the air all around the mansion, and everywhere I looked, I could see little green men scurrying about. They wore bright orange helmets on oversized heads, had bulbous bloodshot eyes, and a lanky frame. On the front of each helmet in sight, the word Gobb was emblazoned in black plastic.

I knew I’d ordered a construction team but by the speed and efficiency of their work they seemed to be wizards.

As the cart carried me onto Mr. Sada’s driveway, I saw a crew of the creatures working in the pit the clay clones had been digging earlier that day. They were affixing thin rebar spikes into ball formations and wedging them into the earth at the foot of the wall.

It would make climbing the medieval fortification more difficult.

A rickety looking crane swung a pallet filled with large mud blocks, and a single Gobb clinging to the ropes, over to the top of the wall.

Their machines spit black smoke and sparks, but they functioned, and there were a few dozen of the little guys running around, so things were moving right along with their project. I parked the golf cart in the open garage and plugged it back into its charging station.

Now that it was mine to use, I wanted to make sure it didn’t run out on me.

Then I slung my shotgun over my shoulder. Felt better carrying it than not, with the looks of the creatures running around. After that was done, I entered the house and walked into the kitchen, where I had to stop and stare.

Dozens of bottles were set out on the counter. They were simple ceramic bottles, with thick corks stoppering the hardened clay openings. One of them was broken open on the counter and dripped a thick, viscous liquid to the floor in a pile. It looked like runny bread dough. On each bottle was stamped the word D’jhz.

D’jhz (Creamy ambrosia sucked straight from the Hennel grain and pumped directly into bottles for your home. Intoxicating and alluring, it doubles as a powerful facial defoliant.) 250 morties, 3.5 stars.

As I watched, a little green man ran past me and snatched a bottle off the table. He tore the cork out with his disturbingly sharp and curved teeth, and then proceeded to guzzle at it while walking out through the broken sliding glass door. Other Gobbs were working on that, and one chattered angrily at the first when he walked through their work zone.

Mr. Sada appeared at the top of the steps. “Holy shit, Tyson. Thank God you’re back man. You gotta help me. These green fucks are everywhere, and they scare the shit out of me.”

I walked slowly up the stairs, watching as another Gobb ran past with a bottle of d’jhz. “What the hell is going on, Mr. Sada? Isn’t this just the construction crew we ordered?”

He shook as Hobb stood behind him with a confused scowl.

“Yeah, that’s them. I mean, we gotta get some fortifications man. But I was waiting for, you know, humans like us to show up. Hard hats and vests and all of that. Then I got a prompt asking me to pick construction material and I went with some middle-line shit called mud-crete and just as soon as the buckets of that arrived these fuckin’ goblins showed up and start tearing ass all around, scaring the life out of me. You seen their teeth? Shit, I ain’t even safe in my own house.”

I glanced back down the stairs to see a crew of them replacing the sliding glass door and sweeping the glass clear. When I turned back to Mr. Sada, he was stretching to see past me, eyebrows knit in concern.

“But they’re fixing stuff and building your walls,” I said.

He pushed me. “You gotta go manage ‘em, Tyson. You gotta, man. I can’t, they scare the fuck out of me.”

One of the Gobbs in the kitchen chattered in a harsh, guttural language and the sliding glass door crew took off. Their job was finished, and the door worked again. Each of them grabbed a bottle of d’jhz off the counter and ran on to some other task. Mr. Sada jumped back and made a strange whining sound in the back of his throat. I glared at him.

“Dude. Go lock up in your bedroom. I’ll ask our priest about this and figure it out.” He started nodding as I spoke, and before I had even finished, he was backing down the hallway and avoiding the windows. “And you owe me dinner!”

I turned around and sat down on the stairs. Hord followed Mr. Sada to his room and secured the door. With a deep sigh, I pulled out my crummy psychic phone and pressed the button to activate it. The thick fog rolled in from the sides of the screen and a now familiar face rose into view. The head’s lips were tight, and his eyes were narrowed. I pictured Molls in my mind, and tried desperately not to imagine her nude, but the head flashed a wicked smile at me anyway. Then I said, “Call Molls, please.”

The head blinked. “Manners. Very well.” With that, it turned away and became a tunnel that opened up on Molls in the Lincoln’s backseat. I could see the small, recessed light above her, it was a dead giveaway with the Lincoln symbol etched into it.

She looked at me and her eyes widened. “Another question so soon, Tyson?”

I chuckled and ran a hand over my head, feeling the metal plating at my hairline.

“Yeah, it’s a day full of fun. Mr. Sada ordered a bunch of these little green men to build a wall around his place, and fix it up, construction stuff. They all wear helmets that say ‘Gobb’ and seem to really like these bottles of stuff called . . .” there I hesitated for a moment, struggling with the word I had seen on the bottles. “Duhjuhz?”

She scowled and recoiled from the screen. “Do you mean ‘jizz?”

I blinked at her a few times, as my mind raced to process what she had just said. But nope, nothing came to mind to say, so I continued blinking until she scribbled something on a pad of paper and held it up to the camera. When I looked, the word ‘d’jhz’ was all she had written.

“Is it spelled like this on the bottles?” She asked, blinking seriously a few times.

I nodded slowly, my hand going to my chin. My eyebrows furrowed.

“That word is pronounced ‘jizz,’ she reiterated. “The ‘D’ is silent. It’s a grain-based product, absolutely necessary for a goblin work crew. It’s what they work for, their sustenance, and a potent alcoholic stimulant. If you are using a goblin work crew, you must carefully regiment and control the rate they consume their d’jhz.”

I looked at the counter as another Gobb raced by and snatched a bottle of d’jhz. “Oh.”

Molls’ eyes narrowed and she turned her head. “Are they allowed free access to the d’jhz right now?”

I nodded, my lips held in a thin line and eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“You have to stop that! If allowed free access, goblins will consume their allotted supply of d’jhz far too rapidly and become unstable as a workforce!” She waved her hands in a fast circle. “They’ll start breaking things to sell for scrap money and tear the place apart! They may even kill people!”

After jumping to my feet, I realized I had no idea how to do what she was telling me. I raised my hand and took a deep breath. Then I realized I also had no idea how to ask for clarification. I was still processing the fact that the goblins had a drink called jizz, and nothing else was getting through.

“How? What?” I stammered.

She flickered out her tongue and turned bright green with an outline of red. “Get your Hobb! Most hobbs can manage Gobbs! Tell him to secure the d’jhz! Buy more if you have to, fast!”

That gave me a clear direction, anyway, so I ran up the remaining stairs and approached Hord in the hallway outside of Mr. Sada’s room. His eyes went wide as I approached.

“Hord. I need you to go secure the goblin d’jhz downstairs. Don’t let them take any more for a while. Can you work with Gobbs?”

He visibly relaxed and started to nod. “Yes, Hord Gobb trained. Want light ration?”

I nodded and exhaled in relief. “Yes, please. They’ve had free access for a while.”

Hord’s eyes popped wide, and he gripped his sidearm in its holster. “How long free access?”

I shook my head and shrugged. “Since they got here.”

He turned and ran down the hallway to the stairs, yanking his rusty 1911 out of its holster. “All Gobbs stop d’jhz consumption at once!”

His footsteps hammered on the stairs.

“No more d’jhz!”

When I glanced at Molls, she was reading something, but turned and gave me a fast thumbs up. I opened Mr. Sada’s door and interrupted him in the midst of cutting another line of drywall coke.

“Mr. Sada! You need to order more of that drink the goblins came with!” I shouted as I entered the room. He stiffened and glared at me, eyes wide. Then he held up one finger and bent to do his line.

My head fell back, and I groaned.

This partnership was on shaky ground. Immediately following the phlegmy snort, he hooted and turned back to face me, bloodshot eyes wide and spinning.

“What the fuck for?” He turned and flopped into place on his bed.

I walked over and loomed over the top of him. “Because they’re going nuts drinking it, and we were supposed to carefully ration how much they get. They’re all fucking hammered right now and are like fourteen bottles away from ripping your place apart to sell the scrap on their way out. I’m sure they’ll hold a knife to our throats and make us give them a five-star review too. Just buy another pallet of the stuff. They have a shitload of work left to do, and Hord can manage them.”

Mr. Sada nodded and followed along with everything I said, and then when I finished and took a breath, he reached up and clapped his hands in my face.

“I can’t.”

Then he flopped back on the bed again, too helpless to retaliate against.

“I’m broke.”

Chapter 21

“What?” I asked, flatly.

He threw an arm in the air dramatically and let it flop.

“Gone. My liquor store, gone. My wife’s lingerie, gone. My wife, gone!”

I fuzzed out, suddenly gripped by memory again. My mother had left us, and my father and I were still standing in front of the door she had just slammed in our faces. The fighting, and what my police sergeant father had to do to keep me out of trouble because of it, became too much for her.

On the day it happened, I was almost twelve, and all I could think about was how bad my next birthday was going to suck without her. My father turned from the door after it closed and looked down at me with deeply sad, but gentle eyes. “We’ll get this figured out, Tyson. Just you and me, don’t worry. I won’t give up on you son. We’ll figure it out.”

Mr. Sada snorted, clearing his sinuses and snapping me out of my memories. He paused, then tilted his head to look at me.

“Look, I got scared and did that natural shopping thing, and I ordered a bunch of that mud-crete shit for the whole campground, and BuyMort just took every mortie in my account and these little monsters showed up. I have nothing.”

I blinked at that a few times and settled my hands on my hips. “Well. Sell some of the stuff in that closet.”

He kicked at me, not gently.

“Fuck’s sake man, let me grieve for a minute, would you?” An arm covered his face. “I gotta at least go through it. See what I need to keep.”

Then he sat up suddenly and fixed me with a cockeyed stare. “You! You gotta go find something to sell! Something at the campground. You said Hobb has it under control here?”

A crash sounded from the kitchen, followed by a shout from Hord, and a rapid series of three gunshots. They sounded like forty-five caliber to me.

I shook my head and started walking out, but he shouted behind me.

“I got you that ammo you wanted though! It’s on the end table in the entryway!”

The door slammed shut behind me and I stormed downstairs to the entryway. On the end table was a small cardboard box with cut flesh-tape that was sitting open. Inside sat two bright red shotgun shells.

He asked for a ‘couple’ of shells. The bastard.

I stewed in my bad thoughts for a few seconds, but then just grabbed the shells and left. Two was better than none, and I slipped them into the magazine of my stubby shotgun, then pumped a shell into the chamber.

I detached the golf cart and left, reversing rapidly, and hurrying to the campground. There was an idea I had been mulling over, about a potential source of income, and this seemed like a good time to explore it.

I glanced at my phone to see that Molls had disconnected, which I took as a good sign. It had to mean that I was doing the right things, and that freed her up to pursue her own investigation into our new potential oppressors.

With positive thoughts, I entered the campground and sped past Phyllis and Doofus lounging in the shade. I headed to my least favorite part of the entire facility. The Joshua tree forest to the south, where the east and south fences met. Spider City.

Spider City was a large area of closely rooted, untended Joshua trees that were nestled into a corner of the campground’s wrought iron fencing along a long-abandoned walking path. It was nothing but them, the fencing, and the open areas between trees that dripped with webbing.

I shuddered as I approached. It was the one place I never went, with good reason. Bits of trash littered the area, along with thousands of webbed insect corpses. The webbing hung thick, its own ‘keep-out’ sign.

Occasionally some idiot kid or dog would rampage into the area without realizing what it was, but they never made it more than a tree or two deep before realization set in, and they fled. Mr. Sada had been after me for years to clean it, but fuck that. There were black widows in there, I wasn’t screwing around with that.

As I approached the forbidden zone, I was better prepared than most. I had personally mapped out the natural boundaries. The area was lost, there was no point in trying to take it back, but I had clearly demarcated the border.

Small cardboard signs stood in a semi-circle around the zone, connected with dayglow red string. The new maps even had that corner and forest webbed over in the graphic, with a little cartoon spider menacing the guests while holding a ‘keep out’ sign.

I had gone to great effort to warn the public about this little problem over the years. This was a no-go zone, a keep out area.

Mr. Sada wouldn’t let the gum chewers tell the guests directly at check-in, but that had been a long fight that I still almost won. Spider city was sovereign. Undisturbed. Its own nation state.

Until that day when I found myself in great need. We needed money for more goblin d’jhz, and this was the only idea I had.

The area was once a lovely walking path through a Joshua tree forest and had been part of the elder focused mobile home park that had come before the campground. Their budget had fallen out for some reason or other, probably some trust fund vampire business tactics.

They changed owners several times, and during that painful process before the bottom of the barrel that was Mr. Sada and his campground, the walkway had gone straight to pot. No yard work meant no one to battle the spiders.

Eventually the residents all learned to stay out, nobody liked shaking spiders out of their hats and jackets, and the area became a military victory for the arachnids. Their inexorable march to reclaim the planet for themselves was present at the Happy Trails campground.

Seriously, this is their world, we’re all just on borrowed time.

So, the area began with a single, oversized Joshua tree. It shined in the afternoon sun, thick gobs of webbing hanging from its limbs. Beyond that was the first row of trees, where I would never dare march, even under threat of death.

But this first tree was approachable. I stepped over the protective string barrier, itself wrapped in webbing, and stepped into the lair of the enemy.

My skin crawled as I avoided long, quivering strands of filthy webs. It was a disgusting amalgamation of dead bugs, dead shrubbery, and wind-blown trash.

And when I pointed at the Joshua tree and said, “BuyMort, I’d like to sell that,” I honestly didn’t know what would happen. But I stepped back and waited for the pod, and when it arrived, it scanned the tree and then blinked.

I got an error message.

“Parts of this property are owned by Mr. Sada. Sale of non-owned portions will now commence. See Mr. Sada for more information on this property.”

I nodded and the pod began selectively warping away portions of the webbing and Joshua tree. A piece of glittering cellophane garbage warped away, as did an entire portion of fresh webbing. The pod swung around the tree with terrifying efficiency, warping away items of value.

When it was done, I backed carefully out of the area and returned to the safety of the golf cart. I was careful to check myself just in case and shuddered at the possibility of an unwanted passenger. Or a dozen.

Purchase: Textile. Earth spider silk, spun webbing. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, pristine. 1246 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Textile. Earth spider silk, spun webbing. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, good. 545 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Textile. Earth spider silk, spun webbing. Rarity, uncommon. Quality, damaged. 87 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Livestock. Earth spider, Orb Weaver. Rarity, common. Quality, good health. 2304 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Livestock. Earth spider egg, Black Widow. Rarity, rare. Quality, good health. 840,000 morties dispensed.

None of the rest of it registered. There was more. Even the trash was worth a fraction of a Mortie here or there. But that black widow egg was the shining jewel on top of my pile of treasure. That vicious little creature and it’s vicious little unhatched offspring had just saved us all.

An ad popped up. To the left and right periphery of my vision cascaded mountains of golden coins while in the center sat a friendly looking shop, in front of which stood a man in a black tophat and matching full-length suit. Big top music played lightly in the background.

TIRED OF LOSS? SICK OF NOT KNOWING WHAT PRICES YOU ARE SELLING FOR? WHY NOT BECOME A BUYMORT AFFILIATE? AS ALL SMART SHOPPERS KNOW, BUYMORT AFFILIATES KEEP MORE OF THE VALUE FROM EACH SALES TRANSACTION, AND THE MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION FEE IS NOTHING COMPARED TO THE FINANCIAL WINDFALL A SMART SHOPPER CAN ATTAIN. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? SIGN UP TO BE AN AFFILIATE TODAY!

Most of what the ad did was explain in detail how many morties I had just lost out on by failing to perform my latest transaction as a BuyMort affiliate. All it took was a monthly fee to avoid the BuyMort broker fee, by becoming an official part of BuyMort. My recent idea about the spiders had made me almost a millionaire in the space of a few seconds, but if I had made that sale as part of a BuyMort affiliate, I would have made forty percent more.

Getting an affiliate account jumped up on my mental to-do list, but it would have to wait. I had Gobbs to manage, and tenants to secure.

And now that I had morties in my account, I felt empowered. The militia and their crazy alien benefactors didn’t worry me so much anymore. Phyllis and I’d kick their asses if they came calling. The sale of a spider egg had saved all our lives for the time being, but I really needed to get better at making morties if we were going to make it much longer.

The sale spun my mind about BuyMort a little bit too, as the livestock category was new. I was under the impression BuyMort was anti-slavery, but it looked like spiders didn’t count as people. Dogs and ravens, sure, but not spiders.

That made me think of the bug monsters that had been sent to attack me, and I noticed a theme. I also viewed Spider City with a new type of respect.

This was a gold mine if I tended it correctly.

I would have to make sure the Gobbs stayed out when they got around to building their wall around that part of the campground.

The first thing I did was get the hell away from the spider infested area. Back to the less webby parts of the park, where I could keep the spiders at bay with a broom. When I was in sight of Phyllis’ trailer again, I stopped the cart and clicked on my BuyMort icon.

HELLO FRIENDLY SHOPPER AND WELCOME TO BUYMORT – WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY SOME FRIED MYRLOCK TODAY?

I ignored the message and instead thought of bandoleers. In an instant an array of shapes and sizes appeared, all with a rainbow of color options beside them. I could choose one that was hot pink, another that was entirely invisible.

I mean, the disclaimer made it clear that it wouldn’t make me invisible, but it itself was.

There were bandoleers made for pets, for fish, for five-armed swordsmen from Alpha-Centauri. It was a mess of options.

I sighed.

“Got anything that’s just for humans?” I asked.

The display changed at once, replacing the selections with human-only merchandise. I scrolled through. There were a few good options but, ultimately, I purchased an oversized bandoleer that would fit over my starfish suit and made sure it came loaded with plenty of triple-aught steel buckshot (Nice spread, nicely dead. Gunny’s Premium all-ethically-sourced-steel Buckshot. 600 morties per 60 rounds. 4.3 stars). Within moments, a pod delivered my package, and I groaned when I realized I didn’t have a knife to cut the weird gummy flesh tape.

I pulled up BuyMort again and got back to browsing. And let me tell you something, when it came to blades, the multiverse was a very inventive place. The selection that appeared came in every shape and size, and every conceivable use. There were knives for cooking and chopping, knives for fighting, knives for gardening and starting vehicles.

One knife claimed to disinfect and heal wounds. A claim that I found quite dubious.

But the one I settled with was a reasonably priced belt-hung, six-inch general-purpose camp knife. The ebony composite handle was slightly thinner than the blade, and it slid easily into and out of the strapped in place sheath.

Or so it said. I couldn’t tell, because it came in a cardboard box, and I had no knife to cut through the unreasonably tough flesh tape.

I kicked the box and an ad popped into my vision.

BUYMORT PRIME – SELF-OPENING BOX SERVICES. FOR 1000 MORTIES A MONTH YOUR BOXES WILL OPEN THEMSELVES FOR YOU! WOULD YOU LIKE TO PURCHASE THIS PREMIUM LIFE OPTION NOW?

“Fuck off,” I muttered, shutting it down. I couldn’t believe they’d found a way to monetize box-opening. Then I sighed and nodded. Yes, I could.

I loaded my boxes up into the cart and drove the rest of the way to Phyllis’ trailer. She was still parked out front and was still smoking a joint. It looked like a new one, but knowing her, she had a healthy stash around here somewhere.

I hustled up her steps and explained my situation. Turned out, she didn’t have a knife I could use, but when I held up my packages, she happily slashed the tape for me with her mech hand. It had the ability to add a sharp edge to its fingertips as needed.

I clipped the belt knife in place and tied the leg strap. The bandoleer I snugged in place around my chest and Phyllis giggled at me.

“Very Rambo, dearie. What are you doing with that peashooter?” She asked with a sudden scowl. The TV in her mech was paused, a bored looking psychic face waiting for her to return.

I hefted my freshly loaded shotgun and slung it too, snugging it in place at the small of my back. “We don’t all have fusion cannons, Phil. It’s the best I got, and I think it’d work well against the little green guys back at Mr. Sada’s anyway. Thanks for the hand!”

I raised my hand in thanks and got back in the cart. Had to adjust the shotgun, but it worked well enough. The cart still said it had a good charge, but I was looking forward to getting it plugged in. I didn’t want to have to leave it at Mr. Sada’s, now that I could use it freely until he left.

Felt like he might somehow ruin it or take it back if I did.

The cart zipped me down the road to the new fortress that Mr. Sada’s place was becoming. The mud walls had progressed, and I hadn’t even been gone that long. The sun was barely starting to set, and when I glanced at my annoyed psychic phone, it told me the time was just past six pm. Once the cart was parked and plugged in, I went to go see Hord and check in on the Gobb situation.

From what I could see of the outside, he had done a good job getting the little green bastards in order. Apparently, they were very hard workers if you threatened their d’jhz.

But when I entered the kitchen, it was to a minor brawl.

A particularly large Gobb was arguing with Hord, chattering in the language they used. Hord was responding and holding his ground, but the Gobb was up on the counter, sticking a hand in Hord’s face. Hord was gripping the last two bottles of d’jhz and refusing to acknowledge the aggressive Gobb in his face. He just lifted his chin and shook his head again.

I slapped my hand on the counter, and everyone in the room turned to stare at me.

“What’s the problem here?” I demanded, scowl on my face.

The Gobbs all exchanged looks and then the big one turned to face me. He approached, his sharp teeth on display. A single long, knob-jointed digit pointed at me, and his mouth opened to speak horribly broken English. “No d’jhz, no work!” he croaked.

The rest of the Gobbs in the area nodded and crossed their arms, angrily forming a barricade in the kitchen.

“There’s still d’jhz, Hord is holding two bottles right there!” I waved an arm. The Gobb glanced back but waved a hand dismissively.

“Two bottles!” it croaked. “Need more for job! Much more!”

I scowled and nodded. “So, you’re upset that we haven’t ordered more yet?”

The big Gobb glanced around and blinked, but then quickly returned to my face and nodded. “Yes! Need more d’jhz!”

I shoved my way through the crowd of little green men and took both bottles from Hord. He gave them up willingly but scowled and followed me as I returned to the big Gobb standing on the end of the counter. I thrust both out to him, and when he reached for one, I pulled it back.

“You make the rest of them get back to work, while we order a new pallet of d’jhz, and I’ll give you both bottles for yourself.” Then I raised my eyebrows at him and held out the bottles. “Call it a bonus.”

It felt like low hanging fruit, corrupting the leader of a labor dispute by bribing him over his fellows, but it worked. He snatched both bottles and tore the cork from the first, before jumping down from the counter, chattering in his own language.

The other Gobbs around him shrieked and ran, each heading off to some task or other. Hord sighed in relief and leaned against the table.

“That no last. There no d’jhz, they break stuff!” Hord was insistent.

I raised my hand to calm him. “I got the morties, Hord, we’re fine. Let’s order a new lot of the stuff now, and then you’re in charge of managing the Gobbs.”

I patted him on the shoulder and nodded as he calmed. “There you go, see, no problem.”

“Gobbs known for killing and selling bodies if not careful, boss.” Hord shook his head seriously, but his bizarre forehead swung back and forth and distracted me.

“Oh, we’ll be fine. They just need to build a wall around the place. How much d’jhz do we need to finish?” I asked, motioning toward the basement. There was plenty of open space down there, and it seemed like a good place for Hord to be able to defend the shipment of d’jhz, no matter how big it ended up being.

Hord scowled deeply at that. He began muttering to himself as we walked down the stairs, and when we reached the bottom, he stopped and looked up at me. “Wait, what kind of shift you want? I like two-four-two.”

It took some explaining, and plenty of pointed questions from me before Hobb could fully explain what that meant, but at the end I understood the basics.

Two-four-two meant the Gobbs received one bottle of d’jhz every two hours of work, then every four, then every two, and the pattern repeated until the job was complete. I still wasn’t quite understanding what the d’jhz was, or why the Gobbs were so gaga for it, but I got how this worked.

You control the d’jhz, you control the goblin work crew.

They wanted it more than they wanted to break and steal all your stuff, and possibly you if you weren’t careful. So we ordered up a whole new batch of d’jhz, on Hord’s specifications. It cost a pretty mortie, but it was well within the new operational budget.

When the pod arrived to beam in our purchase, it first flashed holographic lines on the floor, and we moved away. Then the rainbow beam dazzled us, and we were looking at a mountain of d’jhz. Hundreds of bottles were packed in close on a double-tall pallet.

The bottom of the pallet was basically an open-faced wooden box, and the top of it was just piled with more bottles, in stacks. The bottles were all forged to fit into each other, with a small indentation on the bottom of each making room for another on top of it. The entire concoction was wrapped in a very thin layer of what looked like skin, stretched out to make wrapping tape.

It looked horrifying and smelled worse.

Once it was cut loose and torn off the pallet, I bunched it up and threw it in the corner near the shelf Mr. Sada and I had worked on the day before. Then I went into the bathroom and washed my hands, trying very hard not to think of Mr. Sada’s dead wife in the tub.

It didn’t work. My mind threw the blood and gore of her in the tub at me, and then transplanted the blood over to my hands as I washed them, and suddenly I was a kid again, washing at my knuckles to get the blood off them.

This time, it was in a dojo of some sort. I started visiting those pretty shortly after my mother left us. My father decided on some unconventional diagnosis and treatment, and it involved fighting adult martial art experts. I was hesitant, but my father insisted, and the instructor goaded me into it. So I broke his hand in the fight, and cut my knuckles up significantly.

It had been quick too, I know that part even through the fog of memory because the poor bastard I beat kept saying it, in the background, to my father. From the point he was poking and teasing me, to the point he was clutching his hand and I was waiting to find out how much trouble I was in seemed like a heartbeat.

By the time I finished with my own hands and returned, the instructor was still talking to my father, in the main dojo area. His own broken hand was wrapped, and he was holding a bag of ice to it. I sat quietly in a chair by the door and waited to leave, listening as my father spoke to the man.

“I don’t know, Sarge. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before, he just knows when to move, and how. There’s no real technique to his fighting that I can identify, but his ability to inflict harm is obviously not in question.”

Mr. Sada’s hot water heater finally caught up with his extensive piping system and the water became hot enough to mildly burn me and bring me out of my own head. I remembered the gobbs running around upstairs and dried off my hands to get back to work.

When I returned, Hord was arguing with the big Gobb again, in their strange language. The big Gobb was on the stairs, to be equal height with Hord, but the argument was clearly not going his way. This seemed like easy water for Hord to tread. He pointed at the pallet and then pointed upstairs, and the big Gobb stalked away with a frown. As I approached, Hord turned and gave me a thumbs up. “They working!”

I clapped him on the back and smiled. “Good work, Hord. Now you keep ‘em on whatever shift you think is best, I trust you. This is your job.”

We went up to the kitchen counter, where I created a small drawing for him using one of the campground maps. Mr. Sada had boxes of em. I showed him where the wall needed to go, with gates. The mansion would be finished first, to give us a place to hole up that night if needed, but the entire campground was slated for the upgrade.

They were going to build the wall twelve feet in height, with a broad walkway on top, and several points of access from inside. All of this was being done using a quick setting mud-crete construction item from BuyMort, which was extremely reasonably priced.

Of course, Mr. Sada had only purchased the service for his own mansion. More construction items and Gobb squad time awaited payment, already set up for me in a BuyMort ad. It was getting to know me and Mr. Sada a little too well and realized there was a profit margin in helping me clean up his messes.

After I had established and paid for literally the entire project, I still had over six hundred thousand morties, and I couldn’t help but think about how much more Spider City had in store for us.

Chapter 22

Once I felt like Hord was squared away, I returned to the top of the stairs and walked to Mr. Sada’s bedroom door.

It was closed so I knocked, and when he shouted, let myself in. He was exiting the shower, with a giant terry cloth bathrobe, and a smaller towel wrapped around his wet hair.

“Thank you for handling all that Tyson!” He scrubbed at his hair and stopped in the middle of the room, giant white towel draped across one arm. “It is handled?”

I nodded and stretched. “Yeah, it’s handled. Got the Gobb work crew under control, we should have legitimate fortifications for tonight. If they come back, we’ll be better able to defend ourselves. Molls is also working on the other aspects. She said she’d do some research, see what we’re up against and what the church can do to protect us.”

Mr. Sada tossed the towel in his overflowing hamper. He walked into the closet, and I stayed back. Figured he might be getting dressed, and I’d had my fill of unexpected views of naked people for a while. “So, all we have to do is survive the night?”

I shrugged to nobody. “For now, yeah, that’s the plan.”

His voice echoed in the closet. “Those BlueCleave hobbs are in route. And I got my head on straight and made some sales. Back to not being broke. Got a few morties to rub together again. You find what you need out there?”

“Yeah, Mr. Sada. I’m alright for now. You still owe me dinner for all this.” I pushed off from the wall and started for the door again. “Food is getting expensive.”

“Yeah yeah, I hear you. I’ll order something up now, hang out.”

He emerged from the closet wearing a pair of loose black sweats and a white button-down shirt. His small pony tail was back in place, dangling and shining with the conditioner he had used. I could still smell it in the hot, wet air coming from his bathroom. A hot shower sounded pretty good.

He stared at the air for a while, I assume navigating his BuyMort account, and finally whistled at something. He shook his head, but then closed out of his windows and looked over at me.

“Dinner is on the way.”

We sat there in his room for a few minutes while waiting for the pod to arrive, and Mr. Sada tried to make small talk. I just watched the ravens out the window.

One of them was sitting on the new gate that had been erected in the road outside. It was the only way in or out of the house compound, and it was a giant frame with two panes of metal on either side. It could be upgraded, Hord had explained, if I so desired. Saved morties in the long run that way.

What I saw from this side made the gate look like it would stand up to conventional small arms fire, from what I knew of it, but not much beyond that. Hell, even one of those armored rollers they had before could probably knock it down if given much room.

The gate was positioned to be adjacent to part of the campground walls, so it would be difficult, if not impossible, to position a vehicle to ram it.

The Gobbs had smart, cheap workarounds for our tactical disadvantages. The mud-crete, once hardened for a few hours, would stand up to even plasma weaponry fairly well.

I wasn’t too concerned about the night’s hostilities anymore, assuming they went through with it. No, I was concerned about that raven.

It gawked at me, directly through the window. It could see me seeing it, and all that made it do was open its beak wider.

The rest of its gang were hanging around too, keeping an eye on the construction from nearby trees or the roof itself. I could hear them hopping around up there.

My mind raced with bird related possibilities as I engaged in a battle of wills with the raven on the gate. In the end, he won, as I turned away and faced Mr. Sada again.

“I’m worried about the campground ravens, Mr. Sada,” I announced.

He stared at me, blinking a few times. “Look at em!” I gestured. The raven on the gate was gone, and I sighed.

“Never mind. I’ll let you know if I find anything out, right now there’s just a bunch of ‘em acting weird. Watch what you leave around outside.”

Mr. Sada was staring at me and shaking his head, eyes narrowed, when the pod bearing our dinner arrived. It warped in a pizza box on the end table and flew away. He immediately hopped up and went around to the box, opening it.

Steam rose from inside, and he took a deep breath in appreciation. “Mmm! Sal and Ginos, down on fourteenth street. Best pizza in Arizona! Cost me almost six thousand morties, but we’ll probably never eat this pizza again. Seemed worth it.”

I reached for a slice, with a skeptical scowl. “Best Pizza in Arizona? That’s not saying a lot.”

A vision swam into my head. “THE best pizza there is. No exceptions. 5 stars.” Following it was an advertisement for Sal and Ginos Pizza. Salad, Pizza, Drinks, we had the best before these green-skinned fucks came onto our planet, and we have the best still today. Eat in or delivery, Sal and Gino’s got the perfect pizza for you. 7900 morties, 5 stars.

I had lived in New York City, and Chicago. Still, when I bit the hot mushroom and sausage pizza, it was pretty dang good. I nodded and stuck my lip out in appreciation. “Never mind, this is great. Thanks Mr. Sada.”

He cracked open a mini-fridge and handed me a beer in a green bottle. I twisted it open, and we shared the pizza with a couple of German import beers, while watching the Gobbs run around working. Mr. Sada was getting more and more used to them as his coke rush wore off.

Now that Hord had them running scared of their next bottle of d’jhz, the work was progressing at an impressive rate. The wall around the mansion looked like it would be up before the end of the night, and they were slated to keep working on it tomorrow, after a contract mandated eight-hour rest period where they were allowed four bottles each.

I was just wondering what that was going to look like when Mr. Sada showed up beside me. He frowned, watching them scramble in his driveway below.

“How’d you get ‘em back to work?” He asked, staring out the window while nursing his beer.

My eyebrows raised and I chuckled. “You’re not gonna believe this. They go nuts for this drink. Comes in these bottles, and we gotta regiment how much of it they get for the work they do, or else they go kinda nutty and get scary.”

“Like before!” he interjected, excited to have an excuse to be scared of them.

I gave it to him. “Yeah, exactly. So we get this drink handed out every couple hours, and Hord is watching over it to make sure they don’t steal any. If you leave ‘em to their own devices, they just guzzle the stuff, get drunk on it, then start breaking and stealing shit. Hord says they kill people sometimes too.”

Mr. Sada shook his head and rubbed at his beer bottle. “Fuckin’ goblins man!”

“You wanna know what the best part of all this is?” I asked, pointing at him with my own bottle.

He looked at me, one eyebrow peaked. “Oh?”

“The drink is called d’jhz.” I dropped it for him. Proper pronunciation and everything, and his face was priceless.

He burst out laughing, then scowled and looked at me like I was pranking him. But I shook my head, and he started laughing again.

“You know, Tyson, I can be real . . . difficult sometimes. Just want you to know that I appreciate what you are doing here.”

I stopped eating, slack jawed. “Oh, wow, shit. Thanks.”

“I mean it son. Here I am, at the end of the world or whatever the fuck this is. And I’m lucky to have you here with me.”

We sat in silence after that. Finished our pizza and beer. Mr. Sada sold the empty box and bottles, and then I left him to watch his alien news network. The icon on the screen showed a BuyMort item category stock value, with the cost of food skyrocketing. I bit my lip in concern but closed the door and put it out of my mind.

I had to go organize a new defense force of hobbs. They were due any minute.

As I stood in the kitchen, watching out the back window at the work being done outside, a pod arrived and held position, a rainbow beam glittering in the entryway.

Hobbs began to walk from the beam, each wearing makeshift armor and carrying weapons. One of them carried a shoulder deployed rocket propelled grenade launcher. All in all, I had a dozen of them, and they moved around in a circle to look at me.

They didn’t look quite the same as Hord, but each of them was very similar in features. Tall, lanky, wired in muscle, broad flat faces, and pebbled gray skin.

Each of them wore sidearms, in addition to the long guns they carried. I saw a lot of blocky High-Point pistols in those holsters, and the average Hobb was holding a janky looking AK-47 rifle. One of ‘em had a scuffed up old SPAZ-12 shotgun, and another was holding what looked like a Mauser 8mm rifle with a scope.

Two members of the group, instead of weapons, carried oversized metal shields. They looked like scraps of something much larger that had a handle welded to the inside of it.

All in all, I was pleased with my rag tag group of hobbs. They had good reviews and came with a long history of service with the mercenary company they worked for; BuyMortMercMart.

The group’s name was the BlueCleave Clan.

I spent some time explaining the situation to them, and then I informed them that tonight the priority would be protecting Mr. Sada’s mansion, and the new set of walls being built around them.

The group accepted my information readily, conferred with each other, and then they took up positions around the living room. They were planning to relax before the expected combat patrol that night, as such a thing was a welcome luxury for them.

Everywhere I looked, BlueCleave members hunched up on the floor, using the wall as a pillow, or lay flat on the thick carpet. Several were snoring before I left the room.

The crew looked a little rag-tag to me, but they had powder burns on their hands, and bullet strike scarring on their chest plates and helmets, so I had some confidence in their abilities.

With that detail sorted, I went to check on Hord. He was still doing fine, handing out bottles of d’jhz to well behaved Gobb employees, and making sure none of the bottles went missing. The basement was working out well.

By the time I was ready to go back and collect Phyllis, Molls, and Doofus for the night, it was only seven PM. The sun had gone down, but there was still plenty of residual heat and light flowing in over the Grand Canyon to the west.

The drive back to the campground was pleasant. The golf cart was an open cabin, so I got to enjoy a stiff breeze in my face as I drove, and the looming threat of armed conflict wasn’t quite so bad.

I felt the tickle of anxiety at the back of my head, but it felt distant. For a problem that was someone else’s.

My first stop was Molls, which ended up being a terrible mistake. As I entered the valley, I saw her pod flying away to the north, and only realized she had ordered her dinner when I rolled up alongside to witness her shove an entire suckling roast pig into her distended mouth.

It was like something out of a horror movie.

Razor sharp fangs tore the meat and she gulped noisily as the pig slid down into her gullet. Molls saw me and froze, eyes shot wide open. She nearly choked, then got herself under control and finished swallowing the pig.

I watched in open-mouthed shock as the sides of her mouth folded in on themselves, and it began to seal under overlapping scales. Soon, all that remained was her small and beautiful mouth that I was used to, with different colored scales on her lips.

She dabbed at the side of her lower lip and faced me with a small smile, but her scales were flushed a deep pink.

I got out of the golf cart and decided to just play it like I had seen nothing. I ignored the distention in her stomach region and approached with a friendly wave.

“Hello Molls! Hope I’m not interrupting, but I came to collect everyone. We’re bunking down at Mr. Sada’s tonight in case they attack.” When her face fell, I raised my hands to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I made sure the air conditioning is off, the place is already getting toasty.”

Molls shook her head vehemently. “I will not, Tyson. I will not go.”

She crossed her arms.

“I’ll not spend the night in that man’s presence, and I do not believe there will be an attack. From what I can glean, this Dearth Conglomerate is an upstanding company, with mostly positive reviews. They’re slated to reclaim the ninth-highest credit rating from the Sleem, a noble pursuit. I have put in a notice to the church of my residence on this property, making it church affiliated. That will protect us from any violence. It should go through on the BuyMort network later tonight.”

I stood and listened as she spoke, and then I nodded and backed away. “Are you sure? We’re fortified down there. Just in case.”

She nodded and stood beside the car, hugging herself against the cold. “I thank you for your help earlier today, but such measures will simply not be necessary. I cannot imagine this priest would send a force to attack you.”

Molls suddenly belched. It was a soft noise, but I heard it and froze. She clapped a hand over her mouth and turned bright pink again. Looked at me for a long moment, she opened the car door to escape inside, tucking her long body away and vanishing in seconds, and the door was quickly shut behind her.

As I stared in the car window, a newly installed blinds system sprang into operation, and the window was covered.

I took that as a hint to leave, and did so, hurriedly driving the golf cart over to Phyllis’ place again. Doofus woofed at me as I parked out front, and I quickly marched over to the lounging pair. Phyllis had a fresh cup of tea, and when I approached, she offered it to me. A lit joint was smoldering in the ashtray.

I happily flopped into my folding chair and sipped at the tea. Then I hesitated and looked up at her in alarm. “Hey Phil, this is just tea, right?”

She looked at me with innocence etched into her expression. “Oh?”

My head turned, and I tasted it again. Phyllis was watching me, and a slow smile grew on her face. “Phyllis, that’s not funny! We have guard duty tonight, you can’t be slipping me LSD!”

She burst out laughing, and then calmed me with a giant metal hand on my back.

“Oh Tyson, dear. I was just having fun with you. It’s only tea, I’m sharp and ready.”

There she saluted me, making a terribly serious face as she did it. Then she reached for the joint and I stared at her as it rose to her lips. She noticed my expression and scowled.

“Don’t start. You do not want me completely sober, take the compromise.”

I frowned and considered it, then shrugged and nodded in agreement. “Right, I gotta take Doofus and hole up with Mr. Sada tonight. We’re expecting trouble. Would you do me a huge favor and set up shop by Molls’ car tonight? I need you to protect her.”

Phyllis took a puff of her joint and nodded, holding her breath. When she let it out, it swirled above us in the early evening air.

I swear, it was the hottest time of the day, and the bandoleer was making me sweat. But it was still nice for Arizona, and I took a few hits from her joint. The weed helped my nerves, and by the time I was cruising back to Mr. Sada’s with Doofus laid out in the backseat of the golf cart behind me, I was feeling no pain about the night to come.

That was a mistake, but I was still a pretty dumb shopper back in those days.

Chapter 23

The first thing on my list upon arriving at Mr. Sada’s for the night was to talk to the new hobbs. Their hire page on BuyMort had indicated that they were general-purpose security mercenaries who worked time-based commissions and had a good reputation.

They came as a unit, all twelve of them, and no security job was beneath them. Even guard duty that may or may not be a suicide mission.

I was thinking hard about those vehicles I had seen earlier. I was pretty sure one of them was a tank. It had a barrel, a big one. Made me wonder if they had any air support or any of those other nightmarish military goodies.

Hell, even the good ol’ boys in the Toyota made me nervous. Most of them were too fat for their plate carriers to be anything but ceremonial garb, but they all carried those obnoxiously over-customized AR-15s. Something about them made me think they might be trigger-happy morons, couldn’t put my finger on just what though.

All the cascading worries I had been forming and pushing away since our visit fomented and bubbled over into a near panic attack. I was genuinely spun up about getting shot when I walked into my meeting with the leader of the Hobb-squad we had hired.

Their leader was the one with the sniper rifle. She wore heavier armor, and carried their box of medical supplies, strapped to the small of her back. When she sat down across from me on Mr. Sada’s stairs, it clanked against the wood. I stood on the opposite side of the kitchen counter, and her team was scattered around the house. She waved a hand at me and grunted.

“Tell plan.” Her accent was halting like Hord’s, but she struck me as significantly smarter than him. Her name was Rayna, and she had been named for an ancestral hero in her tribe.

Someone, I later learned, who set their tribe on a better path.

Rayna looked much like the others, but her demeanor told me she was smarter than the average Hobb. Leadership material.

“Right. Well, the plan is you guys patrol the wall all night, and let us know if there’s any trouble,” I answered.

The Gob squad had been hard at work since I left, and they had mostly finished the fortifications for the night. The mansion was now surrounded by a twelve-foot-high wall of thick brown mud. The mud-crete was slopped on, so it poured over the sides to harden naturally. Pretty, our fortification was not. Functional?

That remained to be seen.

The Gobbs had at least built the beginning of the buttressing campground wall across the street from the gate, so it was more secure than I had been hoping for. They were working on that until it got fully dark, and then they were going to crash for their allotted break time and d’jhz consumption. Get to the rest of the campground’s walls the following day.

Rayna shook her head. “Mean why.”

“Why?” I blinked a few times.

“Why patrol. Who coming? How armed? What support? When threat over? Would ask where patrol too, but wall obvious.” Rayna’s drawl indicated I wasn’t keeping up with her. “Need full information.”

“Ah, yes. The basics, who what when where why and how. Yes, good questions! I should know those, hang on a second.”

I frowned and thought about what she had asked. Just her presence was making me think tactically. I suddenly wanted to have good answers for her.

“We hired you guys because we might need some muscle. Backup, for tonight only. The guys coming after us are the Dearth Conglomerate, or I think hired mercenaries, like you? They had a priest with them. Oh, and they want to take our land. Or live on it, that part was a little fuzzy. Aggressive though. Seemed well armed, couldn’t tell with what. Sorry.”

“And this land yours? MortBlock yours?” She stared at me for answers.

“Um, yes. Well, Mr. Sada, who hired you. It’s his.” I squinted. “Was his before BuyMort, so BuyMort recognized his ownership on the MortBlock, I think. We have a BuyMort priest filing paperwork with the church, that will make us a protected affiliate since she’s renting here. After that, they’ll leave us alone.”

She nodded a broad chin. “Yes, this early days new planet. Land grabs common.” There she narrowed her eyes in thought. “Know Dearth Conglomerate, worked for them before. Ruthless, shoot first. Take what they want. But they have weakness. Overconfident. Cheap. Won’t want to spend much to take land.”

There she nodded.

“Can defend. Good contract. If happy with work, we accept tips in form of equipment upgrades or sales. Have wish-list attached to contract.” Then she rose and walked over to me, extending a hand.

I hesitated but reached out for the hand. She gripped me by the wrist and nodded. “BlueCleave earn four-and-a-half star reputation. Only rule, hobbs not expendable. Agreed?”

Her grip on my wrist increased slightly. Not a lot, just enough to let me know she had more to give and wasn’t above a little physical intimidation.

I nodded though, her rule was reasonable.

It was not my intention to simply feed these people to our enemies. We had the wall, and that felt like it was going to count for a lot when mounting our underdog defense. If we even needed it.

I laughed after the tense moment, and Rayna turned to look at me, question obvious on her face. “Oh, I just feel kind of silly. We’re taking all this precaution, but those guys probably won’t even be coming back tonight. Really, this is all just in case.”

Rayna nodded as I spoke, but then at the end shook her head.

“No. Dearth Conglomerate coming. If they came today and you refused them, they come tonight and kill you.” She shrugged. “How they operate. Shrewd and rapid land acquisition. Results first, always.”

My face fell and I started breathing more rapidly.

“Don’t worry!” Rayna reassured me. “We can protect. Gobbs build good wall. Defended wall like it before. Easy job.”

The hobb fixed me with a serious gaze. “Okay. Any questions for me?”

I glanced at their equipment again and thought back to Hord’s rusty colt.

“Yeah, how come you guys are using our guns?” My confusion was likely evident on my face as I blinked a few times at her blank expression. I pointed to her own rifle. “That’s an earth gun. I guess I just figured you guys would have crazy alien weaponry.”

Rayna scowled and blinked at me a few times. “Big question. Not what I expected, but okay. Short answer? This is what we can afford. Nu-Earth is new market. Very cheap guns right now. Seem like your planet makes many weapons.”

She took a breath and raised her eyebrows. “Long answer is that my tribe is part of much larger tribe. Often must share gear, but new market allows us to field more teams. My old gear was donated to a new tribe, just starting out, because I could upgrade to Nu-Earth gear.”

I scowled at that, thinking about the larger tribe. “So, you guys, what? Live the life of traveling adventure to fund your families back home?”

She shook her head. “Hobbs not have home. Lost that long ago. We live in storage, like all those without wealth.”

“Storage?” I gaped.

Rayna shook her head with a small sigh. “We have time for entire history of hobbs?”

I smiled. “No. No we don’t. Thank you though, Rayna. I would like to learn more some time.”

There she stood and nodded, giving me a strange, quizzical look. “I go talk to tribe. You get ready.” She left, calling out to one of the other hobbs.

I stood and stared at the kitchen counter. Bloodshed was all but guaranteed now, and I kept thinking about Molls and Phyllis. Molls had some kind of protected status in these people’s society, I was almost sure of that. They wouldn’t attack her, surely. And if they did, well . . . Phyllis would wreck them. That fusion cannon was terrifying.

As for me, I had to protect Mr. Sada. Mostly Doofus, but they’d be hanging out together, so Mr. Sada too. The girls could take care of themselves unless things changed. Mr. Sada was the target, after all. He held the MortBlock, so they’d be trying to assassinate him, and it was my job to stop that from happening, for all our sakes.

My first task in regard to that goal was to gather Mr. Sada. He was going to have to spend the night in the basement, and I doubted he would be terribly pleased about that situation. Doofus loved it down there, all the cool concrete made it his favorite room in the entire house. But Mr. Sada predictably whined when I broached the subject.

“The basement?” He cringed away from me, visibly upset. “Why the basement! I was gonna watch tv in bed.” Mr. Sada patted the bed at his side to illustrate.

“Yeah, I figured you’d react that way, but here’s the thing.” I walked over to his bedroom wall and knocked on it. “These walls are above twelve feet in height, and they are very much not bulletproof.”

He looked around, eyes twitching from his tv to the door. “What?” The question was sad, like he knew he couldn’t argue his way out of this, but he had to try anyway.

“Yeah, Mr. Sada. You stay up here, you’re gonna get shot. The new Hobb squad knows their shit, and they say this Dearth Conglomerate is gonna make a play for this place tonight. For you specifically. They kill you, they reset the MortBlock, and BuyMort recognizes ‘conquest’ as a legitimate acquisition tactic.”

I crossed my arms and shook my head.

“Let’s get you set up in the basement.”

Mr. Sada looked around sadly and then nodded. I saw him start thinking about what he wanted me to carry down there and sighed.

Whatever, if it kept him happy and therefore quiet, I’d drag whatever wherever.

Turned out, he was fine with just the TV and his mattress. I enlisted the help of Hord with that last part, and he helped me set Mr. Sada up with a babysitting area in the basement.

Hord would be down there with him, anyway, protecting our supply of d’jhz. The supply of bottles was dwindling, but we still had the vast majority of what we had ordered.

Once Mr. Sada was settled in with some pretzel snacks, a bottle of red wine, and the rest of his drywall cocaine, he was happy. He settled in to watch psychic tv with his undersized chrome handgun at his side, and a comfy little nest near the pallets of d’jhz. I stared at the word emblazoned on the bottles and scowled, before turning and going upstairs.

The Gobbs were happy to crash out all over the living room. There were dozens of ‘em, it was actually hard to walk through the room. Everywhere I went, little green bodies lay on the soft carpet, clutching bottles of d’jhz, or guzzling at them.

It was their food, source of relaxation, drug of choice, and motivation to work all in one. I felt strange watching them and turned away to check the fortifications.

Entering the backyard through the sliding glass door was significantly different. The mud wall loomed large and dumpy looking. Speed had been of the essence, so the Gobbs hadn’t bothered to shape the sides of the wall as it set. Rolls and cracks in the material showed all the way up to the top, which was wide and flat across.

This part we had some extra work in. All the way around the wall at the top was a blank, empty pathway about four feet wide. Dual sloping ramps led up to the top at each corner, and as I climbed one, I noticed the distinct lack of cover up there.

It was just four feet of blank, flat walkway. No handrail even, let alone cover from incoming fire. At least the ramp platforms were wide, the hobbs could use those to mount counter attacks.

Looking down from the wall was a little sobering. It made me realize that falling from here could be serious injury for me or the hobbs. Then I got thinking about Mr. Sada’s rental equipment because it included air mattresses. Another excellent detail was that he insisted on storing it all on his own property, because he couldn’t trust the gum-chewers.

Not that I blamed him, they stole stuff all the time.

The train of thought led me to stand in the oversized shed he used to store all the camp rentals in. Mr. Sada entrusted me with entirely too many keys.

The shed was packed, floor to ceiling with useful things. Tents, in three different sizes, all in reusable storage containers instead of their original boxes. Dozens of air mattresses, for both the tents, and for rent on their own. They each came with their own plug-in pump too. We even had bicycles, although we didn’t rent those anymore, so I didn’t know why.

People stole literally the first three we ever rented, in a row, on the same day, and Mr. Sada swore it off forever after that. Most of the stuff in the shed had never even been used, we didn’t get a lot of rental business, and Mr. Sada just ignored it. Seemed like the perfect thing to use.

After I found an extension cord and multi-plug bar, I set the first nine air mattresses to inflate and stood back to smile at my plan. That was when Rayna walked over with her hands in her pockets.

“What you doing?” She blinked at the air mattresses.

“Oh, just getting ready for tonight. If I pile up a bunch of these at the base of the ramps, there’ll be a safe landing zone for your hobbs.” I looked at her, and hesitated. She was staring at me, eyes narrowed and mouth open.

“Well . . . well, I just thought. It might help. If somebody fell.” I stammered and faltered, suddenly doubting in my plan. They were too heavy, this was dumb.

But Rayna smiled broadly at me and then reached a wide gray hand to clap my back.

“Thank you.” She straightened her back and stretched. “This good night. Will be fun!”

Rayna clapped me on the back again and started walking toward the wall. A few of the other armed and armored hobbs followed after her, moving leisurely, but with weapons held ready.

When I looked around the yard, I saw them in small squads, each group of three moving to different corners of the wall. They must have been starting their patrol. I focused on my air mattresses.

The first batch of mattresses finished, and I disconnected and tossed them aside. After I got the next group of them hooked up and humming, I grabbed two of the already inflated air mattresses and started dragging them to the corner. After I had all nine of them stacked and in place, I started the process all over again.

Over the next hour of the evening, I repeated that process and filled the spaces between ramps with air mattresses.

I had been right about the Hobb’s positioning, they were established mostly in the corners of the walls, with the occasional jaunt to see something further out using their shields. Rayna had a set of binoculars, and regularly walked the spaces on the wall between groups, looking out over the desert. She was kind enough to let me borrow them to check in on Molls and Phyllis.

I zoomed in on them and was pleased to discover that they were having an evening of it. Phyllis had set up shop outside Molls’ car and was waving one of her oversized mechanical hands as she told a story. I could see both of their faces through the front windshield, and I smiled to see Molls laughing along with Phyllis.

They were probably talking shit about me, but whatever.

They seemed happy, and I felt like I was slated to die anyway. That’d teach em. Molls squinted through the windshield at me, and I saw her hand point as her scales flushed red. I turned away, gave the binoculars back to Rayna, and descended the wall with a blush hot on my cheeks.

BuyMort chose that moment to pop up in my vision, and I was starting to wonder if I had developed a nervous tic. I was opening the app anytime I was nervous these days. But it did present a good opportunity. Between the ads for romantic gifts to make amends with jilted lovers, I saw an item from the suggestions list that caught and mercifully diverted my attention.

A helmet.

TORGUE’S HELM OF THE GLORIOUS RISHTAF. TORGUE MAKE GOOD ARMOR. WEAR TORGUE STUFF. TORGUE STUFF BEST. 40000 morties, 5 STARS.

The helmet looked fairly normal, for a medieval environment. It featured a sharpened grill front that protected nose, eyes, and mouth while allowing full use of all three, and a reinforced metal skull frame. At the back was a scrap of frayed red ribbon, and two broken ivory horns were forged into the sides.

The advertisement promised good concussion support, and I was still terrified of that starfish suit. If it got inside my brain with its bladed tendrils, whatever made me me would get chopped up, ground into gummy paste, and ejected from my chest turbine in a stream.

My current horror-fantasy was that the procedure wouldn’t actually just kill me but leave some kind of evil clone of me in my stead. I was stressed.

So, I bought a helmet. When BuyMort arrived, one of the hobbs shouted a warning. “Pod incoming!”

All of them nodded their understanding and resumed their patrol. I was smiling at their response when I slit the flesh-tape and opened my box, before retrieving the helmet. It had cost me only forty thousand morties, and when I tried it on, I decided I could have sprung for some upgrades.

The opening was tight, even with the spacer, but I’d always had kind of a big head, and it fit, so I wasn’t complaining.

Once latched, it moved with my head and made me feel strange. More like a bobble-head than previously if that makes sense. Not quite a bobble-head. Just a step further on that path than I had anticipated with this purchase.

But it made me feel safer about my brain. So, I wore it and continued the process of getting used to the new weight on my head. Rayna raised an eyebrow when she saw me, and then shrugged and turned away. Another Hobb noticed and nudged the shotgunner.

I hadn’t noticed before, but that Hobb was also a woman, and she became very angry upon seeing my helmet. She approached me, barking guttural sounding words in what I assumed was her own language, and pointing aggressively.

I hesitated, but Rayna shouted and interrupted the moment. She was at the front gate, north corner, and when her voice rained out across the courtyard, everyone stopped.

“Clay soldiers! Front gate, engage, conserve ammunition. All other squads, on alert, but stay. RPG be ready!”

Her orders sent us all running, but that shotgunner Hobb gave me a dirty look as she returned to her group. I ran to the ramp behind Rayna’s group and started climbing when gunshots rang out above me.

The helmet had advertised limited hearing protection, and I was glad for it, but agreed that it was limited. Loud was still loud. Just not quite as loud.

And the battle that was starting, it promised to push that limited hearing protection to the limit.

Chapter 24

Rayna knelt near the top of the ramp, rifle tucked into her shoulder. She was focusing through her scope, and as I approached, she fired. The gun bucked and she worked the bolt.

A flash caught my eye, and I noticed she caught the shell casing and set it down carefully before loading the next shell. She crouched down and turned to face me as I approached and held out a hand.

“Back, boss! They not that dangerous, but still might shoot you.” When I stopped near her she shook her head and narrowed her eyes at me. “Nice helmet.”

I frowned.

“What did I do? I seem to have pissed off everyone with this thing, but I just want to protect my head.”

I pointed across the yard to another group, where a Hobb wearing a Vietnam war era combat helmet was hunkered down with his group. “Some of you guys have helmets, what the hell?”

Her face went through several changes while I spoke, but at the end she just nodded and raised her hand for me to stop. “That different. The helmet from our wish-list, Tolya wanted it.” She indicated the Hobb clutching a shotgun across the courtyard.

Understanding flooded through me. I had committed some social faux pas by buying an item off their wish list for myself. “Oh. Oh no! I just took a BuyMort suggestion.”

Rayna nodded, then leaned back out to take another shot. She aimed, fired, and then ducked back as return fire peppered the air. One of the shield hobbs stepped in front of us, crouched low and braced against the shield. Rounds pinged from the top of it, and they crawled back a step.

“Be fine, work now.” She waved me back, but I climbed up a little bit to peek over the lip of the wall. Rayna and the shield Hobb moved together, and she picked off one of the things that was marching toward the wall.

I focused on them, whatever they were, and wished we had flood lights. The desert was dark, even in the early evening. Especially now that almost nobody had power. But then they opened fire, and I could see them clearly.

Clay robots. They were flimsy, made of hardened ceramic interspersed with rusted gears and low-grade metallic joints. Most of the metal was in the arms, where two slow fire repeating guns threw slugs at us with poor accuracy.

The things were bare bones, but each of them had a small red dot glowing in the center of their ceramic heads. They moved at a walk, making slow but steady progress as they all swiveled and opened fire.

Bullets spattered against the wall, pinged off from the shield, and whizzed through the air above our heads.

A Hobb came running from the back wall and climbed the ramp behind us as I watched. He tapped Rayna on the shoulder, and she hustled down the ramp. The new Hobb took her place with his AK-47 and moved to take a few shots from behind the shield.

Rayna jogged down to the other side of the gate, then climbed up on the ramp and began belly crawling forward along the ramp. The other shield Hobb crouched and followed but stayed at a distance.

Rayna got into place in the middle of the walled section and began firing into the crowd of clay soldiers. Between her and the Hobb by me with the rifle, they started chewing through the enemy’s toys.

Clay soldiers sparked and shattered, sending ceramic chunks flying. The combat bots tried to fight back, but they sucked. Their guns were just not well machined, and that made their barrel accuracy quite poor.

Couple that with bottom-of-the-barrel targeting computers, and you had a pretty two-star service on your hands. They were certainly no match for the elite BlueCleave soldiers, who looked almost bored as they dealt with the attack.

Fat, slow moving rounds pattered against the walls all around me, and I ducked back down. The hobbs were making short work of the clay robots, and I was starting to wonder about what was next.

An explosion sounded in the campground, and I looked to see a fireball rising into the sky.

Phyllis was either going to work or getting worked over.

I hoped it was the first option, as our next problem drove up on the road outside the main gate. A trio of pickup trucks roared in the near distance, filled to the brim with good old fashioned Arizona humans.

Arizona humans carrying guns.

Rayna waved for all the hobbs to get down, and I followed suit. We all hunkered behind the walls as the trucks approached.

The night became quiet again, as the single surviving clay soldier bot clanked against the closed metal door. It raised its guns above its sides and started dry firing as it attempted to get through the door by repeatedly walking into it at a low rate of speed.

The machine was out of ammunition, but not programmed to recognize that situation, so the guns just clicked over and over again, and it bonged into the door between clicks.

“What happened to the rest of em?” An unfamiliar voice sounded from the other side of the gate as the trucks pulled up.

Headlights washed over the area and cast everything in strange shadows. Boots crunched in the gravel and dirt outside the wall, and I heard weapons click metallically as they were primed.

I glanced at Rayna in discomfort, but she held up a hand and shook her head. The Hobb with the shoulder mounted grenade launcher crept into position behind us on the ramp and moved up slowly at Rayna’s waved command.

Once in position, the shield Hobb and launcher Hobb moved as one. They took a few rapid steps out, and a voice shouted from below. “On the wall, contact!”

Then an explosion lit up the night, and the gate rocked inward against its hinges. Oily black smoke began rising from two ruined pick-up trucks, and the third made a run for it.

Rayna stepped up behind the shield and picked off the driver with a single careful shot. It swerved violently and flipped.

Bullets began to snap and hiss through the air around me then, as the remaining militia members opened fire. Their muzzles flashed in a variety of shapes and colors, annoying me immediately with their inane modifications.

I clutched at my shotgun and started crawling down the ramp. Rayna and her hobbs were engaging, using the shields and careful aim to fight off the opponents. That was their job, after all. What good could I do up there?

Not to mention that I was upset at watching these hobbs kill humans, in my name.

Well, Mr. Sada’s name, but I was managing the entire thing.

I went below to avoid having to watch my Hobb squad mop up the good ol’ boys out front. The smell of burning meat from in front of the gate was bad enough.

The battle went well, and Rayna was walking down to talk to me just a few seconds later.

“Boss! Humans with guns running. All vehicles destroyed.”

Another explosion sounded from the campground, and I grabbed Rayna’s binoculars. I ran up the ramp and focused on Molls’ campsite.

A troop of vehicles was surrounding the sandy bunkers, and two smoldering wrecks were blocking the driveway.

Molls was nowhere to be seen, and Phyllis was pointing her fusion cannon at any movement atop the privacy barricades. When she turned to face me momentarily, I saw smoke leaking from the interior of her helmet.

Then I got a phone call. The psychic phone showed me a still photo of Molls. It was odd, seeing her face on my screen, and as I looked, the image shifted. It became a different angle of her, but nude, and looking over her shoulder at me.

“Woah, not cool!”

I concentrated, and the picture returned to a serene image of Molls during our meditation session together. The physic creature’s face scowled at me, replacing the image with an impatient glare.

“Do not keep making her naked!” I hissed at it, and then hit the green button to answer Molls. His face distended as it became a tunnel, and Molls replaced him quickly.

She looked terrible. The Nah’gh woman had obviously been crying, and she squeaked in fear when another explosion went off.

I saw it off-screen in the distance. Phyllis had smoked a humanoid figure in armor that was trying to sneak over the ridge to get a shot off at her. All that remained of the figure was some partially slagged armor, and a giant burn scar from the fusion cannon.

Molls sobbed and huddled down further. It appeared as though she was in the car, but very low, and covered with blankets.

“Tyson!” She started, fear straining her voice. Her scales were a vibrant mix of orange and yellow. “Tyson, I am so sorry. You were right, can you please come get me?” She was sobbing as she spoke, and I hesitated.

I looked through the binoculars and counted. There was about a dozen enemy forces still, with two vehicles remaining. Rayna was at my side and pushed my shoulder. She pointed at Molls and then nodded at me.

I turned back to speak, looking into my psychic phone. “Yeah Molls, we’re coming. Just hang in there, Phyllis will protect you.”

Molls pushed back a blanket, and Phyllis was there, leaning in the car window. Her helmet was open, and she was staring at us from the inside of the mech. The smoke had been from a joint she had dangling from her lips.

“Well, hurry up then,” she said.

Her helmet clanked back in place, and the mech rose. I looked through the binoculars again and saw Phyllis raise her fusion cannon to another creeping figure on the ridge.

Her shot flared over his head this time, but it had the desired effect and he scrambled back down the ridge in a hurry.

I saw an Orc’s tusks glint in the moonlight as the small figure roared something and retreated. A group of similarly armored figures clustered around one of the remaining vehicles and argued.

I guess they hadn’t been expecting a nonagenarian in a war mech with a fusion cannon. They were backing off for the moment.

Molls disconnected, and I pocketed my phone. Rayna had already summoned all her people, and the Hobb squad was lined up in front of us. She raised a hand and got their attention.

“New mission! We go, stretch to campground, save priest, escort back.”

Rayna turned to their shotgunner and clicked her long fingers together. “Tolya!” Tolya was staring at me and didn’t answer. “He new, Tolya, bought what BuyMort suggest. It not insult.”

I shrugged out of my jacket and dropped it on the pavement. Now I was wearing a pair of flared cuff jeans over reed boots, my starfish suit, and a medieval metal helmet. My dream apocalypse outfit was really coming together.

I looked directly at Tolya and nodded my helmeted head. “I’ll buy you one after we get Molls, Tolya, I promise.”

The Hobb’s eyes went wide for a moment, and then she glanced between me and Rayna, before turning back with a nod. Rayna walked among us, barking quick orders, and then she came back to my side and slid a fresh round in her Mauser, flicking the bolt closed.

“Okay. We go. You stay with me. Sniper guard.” Rayna tapped my shotgun with the butt of her rifle as she finished, and I took her meaning.

We moved, and Tolya opened the gate. She slid it open a crack, just enough for us to slip through. The entire Hobb squad aside from Tolya slid out in single file. They covered the charred corpses and wrecked vehicles out front, but nothing moved aside from some guttering flames.

I followed with Rayna at the rear, and as we marched through the desert, she began stationing her people.

We didn’t move by using the road, like I always did. We cut right through the desert and went over the campground fence. The little six foot wrought iron barricade was nothing but a minor obstacle, as those who remained in our group vaulted it with little effort.

I was starting to like these hobbs.

Rayna had stationed the shield hobbs back near the mansion, with a rifleman each. The two groups huddled down behind cover that mostly concealed them as we left. They were meant to secure our route back, and Tolya was door guard.

The rest of us went to ambush some alien mercenaries and save our snake priest.

Rayna took control over us the instant we left the gates. I recognized and molded into her authority automatically before I even recognized that I had.

She was good. An excellent commander.

So when she suddenly called for a stop and went flat to the ground, so too did we all. There was a patch of cacti and shrubbery between our group and the privacy barrier of my site. We approached on our bellies and took cover behind the wall of scrub, all within earshot of Rayna.

She shifted and turned back to face us as the enemy patrol vehicle slowly rolled by. It shot a beam of light out at the cactus patch, but quickly shut it off when a blast from Phyllis’ fusion cannon sent the vehicle scrambling.

“We go now. RPG vehicle, shoot for heads. No prisoners.”

There her soldiers started belly-crawling around the patch of scrub and Rayna turned to look at me.

“You secure VIP. Not wait, when you have her, you go back to base.”

I nodded my understanding, and she started crawling after her people.

I grimaced and pulled my phone out of my pocket. The face appeared and glared at me. Then I whispered Phyllis’ name and thought of her face. The head leaned sideways and became a tunnel. Phyllis appeared in front of me. The view was inside her mech, and she was staring at something in her view screen.

“Hey Tyson, you come to save the day yet, dearie?”

Phyllis snarled and reached for something, and a fireball shot overhead into the night. Then she looked at me, and I could see her face contort. She was trying not to laugh. “What is that new hat?” She half snickered out.

“Go ahead Phyllis. It’s me, I’m wearing something stupid, you can laugh all you like.”

I laid in the dirt behind a patch of cactus and waited as she cackled. When she took a breath I jumped in. “I’m coming over the wall, you need to stop shooting for a minute.”

Phyllis coughed at her next laugh, and then stopped and looked at me. “You? Oh, he came Molls, he’s here. I owe you five bucks.”

“Thanks Phil! You gonna let me over?” I was struggling to keep my voice low, and I was getting worried about how much light the psychic phone was producing.

Phyllis put on a serious expression and nodded at me, lips pursed. “Yes, Tyson, you are clear to approach. You and your helmet.”

I ignored her and shut the phone off, looking around hurriedly. My little section of the desert was still, and I was alone. That made me more nervous for some reason, and I scooted hurriedly to the sloping privacy wall around my site.

It was weird, I never saw it from this angle, and it made me feel kind of lost, even though I was so close to where I had called home for the past few years.

Once I made it to the wall, I looked around quickly to make sure nobody was coming, and then I scrambled up to the lip. A roaring fireball flew at me when my head peeked over the ridge and I tumbled gracelessly back to the bottom as Phyllis belly laughed.

Another, shorter climb this time and I was staring at Phyllis from inside the privacy wall. The mech was bent over and she was still laughing, trying to catch her breath, one giant metal hand pointed at me.

I hurriedly moved over to them but held my position as an explosion lit up the sky just on the other side of the wall. Gunfire started immediately after, and Rayna shouted orders between the cacophony.

Molls uncoiled herself from inside the Lincoln but kept her body very low. My blood boiled at the expression of fear on her face, but I just approached and crouched down beside her. She was clinging to the car, her scales vibrant yellow.

“Hey Molls,” I said. I reached out gently for one of her hands, and when she met my eyes through the slits in my helmet, I smiled at her. “It’s going to be okay.”

She had been crying, her eyes were puffy and red rimmed. But when I told her it would be okay, the color in her scales softened a bit. I just rested my hand on top of hers, and she took a deep breath. Phyllis suddenly moved, her mech’s legs whirring and thudding against the ground.

A vehicle fled the combat behind them, its back end in flames as it crested the privacy ridge. Phyllis took a wild shot at it, but the driver saw her and dodged, and the wire frame buggy threw up sand as it slid around the ball of fire.

Phyllis lunged for the vehicle, her mech’s legs churned the desert sand as it moved. She and the buggy crashed into each other, and the mech went down in a burst of sand and scream of metal.

The buggy’s tires whirred, and its engine screamed as it teetered on top of the war mech’s chest. My focus was on staying between Molls and what was happening, and I moved to the front of the car.

I turned to see Phyllis heave, and the buggy crashed onto its side. She came up over the side of it and her giggles mixed with terrified screaming as one of her metal hands ripped into the vehicle. Her legs heaved and the buggy bounced.

The passenger fell free and rolled away in a tumble. They rose in an aggressive run, directly toward Molls. As Phyllis physically tore apart the buggy and its driver, I raised my shotgun and fired at where the dark streak of movement was about to be.

Whatever it was went down with a squeal, thrashed heavily in the sand for a few seconds, and then stilled as Molls stared at it with wide open eyes. The headlights of the buggy washed over the scene in the sand, and I saw the body.

It was Retha, the Nah’gh woman from before, who had threatened us. She was gripping a knife and pistol in her hands, and her face was frozen in her final expression.

Molls turned her head away and tucked it into the side of the car with a sob.

An Orc mercenary from the other side of the ridge roared toward Molls and I, rifle gripped in his hands. I rose with the shotgun pressed to my side and put the car between myself and Molls before I squeezed the trigger.

The triple-aught buckshot slammed into the Orc’s chestplate and he squealed in pain as jet black blood dribbled from his midsection.

At least one of the balls had gotten under his armor, and I grit my teeth as I racked the slide on my Mossberg.

He raised his rifle and I shot him. This time I aimed for his head, and we were significantly closer to one another. The buckshot splashed into his face, and he dropped to the sand.

Rayna chased him over the hill, with the rest of the BlueCleave mercenaries at her back. She looked down and grabbed the rifle from the dead Orc. Then on her way past me, she grunted and shoved my shoulder.

“Good work, boss.”

The rest of the Hobb squad marched past, some carrying recently looted items. The final trio over the hill was slower. One of the hobbs was being carried by two others and had a big smear of dark gray blood across his midsection. They each had an arm slung across their shoulders and were helping the partially conscious tribe member.

Rayna pointed at a patch of ground near the Lincoln, and they set the injured Hobb down. He grunted and gritted his teeth, but otherwise remained still.

Rayna pulled her medical box and got to work as the rest of the hobbs worked on stripping the two dead mercenaries of their armor and weaponry.

One of them checked in with Rayna, and at a quick word from her, a group of them returned across the hill to do the same on the other side.

I looked at the two aliens I had shot and felt a little sick, remembering them from earlier in the day. The Orc and Nah’gh in armor on the sand had been with the priest when he threatened our plot of land.

It upset me that they were dead, but it didn’t upset me that I had done that to them.

It was an odd feeling, and I didn’t get a lot of time to process it before Rayna and her troupe of hobbs were back and urging us to move.

Chapter 25

Molls reached out for my hand, eyes swimming with tears. I hesitated, but took it, and she slithered into place at my side. Her body was low, and she was leaning toward me, shuddering, and blinking often.

I sighed.

She was in shock and it was my fault. But Retha had been rushing her with a knife!

Not me.

They were trying to assassinate our priest, and that was also my fault. I had gotten her into this by naming her earlier in the day, and then to top it off I had failed to recognize that and left her outside the fortifications and at their mercy.

That made me realize the injured Hobb was also my fault and I paled as I looked at Rayna. She had taken over and was hauling him with another Hobb on the other side, a fresh bandage already soaking through wrapped around his midsection.

The weight of my fuckups and failures crushed me as we ran through the desert back to base.

I just hoped everyone would be okay. Fuck me. It’s a miracle any of us has survived this long.

Rayna’s troops collected as we moved, falling into place, and helping cover us as we ran. Both squads had run into no trouble, and they arranged their shields around Molls and the injured Hobb as they entered our march.

One of them created a ramp for Molls to easily climb the wrought iron fence at the edge of the campground and we were on the road in almost no time. The gate loomed close when Tolya screamed a warning at us, pointing frantically to our rear.

“Mordren!” The urgency in her voice spurred me to faster movement, and Molls suddenly tore free of my hand and slipped inside the open gate. I could hear her screaming the entire way, but it took me a moment to register that it was her making the sound.

Everything was coming at me too fast, and I couldn’t properly deal with any of it.

But when all the people around me quickened their pace, I did too. We sprinted as a guttural roar sounded behind us. It was in the campground, and I could hear footsteps racing closer.

Whatever it was, it covered ground in a hurry.

By the time I made it in the gate, Tolya was already heaving to swing it closed.

Rayna and the injured Hobb made it inside just in time, and then the gate clanked close and Tolya threw the simple deadbolt. A weight slammed into it and the doors swung inward so hard they knocked Tolya flying.

She tumbled to a stop in the gravel a dozen feet away, and the Mordren roared again. It clawed the gate, and metal screamed in the night, and then its head peeked over the top and I realized it was almost as tall as our wall.

A horribly reptilian face rose beside the gate, with a single gleaming eye blinking at us. I saw a patchwork of hardened armor scales, an eye with a shining red pupil, and a ridge of head spines before Rayna’s hobbs opened fire.

The face vanished with a growl.

An instant later, massive claws gripped the top of the wall, and the Mordren vaulted over it effortlessly, landing in the middle of the driveway.

The Mordren came from a small race of lizard-men. They were once three feet tall, and kind of cute. With big, armored segments all over their bodies, they became natural soldiers when BuyMort came to their world.

But integrating into the BuyMort system meant different things for different species, and to the Mordren, it represented an opportunity to ‘follow the path of the dragon,’ an important cultural adage about self-improvement and survival.

Over the millennia that passed since BuyMort consumed the Mordren, their species had become something significantly different than it had started off as.

What I looked at in Mr. Sada’s driveway was just over ten feet tall, and hugely muscled. A massive, walking lizard, with razor sharp claws and teeth, loomed over the compound.

Our own personal Godzilla, wearing tactical gear and cracking its knuckles looking for a fight.

Thick armored plating covered its body, and when Rayna’s hobbs opened fire on the monster, I could see the rounds sparking from it. It also wore armor, a full-body outfit of it covering everything but its head, hands, and feet.

Still, the thing flinched at the gunfire, so I raised my own shotgun and let it have a few pellets. It lashed out with a kick and sent three of the BlueCleave hobbs flying. Thankfully, they sailed into one of my piles of air mattresses and were moving again as soon as they landed.

Phyllis engaged it then, taking an aggressive step forward and raising her fusion cannon. It turned to face her and charged, dropping to all fours to race across the driveway and leap onto the mech.

The fusion blast went wide, whistling over the wall as the Mordren grappled with the mech. I could hear Phyllis inside, straining, and my fear spiked as I ran to secure Molls. I got her in the house’s doorway before turning to run back to Phyllis.

She and the Mordren were locked in combat, rolling violently in the driveway. The mech’s grip on the creature had shifted to a leg, and Phyllis’ other arm was still trying to aim the fusion cannon at it. It had the cannon in a firm grip, and kept the weapon pointed away while it discharged several times.

Most of the shots went into the sky, but three slammed into the newly constructed wall. It held up, but the weapon left giant scorch marked craters in the mud wall. The BlueCleave hobbs in the line of fire dove out of the way of the last blast as it rocketed into the wall.

Then the Mordren did something stupid and hurt my friend. It stomped on Phyllis’ free arm with a foot, pinning the mech to the ground.

Phyllis grunted. “Oh, well now that’s just rude,” she protested.

Then the Mordren reached down and gripped the mech’s collar with one hand. It reared back and slammed the machine to the ground.

The hit hurt; she yelped in pain. I started moving toward the fight again, making sure I had a round in the shotgun. The Mordren slammed Phyllis into the ground one more time, and she made a strangely sharp grunt, before the mech went still entirely.

I roared in anger and raised my shotgun, firing at the Mordren and watching as the shot sparked from its natural armor plating.

Tolya grunted something from beside me and shoved her way past, moving to circle it. She was bleeding from her forehead, but otherwise appeared unhurt. It focused on her again and she ducked, as the Mordren’s tail whipped through the air above her.

I cycled my weapon and fired again, aiming at its face. Hardened eyelids slammed into place impossibly fast and protected it from my shotgun blast, but then it turned to me with a toothy snarl.

Molls screamed at me to run, and instead I racked the slide on my shotgun. The Mordren reached down and grabbed me with both hands. It brought me up to its face with the clear intention of biting my head off, so I shoved the shotgun into place between its lips and its gums and jerked the trigger.

The Mordren screamed in agony and squeezed me. When I say squeezed, I mean it reflexively crushed my ribcage and spine, and impaled my abdomen with all of its clawed fingers.

Molls screamed from the doorway again, and then I fell limp to the ground beside Phyllis. A cartoon starfish popped into my vision and looked at me with wide eyes. It raised an arm to its forehead and peered close.

“Damage detected user. This is a lot of work! You’ll need to break some things once we get started,” it chirped at me and I grunted, trying not to scream in agony.

I was broken.

Badly.

I could feel every bit of how broken I was, and it panicked me deep. My brain recognized the certainty of my death when I couldn’t take a full breath and couldn’t cough though I violently needed to. My blood slicked the ground underneath me already, and I could see the look Rayna gave me as I gaped like a fish.

I was not a patient she was going to rush to attend.

Then something in my lungs convulsed. Blood sprayed through the bars of my helmet, and I drew a ragged, tiny breath. The painkiller was in me already, but this was too much for even it.

I felt the internal tendrils start their work as the chest turbine wound up, and turned to watch the battle unfold before me, from the vantage point of my puddle.

I needed some distraction from the snapping and grinding happening inside my own torso.

Apparently, I had hurt the Mordren, badly. The shotgun at point blank range had torn off part of the reptilian monster's face, and it was bleeding profusely from its scalp and mouth.

When it whirled with a roar of anger and tried to slash at Tolya, she dove into a roll and it missed, turning toward me briefly.

I could see the damage I had done to it and was grimly satisfied to see that I had taken its eye on that side. It was squeezed shut, but still dribbling blood.

Rayna and the BlueCleave tribe were using that to their advantage, moving to keep a threat present on its blind side, while avoiding its counter attacks. The Mordren screamed in frustration and slashed, chasing after a Hobb.

Molls arrived at my side, and I looked up at her. My back popped, and suddenly I couldn’t move at all from the shoulders down.

Molls screamed as bone and tissue ground its way out of my chest turbine in a fountain and spattered her new clothing.

I croaked at her but couldn’t make any words happen, merely chokes and gasps. My chest and lungs were too mangled to manage the apology I desired from them.

She looked down to me at the sound, and her eyes welled up with tears again. She sobbed, and then whirled to look at the Mordren. It was rampaging after the hobbs.

Molls stared at it hard, and when she turned back to face me, anger had replaced the fear. Her scales deepened from yellow to orange, and then flushed a deep red. She charged the Mordren as my replacement spinal pieces were being installed.

The creature had dropped me right next to Mr. Sada’s Tesla, and I started climbing it as soon as I could breathe again. My ribs began being torn away and replaced next, and random globs of gore were ejected against the car from my turbine.

I never expected bone to be so wet, but it came out like thick jelly.

Lasers and flesh paste shooting tendrils swarmed around the outside of my body as more operated on the inside. The machine must have been creating artificial blood for me, because when I looked down at the pool soaking my legs and feet, it registered as a non-survivable amount at a glance, even through the cloud of drugs and emotions.

Not much below the waist worked very well by the time I managed to drag myself up to the side view mirror and drape an arm around it, but I did manage to notice that Mr. Sada had gotten his window fixed from the day before.

I grinned and dripped bloody spittle as I reached back a fist and smashed out his driver’s side window. The turbine spun up faster, and more bones began to pop. Something tore free in my midsection, and I felt a thick replacement being shoved into place.

I leaned over and smashed the rear window on the driver’s side.

More slop spewed from my turbine and covered the side of Mr. Sada’s Tesla in gore. Thankfully it was low enough to miss going in the windows. Then something popped into place in my back, and I could stand again.

Once I got my legs under me, I staggered around to the back of the car and smashed the rear window before my starfish appeared again and saluted.

“Good work user! You have enough charge to finish your current repair!” It announced gleefully, and then vanished.

I broke the other two windows on my way by the other side of the car, just to be safe. Both fists shot through the glass and I started marching toward the Mordren again, overcharged and angry.

Rayna was running out of hobbs, the Mordren kept knocking them aside and injuring them.

As I ran around the corner, the Mordren finally got Tolya with a tail whip, and she rocketed toward me. I dove to intercept, and we tumbled to the gravel in a series of abrasions and grunts.

My starfish appeared and gasped at the fresh injuries. It shook its head, gave me a stern look, and tendrils slid out from between the armor plates to get to work.

Tolya rolled free and shouted, but when she saw it was me, just nodded and offered me a hand up. I was glad to accept it, but before she could say anything, I ran for the Mordren.

Molls had finally engaged it, and as I watched, she slid around it in a series of rapid movements, wrapping her tail around its entire body.

The Mordren howled as its limbs were crushed to its sides. Molls screamed back in its face, opening her mouth fully and distending her jaw in anger. Her hands were balled into fists and she heaved, trying to apply crushing force to the monster.

It stood firm, and I could see the look on its face. It was going to hurt her.

I ran, stumbling. The shotgun lay forgotten behind me, in a giant pool of blood. I was moving on synthetic blood and whatever this painkiller was. My new composite bones worked better than my originals, and those were a paste mostly sprayed across Mr. Sada’s Tesla and driveway anyway.

Spilled milk.

As I ran, I saw the Mordren’s claws flash, from roughly the middle of Molls coils. Her blood splashed against the backyard tile in the moonlight, and she screamed in pain.

Molls uncoiled, rapidly, falling aside. I saw her blood on the tile, and in the air, and I charged. My arms pumped and my blood-soaked shoes slapped the gravel. All I could think about was how still Phyllis was, and how red Moll’s blood was in the air as I moved.

Time slowed for my mind as memory surged and gripped me again. This time, my father and I were in Pakistan, and I was thirteen years old. An old man with deeply wrinkled brown skin, a long wispy white beard, and a plain, dirty turban wrapped around his head sat in a chair opposite my father. A platter of tea sat between us at a small table outside this man’s home. He was famous for helping people, and my father’s quest had eventually led to this man.

“The issue, of course, is not with your son at all, Mr. Dawes. The boy is possessed of tremendous natural talent, he is a savant. If he played piano, we would celebrate him and compare his ability with music to Mozart or Bach.”

The man templed his fingers in front of his beard and looked over at me with serious eyes.

“The issue with your son’s tremendous gift is the world it was born into. Violence is not a gift, in this world, it is a terrible burden. A responsibility. Your son’s gift must be buried in a box, hidden from the world. Never to be opened, except at the edge of great need.”

This man, this guru, mystic, healer, whatever you wanted to call him. This man had finally helped me. I understood what my problem was, after we left him.

In order to exist in the world as it stood, I simply could not use violence, no matter what my instincts told me. I swore off violence that day, and began my therapy as soon as I returned home. I repressed and suppressed every violent urge I had from that day forward, until it became a habit, and I was no longer consciously aware of it.

The edge of great need had simply never arrived for me, since that day in Pakistan.

Until the mordren hurt Molls.

It all came rushing back to me, and as sure as I had been about the abandonment of violence then, I was more than sure about embracing it again. I let go entirely, and let my instincts carry my movements as I pumped my arms and charged.

Molls’ body came clear just as I hurtled into the Mordren. I just ran at it full force, with my head slightly lowered. The top of my helmet bashed into the Mordren’s nose, and it squealed as it toppled over backward onto the ground. One claw went to the tip of its nose, where blood fountained.

The other hand I immediately stomped on. It was open in the dirt as the Mordren lay on its side, and I took a stepping leap to land on it with both feet, heel first. The armor plating across the reptile’s body didn’t protect him from crushing damage, and I felt bones first break, then shatter, as the Mordren’s scream became piercing.

Its jaws stood wide, and it hissed viciously at me, before swiping with its claws.

I raised an arm and allowed it to tear ribbons out of my own forearm, before grabbing its wrist with my hand. More lasers sprouted from my starfish to begin emergency cauterization.

The Mordren hauled on me, dragging me closer when I refused to let go of its wrist.

I left the ground in a jump and kicked the Mordren in the same place my helmet had bashed it. The creature squealed and tried to wrest its hand back from me as my cartoon starfish arrived to dance in joy at how much charge I was getting for it.

I just launched myself on top of the Mordren, and then twisted savagely as we landed. The arm dislocated in both the elbow and the shoulder, and the sound of mixed anger and pain became pure pain again.

The Mordren squealed loudly and started trying to scoot away from me with its back legs. Both arms were cradled into its midsection, as well as it could with the injuries.

It was then that I noticed Rayna and her hobbs all gathered around. They held weapons at the ready but were just staring at me.

I looked down at my foe, curled up in front of me and squealing. Its back legs kicked and scrabbled at the dirt, and it wheezed and made a sharp keening sound. One eye was closed and swollen, bleeding. The other was wide open and staring at me as the creature on the ground took a long shuddering breath. I could see on its face the fight had gone out of it. It was just quivering there, hoping for the violence to stop.

Molls said my name, quietly, from the other side of the hobbs. “Tyson,” she almost whispered, and I turned to look at her instead of the Mordren. A clawed and bleeding section of her tail was held in her hands, and her scales were tinted a deep yellow again. “It’s over, Tyson. Please stop.”

My eyes returned to the Mordren, and I shook my head. “Yeah.” I pointed at Rayna, and she approached. “Patch up Molls, she’s hurt.”

Rayna nodded at me, blinking. “Yeah boss.” She turned and pointed with her new plasma rifle at the Mordren. “What you want done with him?”

“Him?” I looked where she was pointing and quickly looked away. The Mordren was in some kind of pain shock and was panting rhythmically while staring at me with a giant, fear-bulged eye.

“Worth a lot either way boss. Ransom better, but corpse good morties too.” Rayna tipped her chin at me. “Your call.”

My head hung and I was glad no one could see my face at that moment. “Ransom? Are you telling me that’s a person?”

Rayna nodded at me, her eyes narrowed. “Yeah boss. Mordren. Thinking person, like rest of us. Just more lethal.”

“Help . . . help him. Please. I . . . I didn’t know.” I turned to the Mordren on the ground and shook my head. “I’m sorry.”

He panted on the ground in response, eyeball bulging at me from behind his shattered snout.

I shook my head and went to go check on Phyllis. That sound she made scared me. Nothing else seemed to be coming in on our heads, and it struck me as a good time to see who was hurt.

Thankfully, Phyllis didn’t end up needing my help. When I arrived, I saw that her helmet was open and she was calmly watching TV again, the mech in a lounging position. As I approached, she turned to face me, and I recoiled in horror.

Part of her skull was covered in new metal plating. It pulsed with soft blue light from beneath the metal.

She waved at me, the mech’s arm casually flopping back and forth. “Hello dearie. We win yet?”

Her pupils were the size of dinner plates, and one of her eyes wouldn’t focus correctly on me. It swam a little, trying to track where I was, while the other stared directly at me.

Quickly, she gave up and went back to her TV. A serene smile spread across her face. Whatever my starfish suit gave me for pain, I think her suit had something better.

“Yeah, Phil.”

I hesitated and looked in the mech a little closer, risking another glance under her nightgown. I needn’t have worried, the mech was covering her entire torso and back with sheets of metal. The same soft blue light pulsed from those as well. “We won alright. How are you doing?”

She blew a tiny raspberry. “Pft. Fine. Just not allowed to move for the next twelve hours.”

I pressed my lips together and nodded. “Mmhmm. Mmhmm. Can I ask why you’re not allowed to move for the next twelve hours?”

Phyllis sighed and looked at another screen in her mech, using her arm to swipe it up in front of her. “Fractures to skull, spine, ribs, hips, and my left collarbone. You want all the technical names of each bone, Mr. Fussy?”

I backed up and shook my head, hands raised in surrender. “No thanks Phyllis, I’m just glad you’re okay. Can I get you anything? Some trail mix, perhaps?”

She turned her head toward me and scowled. “Yes Tyson, some trail mix would be lovely.”

Then she lifted a bag of it from her mech’s cockpit and waved it at me.

“Good thing I’m a big girl and know which way to put on my panties, huh?” Something on her TV caught her interest and she waved it back up. She had gotten really good with that TV system. Shocker.

My helmet bobbed as I nodded again. “Yes Phil, it sure is. You let me know if I can do anything for you while you heal up, and hey Phil?”

Her face looked at me again, ringed with metal and lights. My best friend.

“Thank you for protecting Molls.” I smiled through the helmet at her, and she snorted again and looked back to the TV. I turned to walk away, heading inside to check on Mr. Sada, Doofus, and Hord. “I’d be lost without you, Phil!”

She chuckled and nodded, never looking away from her TV. “Damn straight.”

Chapter 26

I picked my way through the living room, which was settling down as the gobbs all returned from their vantage points at the various windows. Many of them were gulping at their bottles of d’jhz and talking in their own language.

The big gobb scowled at me, and several of the gobbs around him chattered quietly while staring. I shook my head and ignored them, then walked into the kitchen.

Molls was there, with Rayna patching her up. The obb knelt at the stairs, applying a line of sizzling foam to the Nah’gh priest’s body from a dispenser with a plunger at its back. Molls was breathing in relief and when I entered, her eyes went wide and she looked away, scales flushed a soft pink.

They had changed, I realized, looking at them. Where before Molls had a pink outline to her scales, it was now layered pink and red. A new layer of dark red stayed present on top of the pink when her scales would flush with color, or when she was her natural pearlescent white resting state.

I pulled my helmet off and she looked at me again, furtively. Dirt and blood was smeared on my face, and I bent to the sink to wash it off. It felt amazing, and I made another mental note to figure out how Mr. Sada had water and power while the rest of us were cut off.

If I ever got a second to breathe, that was.

It was nearly ten o'clock at night, and I was exhausted. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I was starting to crash hard.

The air conditioning had been off all day, so the house was warm to me, even shirtless as I was, but Molls was shivering. I stopped on my way to the basement and looked at her. She didn’t meet my eyes.

“I’ll find you something warmer, Molls.”

WINTER CLOTHING AT ITS BEST! THE HOTTEST HOT, PERFECT FOR A COLD, COLD DAY. WARNING: MAGMA WEAR IS NOT FOR USE BY ALL SPECIES. PROLONGED USE OF MAGMA WEAR MAY CAUSE ISSUES WITH FERTILITY IN GONAD-BEARING SPECIES. USE MAGMA WEAR RESPONSIBLY. 6000 MORTIES, 3.3 STARS.

I tactfully waved the ad away with a single finger. I was getting better at this as time went on. Molls blinked a handful of times and lowered her head.

“Thank you, Tyson. I would appreciate that.”

Before I closed the door behind myself I heard her say my name again and I leaned back to meet her eyes.

“The church has accepted my registration at your encampment officially. Happy Trails is flagged as church affiliated, systemwide. The Dearth Conglomerate won’t attack again.”

I nodded and tried to smile, turning back to the stairs.

Mr. Sada was fine. He and Hord had locked the basement door to keep out sneaky gobbs, but otherwise hadn’t been disturbed by our problems outside.

That was yet another key I had I really didn’t think he was aware of. When I descended the stairs, Mr. Sada was laying on his stomach, dangling over the wrong side of the mattress and staring at his TV with a small smile on his face.

On screen I saw that there had been intense fighting up north, the blue screen behind the male nah’gh and female orc correspondent resplendent with mounties grappling with orcs while laser fire, plasma beams and good ol-fashioned rifles blew people into bloody corpses.

“The Battle of Sticky Syrup rages on as Canadian forces under proclaimed General Winston Henry continue their defense against a force of mordrens who have united and arrayed themselves against the men. The national syrup reserve happens to be within the same compound the remaining Canadian government sheltered in, and when the mordren attack force descended upon them, it became a full-scale conflict within seconds. The scattered military and police forces are under tremendous threat as the giant beasts appear to have developed an addiction to the syrup and are not backing down despite massive casualties to both sides of the fight,” the orc woman recited mechanically, her speech clearly read to her on teleprompter.

The nah’gh host leaned forward toward the camera, his facial scales framing his snarling grin in a way that reminded me of the devil himself. “What a wildly inappropriate name for such slaughter. Nu-Earth is so refreshingly aggressive. Delightful! Over to you, Barbara.”

Mr. Sada’s legs were bent at the knee, and his be-socked feet swayed lightly in the air. A glass of wine was beside him on the concrete. Hord was asleep in a chair beside the d’jhz pallets. Doofus was flopped out on the concrete beside him, blissfully snoring.

Mr. Sada noticed me and waved. “Hey, Tyson! How’d it go?” Hord jerked awake with a snort, before settling back with a deep breath. I wondered briefly what Mr. Sada paid him. Probably not enough.

“We won. We’re part of the church of BuyMort officially now, as a domicile for one of their priests. That gives us some protection, at least for now.”

I sat heavily on the bottom step and rested my elbows on my knees. Doofus plodded over and flopped onto my foot with his lower jaw, looking up at me mournfully through the top of his head and bunched up wrinkles. I couldn’t help but pet him and smile a little.

“We owe this church anything?” Mr. Sada gently kicked the air with his legs, as he took a delicate sip from his wineglass.

“I honestly don’t know. It feels like because Molls is a member, and she lives here, this place is now listed as a church residence. That means other factions won’t fuck with it. I think the church is big shit.”

I sighed and hung my head.

“Don’t have a very clear picture of it all, boss. Just kind of scrambling to keep up at this point.”

Mr. Sada nodded, swishing his latest wine around before swallowing it noisily. “You need a break, Tyson. Why don’t you crash here tonight?”

He turned back to his screen and wine and started moving his shoulders slightly with some dance number happening on the screen. Mr. Sada was a big fan of those overinflated talent shows, especially those where people sang or danced, and it looked like he had found an interdimensional version to enjoy on his psychic TV.

I wondered how much that package cost a month.

After a couple of moments where Mr. Sada strictly reacted to his TV screen, I realized I had been dismissed and stood to leave. Doofus noticed too, and slipped out, shoving his way past me. As I tread heavily up the stairs, Mr. Sada shouted a cheerful goodnight and Hord startled awake again.

I grunted and left the basement, locking the door behind myself. Molls was gone, but I knew where to look for her.

Doofus slipped away upstairs, and I figured he’d crash in Mr. Sada’s guest room. He liked to hide in there sometimes when he was stressed.

But before going to look for either, I decided to check in on what Rayna was doing.

The hobbs were gathered around, various parts of them bandaged or obviously bruised. The fight against the mordren had ensured that most of them took some portion of the beating, but these hobbs were pretty tough.

They were also cheerful, which confused me until I spoke to Rayna. She was working on the mordren. One arm was in a sling already, his elbow and shoulder put back in place. Rayna was trying to affix a scanning device to the creature’s hand, but it recoiled involuntarily and hid the injured limb. As I approached, Rayna stood with a grunt and turned away, frowning. She noticed me and lifted her chin in greeting.

“Boss. Good. Mordren hurt bad. Needs doctor. Eye repair, scalp reattachment. Can’t scan hand, but sure it crushed. More than what I can do.” Rayna raised her lip and shook her head. “Need mordren doctor too, not cheap.”

I stared at the ground for a few silent seconds, then intentionally activated BuyMort. Immediately I was faced with a snarling mordren in full armor, a gleaming badge peaking above the brow of his helm and a speech bubble pouring out from his mouth.

“USE YOUR HEAD MORDREN – GET THE BEST. GET MORDHEALTH. BONE REGENERATION SPECIALISTS. PRETTY GOOD AT BLEEDOUTS TOO. PRICES PATIENT DEPENDENT, WE ACCEPT AFFILIATED PERK INSURANCE ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS.”

A sort of ticker ran along the bottom in black background with white lettering.

Medical specialists for hire, all areas, all dimensions. Mordren certified.

I clicked on it and the screen swarmed over me like it had before with Clippy. But now I was standing in a medical bay, filled with bloody screaming mordrens.

“PREMIUM CARE BY PREMIUM DOCTORS. MORDHEALTH CARES.”

I was tired and unthinking. I rolled through the throbbing and pulsing squares, each one of the patients clearly demonstrating some sort of horrid wound or illness, and when I saw a mordren who’d apparently been hit by a train I stopped.

“That one,” I told him.

I briefly wondered if I’d said the words out loud or if they had remained in my head but it really didn’t matter. A price flashed and I paid the exorbitant fee without really registering how much it was. Most of my remaining fortune from Spider City went into a hired doctor contract.

I had just under fourteen thousand morties remaining. Didn’t matter though. I just needed to help this broken person in front of me.

This person I had broken.

I couldn’t get the look on Molls face out of my head. The way her voice shook when she begged me to stop hurting him.

A BuyMort pod shimmered into existence with a violent blink. Scorched ozone wafted by me as the pod found a clear space in the yard, projected an outline to back away from, and then warped in our doctor, and his entourage.

I was surprised to see a human in a long white coat.

He wore goggles on his forehead, with bulging, colorful lenses. He also held up a small chunk of glass that projected lights and tapped at it while pointing the device at me.

He approached, but his guard got to me first. A Nah’gh man wearing familiar composite armor and carrying a high-tech looking rifle was suddenly in my face. He slithered in a circle around me and then moved to block the doctor with a beefy arm. I checked his tail and noticed that he, too, was significantly shorter than Molls.

“Careful Doc, he’s wearing some kind of weapon.” The snake man fixed me with an untrusting glare, but the doctor frowned and showed him the chunk of glass.

“That’s the client, Tohl. It’s fine. See if you can’t find me the patient, huh? I’ll be fine, I know this world. Kind of.” The man smiled at me as he walked the last few steps. “Hi there. I’m doctor Julian Miles, at your service. Where’re our patients, I read the file as non-critical?”

I nodded and pointed behind him, to where his guards were moving the hobb squad back and policing their weapons. They gave them up willingly, the contract had stipulated relinquishing temporary control of all weaponry.

His other guard was also human but dressed in the same composite armor our aggressive priest’s friends wore. He was pointing at Rayna’s hobbs, making them back up further.

“Hey, some of those hobbs are patients,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow and looked at me. “Really? hobbs?” His lower lip jutted out. “Alright, your money to waste. Who’s worst off? The mordren?”

I flinched but nodded with a scowl. “Yeah, the mordren. He’s having some kind of shock reaction, I don’t know.”

Dr. Miles scowled at that and turned, moving at a quick pace to the downed mordren. His bodyguards expertly parted and allowed him access. They had set up a small tackle box of medical supplies, and as I watched, he knelt at the mordren’s head and braced his forehead with one hand to look into his eye.

“Can you hear me? My name is Doctor Miles.” He lowered his goggles and focused on the bloody closed eye. “I am a non-combatant doctor, called here to help you. Do I have your consent to treat your wounds? Answer quick buddy, this is pretty bad.”

The mordren croaked something, and Dr. Miles clapped his hands and dug a large syringe from his coat pocket.

“This is a general anesthetic, powerful enough to work on your system. You’re going to feel sleepy.”

He injected the mordren between two armor plates on his neck. Even with the large, sharp needle, it was an effort for him to manage.

“Honestly, you should go with it. Better off not being awake for what I have to do to fix that hand.”

As he looked down at the limb and tenderly touched the wrist above it, his goggles shifted in hue, and projected a soft light onto the hand. I could see the bones beneath the surface, as the light made the flesh translucent where it shined.

His hand was crushed. Dozens of breaks, many of the bones were ground into fragments.

Dr. Miles looked to his human guard. He knelt on the ground next to the mordren and coughed lightly.

“Dry here, we in a desert or something? Hey, Franky? Can you call for the mobile adjustment unit and get it set up? I want to check this sling work here.”

He pointed at the other arm, wrapped in a sling after Rayna had tried to help. As he crouch-walked around the mordren’s shoulders, his goggles shifted again, and a different shade of the same color began to project. This time the mordren’s muscle and ligature was displayed, along with joint seating.

“Ahhh, this is good work. See here? The elbow ligature was torn in the dislocation, but the joint was seated back in place without causing further damage from the elbow spine. Who did this? He’ll need surgery to ever use the arm again, but this is a very good start at immobilizing the injury. Mordren are notorious for reinjury on dislocation settings.”

Rayna raised a hand. “Yes. Mordren joints sharp inside. Have to move just so, or they cut themselves.”

Dr. Miles grinned. He checked his now snoring patient by moving the mordren’s sharp toothed muzzle back and forth casually. “Wanna assist? I’ll teach you a whole bunch more.”

Rayna stepped forward immediately. “Yes!” She eagerly moved to his side and the two began an in-depth discussion of mordren anatomy while providing medical aid to the one I had beaten half to death.

I know he had been trying to kill us. He hurt Phyllis and Molls both, right in front of me. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the end of our fight. After I kicked him, I was pretty sure the fight went out of him. That last tug was him trying to get away, I was sure of it.

I remembered his legs kicking feebly at the sand.

I had been in the mode, just slaying a monster. Problem was, it turned out he was a person.

A person who had been beaten.

While he’d been trying to get away from me, I’d wrenched both his elbow and shoulder out of the socket and crippled him for life.

I didn’t have to hurt him as badly as I did, and that mattered. My head hanging again, I turned away and left as I heard Dr. Miles ask how the mordren had gotten injured.

On my way in the house, I grabbed my leather jacket off the kitchen counter and slung it around my shoulders. I had to take my mind off the mess.

What I needed to do was find Molls a blanket.

The first place I checked was Mr. Sada’s linen closet. His laundry service picked up and delivered, and left his bedclothes bundled into neat little paper-wrapped packages on a white painted wire frame shelving system. It was a swanky service.

SWANK’S LAUNDRY SERVICE - NOT ONLY DO WE DO THE DIRTY WORK, WE DELIVER!

I had to grin at the ad. Good to see they were still alive and kicking in this world gone sideways.

I found two comforters and a giant fluffy duvet, in tightly wrapped packages tied in colored string with hand-written notes identifying them. It was like shopping, I totally got why Mr. Sada liked that service.

Wonder what happened to them. If they were still operating from the same place. Maybe they had also hired Gobbs and built a fortress.

With my packages stuffed under an arm, I opened the doorway to the attic and called up. “Molls? It’s Tyson with some blankets.”

Her voice sounded from the window. “Come on up Tyson.”

I climbed the stairs and brought them up after me. “Hi. Sorry, took me a while to get everything squared away.”

She shook her head and looked back out the window. The shining moonlight made the scales in her hood sparkle silver and reflected in her oversized eyes. “I understand completely. Thank you.”

Molls accepted the larger package from me and eagerly tore into it with her nails. When it was revealed, she held it up appreciatively and then whipped it into the air. Her coils shifted as the large duvet settled on the plywood, and then they shifted again, and she was settling into place on top of it comfortably, a small smile on her lips.

“This is nice,” she whispered.

I handed her both blankets and she gratefully twirled them around her shoulders. Her clothing was still covered in stains, but it looked like it had mostly dried.

Most of what had hit her was droplet sized or smaller, I guess. Seemed worse in the moment.

I looked away as Molls noticed me staring and grimaced. “Sorry, Molls. About your clothes. That’s twice in one day.”

She carefully drew the blankets around her so that the blood stains were no longer showing and smiled gently at me. “I thought you were dying.”

Her eyes cast down, and then she turned back to the window. “Your moon is beautiful. It reminds me of my own.”

She was still smiling, but an oversized tear formed in her eye and splashed to the blanket.

“It was one of the reasons I chose Earth for my pilgrimage. Arizona was supposed to be warm, arid, and have a good clear view of the night sky.” Another tear fell onto the plywood. “Two out of three isn’t bad, but I was counting on that heat.”

Molls lowered her head and closed her eyes against the tears. Still, another formed and fell. “And now I have red in my scales,” she whispered.

My first thought was to leave. I was certain it was my fault. My violence. I had killed two people in front of her, and then beaten another into a whimpering heap.

While dressed like a movie psychopath.

She turned and looked at me, blinking before making space beside herself by the window. Her coils shuffled slowly to one side of the blanket, and I knelt down beside her to look at the moon.

“What do you mean red in your scales? Are you hurt? I got a doctor, I can go get him.” I rose to one knee, ready to leave if needed, but Molls held out a hand.

“That is kind of you, but no. This cannot be helped by a doctor. It’s just part of being albino for my people,” she said.

“You’re albino?” I asked, one eyebrow raised.

“The Nah’gh version, yes.” Molls sighed and shook her head, looking out the window for a long quiet moment before she continued. “Our emotions color our scales as we age. It’s part of our body chemistry and is considered a severe disability in Nah’gh culture, until outgrown.”

I frowned with a nod. “You can’t help but express your emotions. It’s not fair that the rest of us can hide them.”

Molls nodded, still looking out the window. “Yes. In our first century of life, we slowly gain permanent pigment in our scales through strong emotions.”

She held part of her own tail up to look at, and another tear fell. “I was hoping for purple.”

I hesitated but couldn’t say anything else. “I’m sorry, Molls.”

She didn’t respond and wept silently while staring at the color change on her tail. After a few moments, I decided to try and shake her out of it with a joke made in poor taste.

“I thought I was handling this whole situation poorly.” I made a face when she looked over at me with furrowed brow scales. She snorted a laugh.

“You are.” Molls chuckled again and turned back to the window, dropping her tail to coil back beneath the blankets. “But so am I. It’s nothing like what I was expecting.”

I sat quietly for a few seconds before responding. “What is?” She looked over at me and I blinked. “The end of my world?”

Her scales flushed yellow before fading quickly back to a pale white and pink hue with fresh red trim. “This is not the end. It is the beginning. Your admittance to BuyMort is as painful, or not, as your people make it. Most are not this painful.”

That made me think for a long moment. “You’re not wrong, exactly. But I really don’t know if blame is important in the face of this kind of . . . problem. I mean, I haven’t checked the death tolls in a couple minutes, but. . .”

The words turned to acid and I bit my tongue. “I have no grounds to moralize on that. I’m sorry.”

She stared at me and I sighed. “I just don’t know what to think right now Molls. At first I just wanted it to go away. But now, everything that ran anything is already gone, cause my world was pretty flimsy, being perfectly honest. Gone is gone, and what is, is. I think I’m doing a good job adapting to survive so far, but . . . I’m not required to like it.”

She blinked several times. “What are you saying? That BuyMort is a burden? The cause of your woes?”

I shook my head and shrugged. “I dunno what to tell you Molls. Yes. It feels like evil from my perspective. It came, and now my world is in ruins and I’m fighting for my life every day. I killed-”

And then I broke. It wasn’t a sob exactly, but I did choke on the word, just a little bit. An image burned in my mind of Retha’s final expression. My heart raced and I fidgeted.

Molls immediately lowered the blanket and started taking deep, slow breaths. She raised and lowered a hand as she did so, and I focused on matching my breathing to the rhythm her hand presented.

It distracted me, and the moment passed.

I focused on my breathing for a while, and she happily bundled back up in her blankets.

“You did what you had to, to protect me. That is your job. I understand and respect that.” Molls spoke softly. “I was frightened, and I apologize for my reaction at the time.”

It was my turn to snort. “You have nothing to apologize for Molls. I’m just working on my new reality.”

She burst into tears again, her scales flushing a deep pink. “And I’m supposed to be helping you!” she sobbed.

I turned and gave her a lopsided smile. “What a pair we make, huh?”

Her tears became laughter and she swatted me with her tail through the blanket. “Stop it, I’m new to all of this. Don’t tease me.”

Instantly, I shook my head and widened my eyes. “No way, you’re the reason we’re safe. No disrespect meant, Molls. You saved us tonight by getting that registration.”

When she didn’t respond immediately, I leaned over slightly and continued, “Not that I fully understand what that means.”

Molls nodded and composed herself, wiping at her eyes with the blanket. “This is now a registered residence of a church affiliate on official church business. Any other companies operating in this area will be informed, and none of them will risk attacking now that the church has us on the books. I am, frankly, stunned at the Dearth Conglomerate’s behavior tonight. They tried to kill you all.”

I shook my head again, slowly this time. “No Molls, they tried to kill you.”

Her scales flushed yellow again briefly, before converting to their resting state.

“I do not agree.”

She met my eyes, and the yellow flashed quickly again.

“If they did, that is significantly worse. I cannot believe that a priest of BuyMort would act in such a manner. We frequent new worlds, as helpers. Not aggressors. Not murderers. I have a meeting scheduled with this Garthrust tomorrow, and I am sure there is an explanation for all of this.”

“Well. Okay.” I nodded and stood. “I ordered a doctor for everyone. He should be by to check on your wounds, and the glass cuts from earlier.”

She looked me in the eyes as I moved to leave, her scales flushed purple. “Oh, thank you. Very kind.”

I nodded, not turning back to face her. “Of course. Goodnight Molls.”

Chapter 27

Her return goodnight was lost in the attic stairs opening. I closed them behind me and went to find someplace to crash.

I was exhausted.

Mr. Sada’s second floor guest room and Doofus’ adorable snores called to me, but I was intercepted before I could make it inside.

The doctor was leaning on the wall just around the corner, his goggles up on his forehead. When I approached, he grinned and lifted his chin. “Hey there you are.”

I squinted. “The mordren?”

He raised his hands into a defensive position. “Resting comfortably, properly immobilized. I set his hand, welded the bone together, and put it all in a cast. He’ll need to keep that on for a few weeks, but the bones will mostly heal like that. Same with his shoulder and elbow. Both joints have torn ligatures that I can’t fix without a surgical suite, but he should regain some movement and use from both limbs, even without surgery. He’ll never use that eye again, it’s toast. I dug buckshot out of it, been a while since I’ve seen that stuff.”

His speech was animated as he went down the list of injuries and I just stared, wondering at the man who had in a day become the member of an extraterrestrial private health practice. It occurred to me that humans must have been part of BuyMort even before Earth.

“The detached scalp is the easiest to heal, that should be fine in a few days. I got it stapled down real good, with some great cellular bonder anti-bio mix underneath. That’ll be a scar and nothing more. Knocked some of his teeth out, and the jaw is broken too. I welded those and wrapped it. Left you a few days’ supply of really strong stuff for him. Should keep him from feeling too much of this during the worst of it, and it’s all included in your contract. You went for the premium package, that includes pharma. He needs a liquid diet for at least a week though.”

His list finished, the doctor took a long breath and shook his head at me.

“Look, buddy, here’s the bottom line. I do medic stuff, not high-end orthopedic surgery. That mordren’ll live. He won’t be able to use either hand for weeks, maybe months. And he’ll never, ever be the same again.”

I flinched and leaned against the wall with a short sigh.

“You did that to him, right?” Doctor Miles asked.

I hesitated but nodded.

“Well, color me impressed. This Earth is rowdy, I’ve never seen a mordren so badly beaten hand to hand against a human.”

Dr. Miles shrugged.

“But care and feeding for a mordren won’t be easy. I already wrapped up my report with BuyMort, which means his merc company knows everything and knows he won’t be a fighter again without serious investment. You name a high ransom, and this guy has a history of failure like this, they’ll just ignore it and leave him to rot.”

My face must have looked pretty miserable because he shoved off the wall and pushed me lightly. “Hey, don't sweat it. Did what you had to; I don’t judge.”

“Can it be fixed?” I stared at the ground as I asked.

He shook his head slowly and shrugged. “The surgeries alone would be millions. If you got him augmentation for each permanent disability, that’d be tens of millions more. No offense brother, but your operation here ain't that grand.”

We stood in silence for a tense moment before he waved a hand. “By the way, your hobbs, they don’t need me.”

I frowned again. “I’m sure I saw one of them was gut-shot.”

Miles frowned and shook his head. “Yeah, but they don’t need me. That hobb leading ‘em is sharp, she got their wounds patched to acceptable levels. They’ll heal on their own in no time. Like tomorrow morning, no time.”

He hesitated at the still present confusion on my face.

“Oh boy are you greener than I thought. Hobbs heal fast brother. You can break ‘em and slice ‘em and burn ‘em and they’ll just heal right up from it. That’s why they’re pretty much all mercenaries, it’s how they live in BuyMort.”

I blinked a couple times and considered that. “Well, thanks for the tip. Got any more for me?”

Doctor Miles smiled at me with a slight squint. “No, I do not, but I do have a patient to get to. I’m looking for the albino conda. She in that attic?” When I didn’t immediately respond he continued, “the Nah’gh priest.”

“Oh, yeah she’s in the attic.” I met his eye and reached to shake his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“Well, the thanks is the five star, yeah?” Dr. Miles met my eyes and grinned wolfishly, before shaking my hand. He then produced a card and handed it to me.

“Call me anytime. I can get you in touch with a good surgical suite, it’s aboard a mordren military station in orbit around your Earth, all top notch equipment.”

Then he raised an eyebrow and pointed at my starfish suit. “What the hell is that thing? I’ve been operating in BuyMort for fifteen years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

My hand went to the box on my chest, and I blinked in surprise. “I actually don’t really know, Doc.”

He raised an eyebrow at me but nodded and shrugged. “Well. Don’t let me keep you then.”

I nodded and thanked the doctor, then moved to walk past him. Really, I could have asked him a million more questions, including where the hell he came from, but I was too tired.

He climbed the stairs behind me as I entered the guest room and closed the door. Doofus was asleep on the corner of the bed and looked extremely comfy.

I left the lights off, I could see well enough with the moonlight coming in the window, which overlooked the backyard and the mordren being bundled into the shed, under hobb guard. After they had him secured, I closed the window and turned away.

I didn’t bother getting undressed. Just took a leak, splashed some water in my face, and crashed on the bed with my jeans open. It felt like I was snoring before I even landed on the blankets.

When I awoke, it was to the high-pitched screaming of Mr. Sada in the basement.

I grabbed the pillow and shoved it over my face, but when gunfire followed the scream, I rolled my eyes and got up. As I was fastening my pants, BuyMort deducted a familiar amount from my morties total and informed me that my dream purchase had been made.

Doofus groaned at me from the bed and slumped into a more comfortable position, indicating he wasn’t inclined to join me. I left the room, and a pod zipped in from outside.

I really hated how often they were nearby.

It stopped in front of me in the hallway, and Therizze stepped out of its rainbow beam. “Good morning honey, I’m your dream come tru-” She stopped and cocked her head at me. “Oh hey, you again. Let me guess, just a dream?”

I nodded rapidly, lips pressed firmly together. It was difficult to resist shushing her, but I did motion for her to follow me back into Mr. Sada’s room at the end of the hall.

She was wearing even less this time. A very skimpy and mostly see-through bit of lingerie bedecked her body, and she chuckled at my discomfiture.

Once we were in his room and the door to the hallway was shut, I turned and faced the Nah’gh prostitute. She lounged against the side of Mr. Sada’s box spring, her short coil beneath her propping her up.

“Hey, Therizze. I am so sorry this happened again.”

She smiled and waved a hand. “No skin off my tail honey, I get paid either way. I enjoy my work, but an unexpected break is nice too. You keep this up, we’re gonna have to start sharing breakfast!” Therizze laughed.

I flinched as more gunshots sounded. This time Hord shouted for help.

“I would love that, but I have to go help with that whole situation, whatever it is. You can hang out in here until your pod comes, and I’ll try to remember to give you five stars.”

I bowed slightly as I backed out of the room and closed the double doors behind me. She smiled and nodded, still lounging on the bed in her skimpy underwear. It left little to the imagination below, and none what-so-ever above. Very see-through, and she was clearly quite cold.

When the doors clicked closed, I heard Molls’ voice behind me and froze. “Tyson? What’s going on?”

I walked with purpose toward her and pointed downstairs. She was in the corner of her hallway, the attic stairs looming open behind her. Her upper body was all wrapped in blankets, but her lower portion and very long tail were still mostly down the hallway. I noticed fresh bandages on both of her wounds.

“I’m on my way to find out. You should stay upstairs Molls, it’s not safe.”

“I heard a voice, is someone here?” She asked from inside her blankets.

“Yes, but just leaving. Accidental dream purchase, nothing to worry about.”

I tried to smile convincingly, and she nodded with a small yawn. My heart was in my throat, and I desperately hoped she wouldn’t ask for more details.

“Okay, let me know what’s happened please, I’ll be nervous otherwise.”

Molls turned and started heading back for her stairs, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned and ran downstairs.

My shotgun was at the ready as I unlocked the basement door and entered. The gobbs were awake again, and standing around grumbling, looking at the door. I scowled and shut it behind me as I ran down the stairs.

Mr. Sada and Hord were backed up against the wall, as a trio of slimes feasted on the knocked over pallet of goblin d’jhz. As I watched, one of the slimes used a tendril to throw a bottle of d’jhz on the floor and shatter it, spilling the liquid for the slime to roll over and begin absorbing.

Bubbles arose from the floor, and the slimes were all jiggling and vibrating at one another, making high pitched squeaks, and burbling farts.

“Go away! You’re supposed to be underground! Go fix your ship and stop stealing my stuff!” Mr. Sada raged impotently at them from his corner.

Hord finished reloading his pistol and leveled it at the slimes again. They already had several bullets each, harmlessly lodged in their bodies, trailing slow bubbles to the top.

I raised a hand to stop Hord and approached the slimes quietly. All I wanted was to slip past, and they really didn’t seem to care. They were very animated about the broken bottles of d’jhz all over the floor.

When I passed them, one turned slightly to follow me, but none of them stopped gobbling at the thick liquid on the floor.

I moved over to the bathroom door and walked in, closing the door behind me. Mr. Sada and Hord both gaped at me as I went, but I ignored them, searching for the target of my foray.

There it was, a fire extinguisher. It was on the wall behind the bathroom door. I grabbed it and pulled the pin, priming it for use, then I opened the door and started shouting.

“AHHH YOU BETTER RUN SLIMES!” I shrieked as I came out of the bathroom.

Mr. Sada and Hord both jumped, and Hord momentarily pointed his handgun at me before realizing his mistake and lowering it. The slimes all turned toward me, and one of them released a high-pitched squealing fart.

I squeezed the handle of the extinguisher and pointed the nozzle directly at the slimes. White extinguishing foam erupted from the end and streamed through the basement onto the first of them. I stopped a few feet away and watched.

The slime’s color started to change where the foam had hit it. It extended a tendril and wiped the extinguisher foam off its body, but the tendril started changing color too. The slime’s body darkened where the foam touched it, and the surface seemed to solidify and crack.

A series of excited burbling sounds began, and all three slimes panicked. One of them rushed me, and I hit it with the extinguisher’s foam too. It made a high-pitched screaming fart noise and immediately slimed in the other direction as quickly as it could.

The three slimes moved as one to the shelving unit I had moved the other day, and shoved their ways through it, into the giant vent beyond. As they slid in between the metal bars, the darkened patches of their bodies sloughed off and were left behind.

I turned to look at Mr. Sada, and he was clutching his empty little chrome handgun. The slide was open, but he was just kind of holding onto it for the sake of holding onto something. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and I was guessing he hadn’t really slept much.

Too much drywall would do that to you.

Instead of telling him off, I walked over and sat down beside him on the mattress. He was positioned on the far side of it, sitting with his knees up and his back against the concrete wall of the basement.

“Mr. Sada. These slimes are not guests. They are a problem. Is that vent how we access the abandoned army base?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

He blinked at me several times, before something seemed to click, and he started shaking his head. “No-no-no! That’s my way off this planet!”

I sighed and shook my head, before standing up to leave. “They’re going to eat you if you leave with them. That’s what they do, they eat everything.”

I turned to face him. “You need to order more goblin d’jhz. I’m broke, I can’t.”

Mr. Sada nodded quietly. He blinked a few times and stared at the vent behind the shelf.

To Hord, I said, “Get the gobbs to build a fortified and fully sealed gate over that vent. Mr. Sada will pay for parts.”

From his corner, Mr. Sada grunted. “Hey, now. Going around spending all my morties. Dickhead.”

I glared at him, and he nodded with a sheepish look on his face. “Okay, okay. I get it, these things are needed. But I ain't made of morties, and food is getting expensive.”

“What do you suggest?” I sighed at him.

My plans for Spider City were still a ways off, and I really didn’t want to just go selling off big chunks of it. The hope was to cultivate the area. Build it up, encourage the spiders to grow, build, and nest. Keep them contained and protected. Hire someone to work directly with them, obviously, but it seemed a rich enough resource to justify some expense.

He sighed. “Well, I have one thing, but I gotta look it up first. We can deal with it in the morning, it’s fine.”

Mr. Sada pulled up his psychic phone, and the face on his TV rolled its eyes and faded back into the fog. I saw it appear on his phone, and it was glaring at him expectantly.

I turned to leave and shoved the extinguisher at Hord on my way by. “There. Now we know this chases them off.” That done, I stomped up the stairs and locked the basement door behind me on the way out.

The gobbs were all there, standing in the living room with their arms crossed. The big gobb was in front of them.

“Just don’t. You all have plenty of d’jhz left, it was just some slimes that needed to be chased off. Mr. Sada is ordering more, and we have more work to be done. Go back to bed.”

I waved them off and turned to go back upstairs. It wasn’t even light out yet, and I needed more sleep. After checking in to see that Therizze had gone, I went upstairs to report the situation to Molls.

I found her bundled in her blankets on top of the thick comfy duvet. The window’s blinds were down, and its big blackout curtains were drawn. The only light in the room came from a bright device in Molls’ lap.

The same screen I had seen her using before.

Chapter 28 – Day 3

It was small and mostly clear, like the glass the doctor from the night before had used. Hers was bigger though and had a solid backing. It was alight with a slowly moving image of the night sky.

A privacy mode, I think.

She had been reading something on it when I entered, using the rattle on the end of her tail to swipe languidly at it.

“Hey Molls.” I spoke from the attic stairway and waved. “It was just some slimes in the basement, trying to eat all the goblin’s d’jhz.”

My face crinkled slightly when I realized what I had said. It was getting disturbingly easy to use that word in relation to the goblin drink, but it still sounded wrong saying it to Molls.

She blinked and scowled. “Did you say slimes? That’s what you said caused the BuyMort bug from earlier too?”

An ad popped up, Slime’B’Gone, and for half a second I thought we had our answer. But then I saw the poor rating. 1.2 stars. A sham product.

I nodded and she took a deep breath and waved me over. She lifted her screen and started swiping at it with her hands. As I approached, she held it out to me to read.

The screen was in English, though the various articles and apps around it were not. In the lower corner, I noticed an icon that looked an awful lot like those porny romance novels Phyllis liked to leave on the porch sometimes.

I peered at it more closely. It featured a topless human man with bulging chest muscles. I pulled my gaze away and focused on the article Molls had pulled up for me instead.

Slimes in your area? It Could be an Infestation.

I scowled. Yeah, that sounded right. I swiped down past the headline to read more.

‘The Sleem - a race of primordial beings whose introduction to BuyMort came from a world without society or civilization. Since the arrival of BuyMort, Sleem have existed in levels sub organized into pods, a hierarchical pyramid through which one bottom scavenger may win promotion and consume his fellow scavengers.

This is not murder to them because, paradoxically, Sleem is both one single organism and many simultaneously.

Slowly and only subconsciously have Sleem come to understand the BuyMort system. It took centuries before they were able to set up their own affiliate, and centuries more before they learned to specialize.

Sleem are scavengers who seize and sell everything they can get away with selling. They keep themselves constantly on the edge of the BuyMort Wave, following its clouds of Van Neumann probes across the multiverse, seizing all they can before first day citizens learn to set up MortBlocks and legitimize their possessions.

Even then they aren't finished, moving into a simplistic game of cunning that can only work on the naive new member of the BuyMort family, stealing as much as possible whenever possible while breeding and spreading.

Extremely dangerous in large numbers, they are opportunists and though they aren't exactly evil, you don't want to invite them to your wedding either.’

I frowned and handed Molls’ device back to her. She took it and blinked at me.

I sighed.

“Mr. Sada thinks they’re going to take him off-planet once they fix up their spaceship. He’s renting them the abandoned army base beneath the campground.”

Molls recoiled, her eyes wide. “I have no doubt they have a ship, but that will never happen. The little ones land, steal as much as possible while reproducing as much as possible before spreading. The original slimes that seeded this infestation will start eating each other as they can afford to, buying out one another’s shares in their affiliation. Then they fly on, keeping up with BuyMort and spreading like a plague across each world. If they bring him with, it will be as food. The Sleem are enemy to all but blessed by BuyMort with success. Many think that is a lesson to us all. A way for BuyMort to teach us further.”

She swiped the article away from her device, and I noticed she hid the romance book with a quick swipe too.

“The church does not condone the way they use BuyMort. It is unethical in the extreme to consume one’s business partners.”

I squinted. “I don’t think that’s the problem I take with them, but sure. So, this is an infestation. And if we don’t take care of it soon, it’ll become a serious problem. If it hasn’t already.”

She nodded. “If it hasn’t already. You’ll see more and more of them as they breed. The little ones reproduce like rabbiths.”

My smile came automatically, and I chuckled. “What’s a rabbith?”

Molls looked at me and smiled. She raised her hands to her head and pretended to have long ears. Then she peeled back her lips and put two fingers where her nose would be if she had one, to simulate buck teeth.

I smiled broadly and nodded. “Close, that’s a rabbit.” She raised her head in understanding and nodded, looking back to her screen.

On impulse, I decided to ask her a personal question. “Hey, how do you speak such good English? How does everyone speak English?”

Molls pulled up an app on her device and showed me a free game hosted by BuyMort that taught literally any Earth language. English and Chinese were the most popular versions accessed, according to the main screen.

“BuyMort is eternal. All encompassing. Yours is not the first Earth to become part of BuyMort’s family, and we have known for centuries that another was on the horizon.”

She lowered the device again and stared at the still-open app. “I have been planning to come to Arizona since I was a small child.”

Her eyes lidded, but she smiled softly. “I had a board on my wall in my room as a young Nah’gh, filled with pictures and drawings. It was so exciting to imagine the red desert, the jutting cliffs, your Grand Canyon. All of it so beautiful. When my rites of passage to the priesthood were confirmed, and my ascension as an affiliate of the church put through to great BuyMort, I could think of no better place for my first mission.”

My lips twitched up again and I met her eyes. “You’d love the Grand Canyon. It’s so much more impressive than it sounds, and pictures cannot do it justice.”

The serpentine woman across from me nodded. “It is the kind of thing that must be seen in person to truly experience. Your world is full of wonders, but it is so cold. Difficult for a Nah’gh like me to be comfortable here.”

I shifted and grimaced. “Well. You came in like . . . the start of winter. I hate to tell you this, but it’s gonna get a lot worse for a few months. You’ll love summer, but you just missed it.”

Molls nodded. “BuyMort moves as it wills and does as it does. Ours is to fold into its majesty. I will find my path here on Earth. I have faith.”

My nod was automatic. “I’m sure you will, and I hope to be of some help.” I stood with a slight groan. My new back felt weird. “I’m going back to sleep for a while.”

She nodded and smiled softly at me. “Thank you for telling me what happened. I trust you will deal with the Sleem.”

I wearily nodded. “Yes, I will deal with the Sleem. As I reached the stairs, I glanced back and smiled at her. “Tomorrow.”

She smiled back, and I went back to bed next to Doofus. Thus ended my second day of life within BuyMort.

When I awoke, I did not have to deal with another dream purchase, which was a relief. Therizze was going to start getting ideas, and the close call with Molls and her was terrifying. I did not want to face Molls if that realization set in.

Honestly, I was struggling to deal with the fact that I kept having sex dreams about a snake woman. I just couldn’t understand or accept it right then, so I happily ignored it and abused Mr. Sada’s trust by having a long, luxurious hot shower in his guest bathroom and dirtying the place up.

His towels were all giant fluffy white bath sheets, I loved them. My old towel that the Sleem had stolen felt like sandpaper and was about as thin.

Once I felt clean again, I got dressed in my hand-me-downs from Phyllis’ dead husband and walked downstairs with my helmet in hand. Rayna and Hord were both waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs.

Mr. Sada was in a bathrobe at the counter, nursing a steaming cup of coffee. I could smell it in the air and saw his French press on the counter beside him. It was steaming and still had plenty of coffee in it, so I moved in a beeline for the cabinet where I knew Mr. Sada kept his mugs.

Once I was holding the French press in one hand and the cup in the other, I turned to look at Mr. Sada, a question in my eyes. He waved a hand at me, and I happily poured.

The coffee was rich and dark, and I nearly scalded my tongue before adding a splash of cream just to cool it down. It occurred to me that cream would be running out pretty soon, without much of a way to replace it.

I wondered what BuyMort had for coffee additions, and immediately a cascade of pop-up advertising filled my vision. Imagine my surprise when I saw that they were almost all the same strange substance. Moth wing dust. My curiosity got the better of me and I zoomed in on one ad that looked glitzier than the others.

COFFEE? CHECK. OMELETS. CHECK. HINDIRAMOON NAVAN STEAK? CHECK. DRUMU-DUST MOTH WINGS - NEVER HAS ANYTHING TASTED BETTER.

500 MORTIES. 5 STARS.

Fucking moth wing dust. Fascination outweighed my revulsion, and I kept on watching. Encouraged, BuyMort shifted my view to a beautiful alien moth floating around a kitchen filled with happy green-faced orcs drinking coffee as it flew over their cups. The dust of its wings scattered down through the air, glinting like diamonds in the overhead light of the dining room.

A voiceover boomed. “CANDIED, THEY MAKE A GREAT SNACK! SNAP UP SOME DRUMU TODAY!”

My vision telescoped out a window and into the yard where a gaggle of children were tearing into candied moth wings. One looked up at me and grinned, dust all over his face and hands.

Huh. I dismissed the ad. Moth wing dust was not going to help me, it was just another reminder of what was being lost. Not just creamer, but my old life.

Cream in my coffee was out, but moth dust was a fuckin possibility.

Still, a cup of coffee felt amazing after the night I’d had. It was seven-thirty in the morning, when we convened for our morning meeting of the Happy Trails campground management, on day three of BuyMort’s arrival on Earth. The day food became a serious problem.

Mr. Sada leaned heavily on the counter, resting his head in one hand while sipping coffee with the other. A bottle of ibuprofen was on the counter beside him, and the empty wine bottle from the night before was in the trash by the sliding glass door. The story of his hangover was clear.

“Okay, now that everyone is here, we can start.”

I frowned at that but said nothing, and Mr. Sada continued. “We have problems. Rayna? Tell Tyson about our problems, please.” He finished and slumped back against the other counter, clutching his coffee.

Rayna stepped forward and waved away BuyMort, focusing on me. “Today day three. Food shortage day.” She paused, making sure I was listening. “By day three of BuyMort on any new planet with a civilization, day three usually when food become too expensive for most and bad things happen.”

I nodded. “Right. So what do we do about that?”

Rayna shrugged. “No offense boss, that your problem. BlueCleave off shift in half hour. Company provide rations before next deployment.”

My head started shaking before she was even finished. “And if we want to renew your contract? I was hoping to talk to you about keeping BlueCleave on, permanently. We need protection.”

Rayna’s eyes widened and she puffed out her cheeks. “Oof, boss. That not a small ask.”

I frowned and she blinked before continuing.

“Look. Can renew contract. Because food more expensive, new contract will be too. Plus, our merc company know you like us now, they charge more.”

Mr. Sada shook his head. “Do we really need protection now that we have the wall? Surely Hord will be enough?”

Hord sniffed and nodded.

I shook my head. “Mr. Sada, you’re not out there. Ever. Trust me, we need BlueCleave, specifically.”

I took a sip from my coffee cup and turned back to Rayna. Probably my last cup of coffee ever and I was drinking it absentmindedly, while working. Of course.

“Is there no way we could go around your mercenary company? Go around BuyMort?”

Rayna’s slab of a forehead furrowed. She looked me in the eye for a moment and then nodded.

“Yes. BlueCleave could quit company. Work for you direct, live here.”

She stopped and crossed her arms. “But we wouldn’t. Can’t feed us. Can’t pay. Can’t provide good shelter.”

An array of expenses opened in my mind, a kind of 3D notebook full of figures and numbers.

Hundreds of thousands of morties a merc in annual pay alone.

Millions for projected housing. A number that went up as the number of residents increased, of course.

Millions more to pay for a year of eating.

It was insane. But, ultimately, worth it. These mercs weren’t just good at what they did. I trusted them as well.

I shook my head. “What if we did all that? What if we could do all of that?”

She scowled and frowned. “But can’t. Off shift in half hour and going back. If you want new contract, contact BuyMortMercMart.”

My coffee was too hot, but I gulped it anyway, breathing out the scald. “Rayna, will you come for a ride with me? I wanted to give you a bonus for your shift, and it sounds like we don’t have much time.”

Her gray features seemed to flare slightly, and she nodded. “BlueCleave accept tips.”

I nodded. “I remember, and last night was rough. You all deserve a tip, but it’s one big thing, and it would be best if you claimed it to split up among the rest of your tribe.”

My coffee cup clinked when I set it down on the counter, and I noticed Mr. Sada again. He flinched at the sound and glared at me. Then he glanced between me and Rayna and narrowed his eyes.

I winked at him in response, a small smile on my lips. Hopefully he would think I was up to something clever and go back to being hung over. Mr. Sada too close to my business was bad news, especially since he technically owned Spider City. He hovered and screwed stuff up, terrible micromanager.

As I left, I turned to Hord. “Got the gobbs back on task?” I pointed at him as I asked, and he hurriedly nodded.

Rayna followed me into the garage and watched with interest as I unplugged the golf cart. When I sat in it, she narrowed her eyes but entered the vehicle. I noticed she had left her new rifle with her tribe but had a pistol and knife both within easy reach, one on either side of her body.

She also leaned slightly away from me and kept her eyes on me. I swerved to drive over near Phyllis, who was still lying flat on her back in the morning sun. Her helmet was closed, but I saw smoke exuding from it in small wafts.

“Hey Phil! How you doin?” I shouted to the helmet.

Phyllis snapped it open and glared at me from within a small cloud of marijuana smoke. “Just enjoying a nice peaceful morning Tyson, how are you?” Her voice was stiff and unhappy, and I smiled.

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better Phil! Gotta run! Catch you later!”

I gunned the gas again and got away from her before her mech arm could swat me and the golf cart. She went back to her TV immediately, I have no doubt.

Tollya opened the big metal gate at the end of Mr. Sada’s driveway for us and gave Rayna a sharp salute. I noticed Rayna waved a hand gently at her, but also saw Tollya follow us into the desert. She ducked and ran across the dirt road in my rearview mirror, vanishing behind a portion of newly built wall.

Goblin work crews were already out in the sun, happily operating that crane and making more segments of wall. As we drove by, a pod warped in a fresh supply of mud-crete, and a small swarm of the goblins began working to prepare it for movement.

“Busy.” Rayna grunted.

“Yeah. I intend to build up a wall around the entire compound. It’s a little bigger than ten acres, so lots of room to grow food and build homes. Which is next on my list. I’m just struggling to keep ahead of everything by myself. If I had a solid security team with me behind this wall . . .”

I took a deep breath as we drove in the campground proper. “Well, that would let me work on some stuff.”

We drove past Phyllis’ blown out trailer, and I saw Rayna notice it. “Right now I can barely keep ahead of the constant crisis trainwreck my life has become.”

Rayna sniffed and nodded.

We drove past the remains of the office and that caught her attention as well. I nodded and chuckled.

“Yeah, that was yesterday’s big fun event. Angry beetle. You guys would have work if you stayed, don’t worry about that.”

Rayna glared at me in confusion from the passenger seat, but I ignored her. We were approaching Spider City, and I wanted to park carefully.

Always important to park carefully, the spiders loved the golf cart, and I didn’t want to give them the opportunity. Not again.

I parked a safe distance from the grove of Joshua trees and got out. Rayna followed me, and I pointed to where we were going.

“Your tip,” I said, looking over to make sure she was paying attention. “Is to sell the contents of one of those trees. Your pick.”

We approached my string and sign barricade, and Rayna stopped in her tracks. She looked at me, and then at the sign I stood beside and shook her head.

“What danger?” She was scowling, staring at the cartoon spider on the sign. “Spider?”

I laughed. “No danger. Well. Not really. The black widows are kinda dangerous, but not to big things like us. It’s very gross here, and most people from my world are scared of spiders. Or at least, in this quantity.”

I stepped over the string and walked in an arc around the first large tree in the area. Part of me hoped she would pick that one just to avoid having to pay her too much, but that wasn’t the goal of this hasty plan.

I had thrown together a Hail Mary to get them to stay, and that meant going all in and offering her a fresh tree with two days’ worth of growth and building.

Scanning the trees, I could see which of the closest ones had the freshest webbing by the shine. There were still spiders crawling around, finishing up their night’s business, so I was careful to watch where I stepped and kept an eye on anything nearby that moved.

Rayna rested her hand on her holster but didn’t pop the snap just yet. She carefully followed me over the string and walked almost exactly in my footsteps to stand five feet behind me. I could feel the lack of trust and tension.

Good. It would make my tip to her that much more impressive. I turned and faced her and looked the tall gray alien woman in the eyes.

“Thank you, Rayna. Thank you for last night. You saved my life, and the lives of everyone I care about. You helped me beyond what I think your contract with Mr. Sada called for, and I recognize what a quality service your tribe offers. In thanks for that, please, take one of these trees.”

I swept my arm at the line of Joshua trees before us but pointed at one in particular. It had the largest amount of fresh webbing, and I was certain I had seen a new-looking egg sack.

“I recommend that one.”

Rayna blinked at me. She looked around sharply, as if expecting attack. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked at me closer. Her hand came away from her sidearm, and she looked hard at the tree I pointed out.

She muttered a few words to BuyMort and then went back to watching me. I merely smiled at her and continued watching out for rogue spiders. It was really uncomfortable being this close to Spider City.

“It is my intention to cultivate this area, once more immediate concerns are addressed. Food, water, security, shelter.”

I chuckled.

“My expectations are that the Gobbs will be here for a while. I have a lot of things I need built.”

Rayna listened but turned to watch as her pod arrived and began warping away select areas of the tree. She waved away the same error message I had received and then began scrolling through something, using lazy swipes of her finger in the air. My smile grew as she scowled at what she saw, and then her jaw dropped, and she looked at me again.

She said nothing and went back to her sell page. The hobb began shaking her head, and blinking. At the end her hand went to her mouth, and she stared at the invisible page before her. Then she turned and stared at me.

I nodded my head toward the golf cart and began moving. We left the area and stood on the other side of Spider City’s border before saying anything. By then, Rayna had composed herself. I moved to the golf cart and began a hurried inspection to make sure no fresh webbing indicated a stowaway.

Rayna leaned against the roof of the golf cart and met my eyes. “Good tip. BlueCleave thanks you.” Then she turned and shouted to the hillside nearby, “Tollya! Come get ride back!”

The other hobb appeared on the top of the hillside, shotgun in hand. She had been there, ready to back up Rayna in case of an ambush. I spared a thought for the kind of life they must lead but focused back on Rayna when she turned to speak to me again.

“You have good natural spider ranch.” Rayna glanced back at the Joshua tree forest. “Great natural spider ranch. That honest work. BlueCleave work with you to build it.” She nodded as she finished, as if deciding on something only as it was said out loud.

“I’m not offering half or anything, but I am offering a share. And I can’t promise anything up front about lodging or farming, or how fast it will all get built. We need a lot of work around here, and I would expect your people to pitch in.”

I sat down in the cart and looked at the wheel with a deep breath. “They would become our people.”

Rayna nodded slowly. Tollya approached then, her slapping footsteps distracting us both from the moment.

“Good tip Tollya!” Rayna clapped her battle sister on the shoulder. “Very good tip.”

Tollya smiled as she climbed in the back of the golf cart, but clearly didn’t understand. Rayna climbed in beside me and leaned over the seat.

“We work for Mr. Sada now, full time. This place is it. What we always talk about.”

I shook my head and started the golf cart, steering it in a tight circle. Tollya fell sideways, but grabbed the middle rail, and Rayna clutched at her own frame points on the cart.

“No, Mr. Sada is leaving soon. This will be between us. Me, as manager and the next owner of this MortBlock, and the BlueCleave tribe as residents and members.”

I pointed at Rayna. “I want you to be my chief of security, and for a while everyone will help out with everything, but as soon as possible I want you to specialize in only security. You and your tribe will be our primary guardians.”

Rayna nodded back at Tollya. “We work for him.”

I had to shake my head again. “No Rayna. You work for yourself. We’re all just working on a project together, that I’m in charge of.”

Tollya grinned and Rayna looked between her and me, before reaching her arm across the cabin. I happily lowered our driving safety by shaking her hand and looking her in the eye as we sped down the campground’s main road.

On an impulse, I decided to swing by Molls' area and sell those bodies, hoping that she wasn’t awake yet. We rumbled off-road to the backside of the privacy wall, where BlueCleave had ambushed the Dearth Conglomerate forces the night before. Scorch marks and gashes in the dirt where plasma fire or explosions had occurred was all that was left.

No blood stains even.

I crept the golf cart up the privacy wall and then steered it carefully down the other side. The Orc and Nah’gh woman were already gone, no traces of blood or shell casings. The ruined buggy was also gone, though the scars in the ground nearby told of it and Phyllis’ battle.

Rayna suddenly realized what I was doing and shook her head. “Yeah boss, that other problem needed to tell you about.” She waved an arm at the empty area. “Bodies all gone. We did patrol for them after the doc left, and they were all gone. Even clay soldiers.”

Tollya sat back and pursed her lips. “Scavenger birds.”

Chapter 29

I sighed. Of course. The ravens. It clicked in that moment. The ravens were pissed at me because Mr. Sada activated the MortBlock and cut off their regular scavenging grounds. These were our normal unkindness of campground ravens, but now they were using an interdimensional store.

Look it up, that’s what they’re called when they’re in a group. An unkindness. Tells you a lot. Somehow our unkindness of ravens got it in their head that this was my doing.

The thought of aggressive ravens with solid Mortie funding under them crossed my mind, but I waved it away. I simply had to hope that the bodies would buy us some time, as I had no idea what to do about the ravens otherwise.

All I could think to do about it was warn Rayna, which I did. She looked at me funny but nodded. I asked her not to shoot them, but to be careful and note any strange or aggressive behavior.

Best not to tip off a war.

I’d thrown a rock at one of these birds a single time back in my first days here, and they dropped rocks on my head for over a year. It only stopped when I started feeding them home-made suet cake semi-regularly and leaving them alone to pick through the campsites before I cleaned them after a guest left. Our arrangement was up for renegotiation, I supposed.

It wasn’t great to lose the morties from the bodies, but at least BlueCleave had looted them already. I had noticed some of them wore new armor and carried new weapons back at Mr. Sada’s compound. That was encouraging. This seemed to have been a very lucrative contract for them already, and now the chance to put down roots seemed attractive, since Rayna was convinced we had the financial means.

As soon as we arrived, she called all her people together to speak with them. After a few short sentences in their own language, a variety of reactions occurred. More than one of them openly cheered or raised a fist in excitement. Several seemed anxious about the idea, and more than one just didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

I noticed my helmet on the shelf beside the charger where I had left it and grabbed it, heading outside to talk to Tollya. She had been one of the hobbs that openly cheered. I offered the helmet as I approached and smiled at her.

“Hey Tollya, I wanted to say sorry for last night. I wasn’t paying attention when I bought this and didn’t realize it was from your wish list. I’d like you to have it, you earned it.”

“Had this boss before,” she started, meeting my eyes and approaching uneasily. Now that I looked at her close up, I could see how different her facial features were compared to the other hobbs.

She was almost cute, in a Tank Girl kind of way.

They each had differences in their appearance, they were just difficult to see without practice. “Boss bought vest, bought this vest.” She thumped her breastplate. “To disrespect me. He mocked us for wanting improvement.”

I nodded. “I understand what you must have thought. I’m not like that, and I will find a different helmet for myself. Thank you for your help last night.”

She blinked at that. It kept surprising the hobbs when I thanked them, and that was starting to bum me out. Tollya took the helmet and nodded slowly at me. She opened it as wide as it would go and tried to put it on, but the opening was far too small.

“I get adjusted. Upgrades too. Thank you, boss.”

I nodded and wondered what it would take to get them to just call me Tyson. Tollya was already walking away, looking at the helmet in her hand and smiling. I counted this one as a win and headed to the next big crisis item on my list, the basement. The basement door was locked, thankfully, and when I opened it, Hord challenged me from the bottom of the stairs. “Who there?”

“Just me, Hord.” I spoke as I descended the stairs and ducked to see the construction. The gobbs were audible from the kitchen, slopping mud-crete everywhere and affixing a sealed steel hatch. The construction was simple. It would open, but only slowly and with great physical effort, by removing its own hinge pin, which was external.

I rolled my eyes, but Hord assured me it would work to keep the Sleem out. From this one portal in and out of their base. Who knew how many of them they had? I would need to talk to Molls again. Her help would be needed setting up a BuyMort affiliate anyway, so she jumped up to the top of the list of people I wanted to talk to.

Thankfully, Molls was a late riser and was still around. When I lowered the attic steps, I heard her rustling movement at the end of plywood hallway. I climbed the stairs and approached cautiously, with my eyes averted. Just in case.

“Molls?” I asked, one hand covering my eyes. “Are you decent?”

I heard her faint giggle and peeked between my fingers. She was indeed decent, with only her sleepy face poking out from the mountain of blankets heaped on the floor. Sunlight poured in from the window and glittered from the scales inside her hood. She was smiling at me with lidded eyes, and I understood the dreams better in that moment.

“Yes, Tyson.”

A delicate hand raised from the blankets and stifled a short yawn, as she did her best to contain it for her company.

“Sorry, it was a late night.”

The smile that planted itself on my face was natural, and I approached with a nod as she undulated and stretched in the sunlight. She finished the stretch by gripping the blanket in either hand and rolling her back muscles. This had the effect of pushing out her chest, which I quickly attempted to look away from.

It was stuff like that driving the dreams, I knew it.

“No! I apologize for disturbing you. We were hoping to get a consult about setting up an affiliate for Happy Trails is all.”

Her eyes snapped open. “We? I won’t have that man in my presence.”

“Yeah, I really don’t blame you. Wanna just run me through it instead?”

I shrugged and motioned toward the blanket. She immediately shuffled her coils aside for me, and I sat down. The area smelled like her, clean and now faintly floral, and the more the blankets around me moved, the more her wonderful scent filled my breath.

A small thought at the back of my head warned me about the infatuation that was already growing, but I very neatly ignored it, as we tend to do with such things.

Molls smiled and nodded, snuggling her blankets close again. “Yes, that sounds good. What would you like to know?”

“I want to know about affiliates.”

Her eyes widened and this time they glistened. It reminded me of those early morning TV shows where the guy would see the light and then choirs full of robed people would swing their arms about and scream to the heavens in the best darn voices on the planet. I tensed, ready for some full-throttle evangelism.

She smiled at me softly. “You would like to learn the mysteries of joining with BuyMort?”

I sighed and she frowned, blinking. “Yes, sorry, yes I would. I’m just a little nervous. Please teach me how to do this better.”

I swung my arms around to take in the whole campground.

“All of this. How do we make this into an affiliate? What does the affiliate do for us? I see it mentioned so often that it must be helpful, right?”

Molls laughed, her sharp white teeth flashing.

“If I tell you everything about everything, you will be too old to start an affiliate by the time we finish, Tyson! But thank you for turning to me and allowing me to invest in you. On some of these new worlds people turn away from BuyMort even though BuyMort is them, always there and always watching and asking to help.”

She made a sign over her chest which in turn brought my eyes to her cleavage and made me blush. I returned them to her face, fully engaging in her animated lecture.

“Affiliates are an extension of BuyMort’s love. They exist as a blessing by BuyMort to give us more control over the prices at which we sell our products or services. Without an affiliate, BuyMort will purchase anything one sells at market rate. But when you allow it into your heart, and when you agree to the holy tithe, BuyMort will give you the power to set your own prices!”

I felt a wave of anger sweep over me but managed to keep my face interested. How dare this thing take away so much of our freedom and then sell it back to us? I nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“BuyMort is unbiased completely, and all have the opportunity to set themselves up as a BuyMort Affiliate. These Affiliate levels rank from the novice, level one, and they extend to the very holiest of us all, the Church at level one hundred. Every holy level comes with a monthly tithe as well as perks and benefits. BuyMort awards those who show their ability and faith.”

I peered closely into her eyes. She hadn’t lived in a time or place without BuyMort. She didn’t get it. Her face glowed with her love and reverence. I stopped my nodding.

“These tithes. How much are they? What do I pay exactly? And what are these benefits and perks?”

“A thousand to start. Less when BuyMort anoints you. More if you have been foolish with debt. The Credit Score is holy, and it has a lot to do with what BuyMort will bestow upon you. A smart shopper can be blessed with great profits, tremendous market access, even blessings upon market operations. A smart shopper can achieve the Infinite Balance!”

Molls sighed those last words and I shivered. I didn’t like to see her like this. “A thousand to start. Okay. Not so bad. So, I pay the monthly fee —”

“Tithe,” she interrupted, her eyes wide as if I’d just drop-kicked a puppy.

“Tithe,” I corrected, “and that’s that?”

“As a level one affiliate you will be an Independent Contractor. This affiliation allows for just one single user. You may choose the sales price for affiliate items and attempt to sell them to others through the BuyMort app in exchange for the holy 30% transaction fee. At this level you are still unproven so you, the affiliate, are only able to sell services or items to beings within this same dimension. But I wouldn’t feel worried,” she assured him.

“I can sense that you will be a smart shopper. I believe that BuyMort will favor you often, and I foresee you basking in its graces.”

I have to admit, I felt a little bit of pride at her words. Her confidence felt like a warm blanket over my shoulders after a night of trudging through driving snow. It was the right kind of warm for my otherwise incredulous and angry heart. I softened a bit.

This was the world now and none of it was her fault.

“What about the other levels? What are those about?”

Molls locked eyes with me, searching. “There are many levels of divinity. But to learn them all, now, might be disheartening. The numbers involved are vast and I seek not to turn your heart away in sorrow. There will be better and more capable days, and we can worry over them then. Do you understand?”

I nodded, though it was a lie. I didn’t need to understand. Not if Molls stayed by my side.

“The second level is the Premium Contractor. In addition to the blessings of the previous level, this affiliation allows the anointed to set up their own customized affiliation page with which to gain followers and to create a landing page to inspire brand loyalty.”

I saw immediately a number of ways in which this could benefit us. “And how much is that?”

Her eyes fluttered. “Be patient, Tyson. The ways of BuyMort require it. It is always best to wait until BuyMort recommends you to the next level. To buy into a level without recommendation is a sin, one that requires a large sum to enact.”

Molls squeezed my hands and gave me a quirky one-sided grin, shifting in her seat and bending forward to whisper in my ear.

“If you wanted to cheat, the start-up fee is usually times ten of the tithe, and the start-up fee doubles for every level purchased. I suppose there really is no harm in it if BuyMort condones the sin after extracting divine penalty. It just doesn’t seem like a wise thing to do, and I would be quite disappointed to see you act as anything less than a smart shopper.”

“Scout’s honor, I’ll shop smart,” I laughed.

Her breath had given me shivers and to be honest I’d do just about anything she wanted at that moment. We both shared a quiet moment while I tried to slow my heart and get my mind back to the task at hand.

“So, how many levels should I ask about?”

She looked surprised, as if she herself had been lost for a moment.

“How many levels? Oh, yes, in BuyMort. As you gain divinity and rise, a beacon of commerce and freedom in this dark multiverse, you will receive many blessings. At level three you become a Business Contractor, allowing for up to five additional specialist roles to be added to your account. These are specialty roles that have access to the account in various ways, are useful for many tasks, and at higher levels roles may be given enhancement in other ways. At fourth level you will be a Commerce Contractor, and BuyMort will bestow upon you the ability to choose a divine perk. And at fifth level you will be a Corporate Contractor, gaining affiliate access to multidimensional commercial sales at a sixty percent tithe to BuyMort. Is that enough levels?” she asked.

The tip of her tail absentmindedly curled around my ankle.

“Thank you, Molls. I promise I will use your wisdom to best serve us all,” I told her and she positively beamed before sticking out her hand with her palms out. I put mine in hers.

“BuyMort is pleased in your inquiry, and the church is delighted that you have come to join us all in affiliated glory. I am so happy that I was able to give you your free trial session and now the church needs to know if you wish to continue to use our services. In addition to helpful advice from myself, this service will keep me on as your spiritual advisor into the great wide market,” Molls preached, her voice sing-song and dreamy.

She sighed.

“And it shall only ask for a mere ten percent tithe of your BuyMort bestowed profits. I’m pleased that you’ve come so far, to become an affiliate already. This is a joyous day.”

I stared, feeling cheated. I knew it was coming, I had to. Of course there was a bottom line to be tended to, but the thing that surprised me in that moment was how much it hurt coming from Molls. I needed to get away. And I needed Molls to stay.

“Yes,” I croaked. “I’ll have to talk to Mr. Sada, but yes.” I fidgeted at my knees and blinked rapidly. “I should do that. Now”

Molls broke from her reverie and her eyes gleamed, serpentine pupils dilating and fixated on him. “Are you ill?” she asked, rising up, concern lacing her voice.

I hesitated, but then rose to my feet with a nod. “Sort of. I just need to go deal with Mr. Sada. I’m sorry.”

She nodded, her face a strange mask that I couldn’t read. Which was fine. I just needed a breather. This damn system. I sighed and shook my head.

I excused myself a second time and went away, compulsively apologizing. Molls went quiet when I did that, but I cast aside the line of thought.

I had to deal with my MortMobile account before Mr. Sada. Needed to come down from this a little before I talked to him.

My account was all set up already but now I was realizing that, like smartphones from before BuyMort, my subscription was full of services that I hadn’t paid any attention to. Services that, in this new world, might well save the lives of myself and everyone around me.

Walking past several hobbs, I exited Mr. Sada’s compound and pulled my phone out.

“Alright, MortMobile, I want to know exactly what stuff I can do with you and how much it will cost.”

I stopped, realizing that my nerves had me a bit high-strung. All of this talk about freedom had pissed me off, I realized, since really BuyMort had taken everything away, packaged it, and was selling it back to us all with its made-up money.

“Look, sorry. I’m just feeling a little rough around the edges,” I explained.

The floating head squinted, a strange look I hadn’t seen before, then nodded. “Hairless apes anger easily, as I have learned over the last few hundred millennia. Irrational, tribal, violent. A fondness for artificial empathy mixed in with ruthless self-interest. Why should you be any different?”

The words stung, to be honest. I couldn’t exactly disagree. It was like he’d been exposed to the worst of us for so long it became boring to him. Merely something he expected.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Let me try again. I’d like to understand more about you, MortMobile, and the ways in which you might help me.”

He gave me that squint again and I wondered what he was thinking. Was he thinking? Was he just reading my thoughts, or was it more than that? Something deeper? An understanding of self I couldn’t achieve without an external and internal view? I’d have to figure it all out later.

“I offer a number of services that might be of great interest to you. Each of them comes with a trial version that costs little but only lasts for a few days. Each of them also comes with a price tag that is unknown until the end of your first month.”

He paused.

“And by that I mean, there is a set price, but with the additional fees that they levy, and the transactional nature of some services, you really never know what you are going to pay after you agree to the terms and conditions until the bill comes due.”

It sucked that the apocalypse was so earth-breakingly different and yet so eerily the same. The nature of this service was immediately familiar, as was the predatory pricing, and the combination drew a sigh from me that rivaled the deity in my phone’s sighs. I shot the face a thumbs-up when I noticed him glaring at me.

“Yeah, alright. Show me what you’ve got.”

And I sucked in my breath as I gazed into infinity.

Chapter 30

You always hear the word infinity used with reverence, infused with gravitas, displayed in simplistic ways like the common circle or ornate ways like the mobius strip.

Never do you expect to gaze upon infinity and cringe back in revulsion.

It was infinity alright, but its entirety was a flashing, ever-changing slate filled with faces, comics, emblems, and figures, all clamoring for my attention. Trying to sell.

“PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” they screamed via their various mannerisms. “

ME ME ME! FREE TO DOWNLOAD, YA DICK!”

That last part may have been my imagination, but it was just so crass and blatant. It was all I could do to keep my food in my stomach.

Again MortMobile was regarding me with that special squint. “Yeah, I know, I’m weak and I suck,” I said. “Common among hairless apes, I’m sure.”

The head was silent for a long moment. “I can make it better,” he said. And with those words the infinite zoomed and shrank. Now before me were just a thousand of the entities, screaming without voice.

I glanced at the head, a question shining in my eyes.

“I muted them,” he explained. “These are the highest rated and best survival apps in the multiverse. I suspect that they are still too many for you to properly sort and research, so might I suggest that you narrow your search?”

I gazed at the entity, thinking about the things that I really needed, and was surprised to see the apps flitter about and change position as I did so. Back before BuyMort, I often used to wonder if my phone was somehow reading my mind, and I found it no less disconcerting to know that it was for a fact.

“Are you reading my mind?” I thought at him loudly.

“Yes,” MortMobile stated bluntly, with a wince. “Something I’m not really supposed to do without charging you. Now be quick about it, we don’t have a lot of time.”

I thanked him mentally.

INTERDIMENSIONAL THANK YOU CARDS. SOMEBODY DO YOU’SE RIGHT FOR A CHANGE? WHY NOT BUY A THANK YOU CARD FROM JOE’S EARTH CARD EMPORIUM? WE GOTS CUT-THROAT PRICES, WHAT WIT’ DA EARTH GONE TO HELL AND ALL THAT. JOE’S EARTH CARD EMPORIUM. WE TELLS THEM THANK YOU WITH STYLE. 10 MORTIES. 3.5 STARS.

I grimaced at the price, wondering what kind of hell Joe and his people were living in that they were cutting things so cheap. Then I realized I had no method of determining the value of a thank you card in this market and frowned.

Maybe Joe was fleecing his customers. I’d have to collate and compare other greeting card companies operating locally to even get a window on the Mortie value.

MortMobile gave me that squint again and I hurried things forward. I needed something like satellites. Something like GPS.

Also internet connections so I could contact survivors like Joe and maybe get a community going, like I had heard we were supposed to do if it all crashed down.

Could definitely use a weather app.

And, honestly, it’d be useful to have something to track what this constantly mentioned market price was, because BuyMort didn’t tell you a thing about how much something was selling for on the general market.

The apps sorted themselves and now there were just a few, one for each of my decided upon imperatives, floating before me.

GLOBAL IMAGING APP — The GIA will give you the lowdown on everything on the planet. Feast your eyes upon the latest nano-scanned images and positions of your favorite beings, places, and routes of travel! The first planet free, subject to credit level and average income!

I glowered at those last words. I bet that all of these apps were free yet chock full of hidden fees.

MortMobile nodded.

I’d have to be careful with these. It was probably best that I chose just one of these apps for now, see what happened, then maybe come back for the rest later.

FRONTSKULLCOVERING-SCROLLCHAT — Grugg talk world! Worlds listen Grugg! Grugg provide general lifestyle advice and cover many interesting topics.

My eyes tore away from the page to MortMobile, who had the decency to look a bit embarrassed. “Hey, the reviews say it’s a lifesaver. I never used it myself.”

I went back in and checked out the next app.

HOW’S THE WEATHER? — Tired of trying to ascertain the conditions of your world? Angry that weathermen all got competed out, lost their job, and now Weatherman Affiliates charge top rate moolah to tell you it's sunny outside?

Well no more!

Introducing HOW’S THE WEATHER, the little weatherman for your pocket. Real sentient beings pledged to a hundred years of labor, digitized to fit into your pocket! And accuracy guaranteed (if they know what’s good for them.) Don’t believe us? Try a month free* Conditions apply.

“Real sentient beings?” I asked BuyMort.

He had a pained expression in his eyes. “Debt is something one does not ever want to fall into. Bad things can and do happen,” he explained.

I felt awkward, unable to think of how to answer, so I turned and dove into the last app.

SSSTASSSTICO – All factsss in your handsss. BuyMort’sss will be praisssed. No tricksss. No gimmicksss. Real time tracking of world ssstatisssticsss. One week trial! Cancccel anytime.

“What’s with with the S’s?” I whispered to myself as I thumbed through the apps features. The front page kept it simple and told me that any numeric based statistic on our world would be available at my discretion, with only a single requirement in return.

A three-minute advertisement, once per day.

I signed on without thinking past that point, paying for stuff by watching ads was nothing new to me.

The MortMobile floating head had been paying attention to something else, which I noticed was indicated by a slight shift in his appearance. When he refocused on me as my app was confirmed, a life returned to his eyes and he came more fully awake.

“Oh. That one.”

I frowned and looked back at my app. It hovered open on the main screen, a blinking bar asking me what I would like to track. I asked it for the world’s death toll since BuyMort had arrived, and the basic weather in my area.

It added those to my home page and informed me my advertisement would randomly interrupt my use of the app once a day. I could watch it in segments, or all at once, but until it was watched, the app would no longer function.

The MortMobile head nodded, with pursed lips. “Right, you have what you need. Good luck.”

He shimmered away before I could say good-bye and I was left wondering about the entire encounter. He hadn’t seemed like his usual jerkish self. But there were other things to get done, and so I set to walking again, idly getting my steps in as I went over this new and powerful trove of data.

For the time being, I could track several things about my planet, in regard to its standing in the BuyMort network. Almost any statistic was available, from total root vegetables grown to how much money was being made by which companies.

The statistic that I tied to my BuyMort homepage and psychic phone background was different though. I was watching the death toll.

Looking back in time to when BuyMort had come to my planet, we had roughly eight billion people living on it. Three days later the number down by a third and dwindling rapidly.

With food prices spiking on BuyMort, the death toll was spiking right alongside it. I didn’t imagine it was going to get better anytime soon. It made me think about Molls, her reverence for all of this animating her eyes, giving her a purple tinge on her cheeks.

She spoke of BuyMort like some benevolent god.

It hurt knowing that she believed such a monstrous untruth and I wondered if I shouldn’t consider her another victim of the thing. Thinking of it, I just felt a powerful need to stay away from her for a while. I needed to get Mr. Sada spun up and get out on that errand he had planned for me. That would help me escape her for a bit to think.

So, once I had the information I needed on my phone, I left the desert outside Mr. Sada’s mansion and returned to find him looking bored in the hallway. I took a moment to be grateful he was out of his drywall cocaine when I saw the look on his face. We returned to the kitchen to discuss what Molls had told me over some more coffee.

Mr. Sada got out the coffee and a spoon, then turned on the electric kettle and pointed at the French press. “Your turn.”

A scowl formed on my face, but I quickly decided it was fair, and settled in to make some decent coffee. I ladled in dry ground coffee up to the line it indicated, and then added two more spoonsful.

As I worked, I spoke to Mr. Sada. “So, the way an affiliate storefront works is pretty easy.”

I glanced up from the coffee to make sure he was paying attention.

“We state, publicly, that we are operating a business in the BuyMort storefront. We pay a steep monthly fee in order to do that, and BuyMort cuts the giant fees on anything we sell. It also allows us to loop in staff, like the BlueCleave tribe, and assign them stipends or sales abilities on the MortBlock. Or if you screw up and we end up in rags, eating garbage and living on the run, we can have an affiliate service, no land, just something to keep us getting money while we do whatever it is people will pay us to do.”

He nodded with a scowl. “It’s all based on the MortBlock I already have set up right now?”

“Yeah, this one is,” I started. “But it’s not just that easy. You’ll have to set permissions for each staff member, and set regular purchases that we need, like the Goblin d’jhz. If you just give me general management abilities, I can do most of it for you.”

I knew he was going to sense my hesitance, and he immediately did.

“So, what happens when I leave?” He asked, tapping his bull ring on his mug lightly. “Once you help me get off-world.”

I had been ready for this. “I take over all assets, per our agreement. The MortBlock, and everything on it except your house and personal assets become mine. In exchange for that, I run it and keep us all alive until that can happen.”

Mr. Sada nodded and nibbled at a thumbnail. “So, I don’t get it man, what’s here that can fund all these plans you talk about? You gonna start renting out sites or something?”

I nodded, both eyebrows raised. “Yes, more or less. I plan to bring in people to work and farm food. There is also a natural resource that seems to have at least decent value right now, and I intend to cultivate that too. It can provide a regular income stream, possibly. Then I’ll possibly do something with the underground army lab. Hydroponics or something, food seems like a never-ending resource. If we could grow more of it than we needed, we could get rich pretty quick.”

His eyes went wide at that last part and he snapped his fingers.

“That reminds me Tyson, I need you to make a run today, for food. We can’t afford to buy it anymore, it’s way too high priced, but the hippy commune is giving away literally as much as we can carry in any single vehicle, if we just go talk to them for an hour.”

I breathed an internal sigh of relief that he had gotten distracted by our food needs. Then I realized what he had said.

“The hippy commune is giving away free food for an hour-long conversation?”

Mr. Sada produced his phone and swiped at it, before turning it to face me and sliding it to me on the counter. I watched as an advertisement started playing.

It was a shaky handheld phone camera scanning the Arizona desert from the top of a wall covered in dream catchers and turquoise beadwork. The area was perfectly peaceful and quiet, in spite of showing a paved road in the distance. Then the phone turned and the oversized face of an older man with long gray hair filled the screen.

“Where’d everybody go?” he asked, before turning to show the desert again.

“We’re missing our visitors here and would love to get some company today. Anyone who can safely make the journey should. We’ll sort you out with food. Gaia knows we have enough.”

The camera faced the man again and showed some of the commune behind him. Crops grew in abundance in large gardens, and at least one fruit tree was visible in the background, inside a greenhouse attached to a nearby building.

“All we ask in payment is some time with another person, at this critical juncture in our species. Come on by and chat with us, we’ll feed you and yours.”

Then a strange graphic appeared over the end of the video, which appeared to be the old man forgetting to turn off his phone and walking down a set of stairs. A blue cloud of smoke blew in from the edge of the screen and showcased the name of their business.

Sundew Valley Foods

I scowled at the ad and slid the phone back to Mr. Sada. “So that’s real? I’m not going to be clubbed and eaten by cannibals or something?”

Mr. Sada shrugged and took a swig from his coffee.

“Shit Tyson, I dunno. It definitely is that old hippy who runs the place in the video.”

He shook his head and moved closer, leaning in on the counter to share a secret he had just realized with me.

“Hippies don’t care about the same stuff as us normal people, he’s probably lonely and used to talking to a lot of people.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, we can’t ignore the offer of food at any rate.” With a sigh, I nodded and gave up. “I’ll go. Right after we finish this affiliate account set up. Oh and we’ve gotta pay the church ten percent of our profits too.”

Mr. Sada glared, and I put my hands up in a shrug. His face dropped and he sighed. “Yeah, right, I suppose if we don’t pay them Snake Tits leaves then we get squished. Got it.”

I ignored the flare of rage inside my chest. It wasn’t going to help any of us. Besides, it wasn’t just Molls I was just confused about. Didn’t know what to think about a lot of stuff anymore.

“So what do I have to do, Tyson? How does this work? Is someone from BuyMort gonna beam down and give me some papers to sign?” he continued.

The moment he finished saying it his eyes rolled back into his head and I had to catch him and lay him down. I had a guess at what was happening, and I was pretty sure I was going to be sucked into it in a moment so while I let him lay on the floor I made sure to move over to the sofa.

And just a moment after my head was up on the cushions, I found myself spiraling through into inside brain 3D space.

At the other end was Mr.Sada, his hands cupped around his mouth, yelling for me, while floating in the air was Clippy, that anthropomorphic AI that’d helped us out with the mercs and the construction team before.

“Hey Clippy, how’s it going?” I asked.

Behind me, Mr. Sada had stopped yelling, but his eyes were wide and he was glancing about as if to find a way to escape.

“This MortBlock owner wishes to set up an affiliate. May I be of assistance?” Clippy asked, answering my question with his own.

“Yeah, we could definitely use the help.” My eyes narrowed. “Say, you aren’t going to try to charge us something for doing so, are you?”

Clippy frowned. As well as such a being could do so, anyway.

“I’m here as a service, to help the people of this new earth with their tasks. No one ever had to pay anything for me. I’ve always come with the system. Cast down, spat upon, rejected over and over again. And yet, when BuyMort came and offered me my own server and a chance to represent humanity, I jumped at the chance. Because you guys love Clippy! You just don’t know it yet.”

I thought of the times, a decade plus ago, when I’d played some of the old flash games that featured Clippy in the place of old DOOM monsters or the like. Rip and tear on poor ol’ Clippy.

We didn’t deserve him, and he didn’t deserve us.

“Sorry about all that man. Just, you know, things are hectic, and it’s been recently pointed out to me that our civilization was rather remedial. In . . . a lot of ways. Look, I’m acting as Mr. Sada’s representative now. So how about the two of us get this figured out and maybe we just let him get out of here and back to doing lines of drywall?”

Sada, who had been gently clawing at the hard emptiness that enclosed us, perked up at my words, his eyes starry and pleading.

“That wouldn’t be proper. Besides, everybody loves setting up their affiliates,” the being stated. “And in order for us to proceed with the arrangement that you have said exists, I need Mr. Sada to properly state that you are his representative in this matter.”

“Yeah, yes, Tyson represents me,” Mr. Sada grumbled.

“Do Affiliates allow partnerships?” I ventured. Mr. Sada’s eyes narrowed.

“You can work out whatever positions you wish within your affiliate, but specialty roles recognized by BuyMort can only occur at the proper Affiliate levels.”

I thought back to Moll’s breakdown and knew we couldn’t set up a BuyMort recognized partnership until at least 4th level. I’d have to be careful to keep Mr. Sada from trying to excise me. I searched his eyes but saw nothing shifty. Good.

“Alright, and how about inheritors? This affiliate is going to be tied to this MortBlock, and so whoever is named the inheritor of the MortBlock will be the head of the Affiliate once Mr. Sada leaves, yeah?”

Clippy twirled, doing a brief little dance. “Indeed! But for a proper BuyMort recognized inheritance, one must file the appropriate paperwork. Shall I find a BuyMort certified legal technician to draw up the necessary case work?”

I gritted my teeth. Nickel and dimed, always, everywhere. “Yeah, fine, but I’ll take care of those details later. As Mr. Sada’s representative. Does he always have to give me the go ahead?”

“He has officially declared you his representative in these matters. That said, he may rescind that declaration in the same manner at any time or even retroactively reverse some of your decisions if he disagrees with them.”

Both of our eyes met his and his backed up a little. “I trust ya Tyson. Just get it done so I can get back to my coffee, yeah?”

I smiled. “Alright, so what do we have to do?”

“Any new Affiliate should specify what they sell. It doesn’t limit what you can list from your Affiliate and then advertise into BuyMort, but it definitely helps searching parties find you and it keeps you from experiencing needlessly expensive clicks on your ads! What is estimated to be your main source of future sales?”

My smile dropped. I would have to talk about the spiders, right here and right now, in front of Mr. Sada. And then he’d own the bastards.

“Well, I was thinking spider webs,” I said, slowly, as if the idea had just come to me.

Clippy skipped and flipped. “Wowzee, these records indicate that Nu-Earth spider silk is prime stock, a rising and valuable commodity in this present market atmosphere.”

“Yeah?” Sada asked. He ambled over close to us. “Set me up with that then.”

“Partners,” I muttered, none too politely.

Now his face looked calculated, his sluggish brain openly processing dick moves over the sags of his chin and cheeks.

“You can have ten percent.”

I opened my mouth and he put up a finger.

“Tyson, I’m going to be leaving soon. On a spaceship full of freaky goo aliens. And then you get one hundred percent? So until then I need to be saving for my retirement? When this place is still here and still mine? Let’s be reasonable and think this through. I’ll need an income after I leave, and if this system is as connected as I think, there’s no reason I can’t keep active ownership. I bought the damn place, I’m the one who made it a place where people could live, I’m the one who invested my hard-earned —”

“Inherited,” I interrupted.

He coughed and stumbled. “Yeah, whatever, if you knew my pops, you’d know I worked for those millions. Anyways I own it, it is mine. You take ten percent and when I leave, it’ll go up to fifty. Good?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Hell no. I’m working to keep us alive while you snort drywall and insult everyone around you.”

I glared at him.

“The only chance in hell I’ll accept ten percent right now is if it swaps when you leave. You take ten percent from them on, and I’ll keep running the place for you. You also can’t sell it out from underneath me or remove me from my position in the affiliate. We’re partners on paper, or not at all.”

Once I was done, I took a breath and stared at him. My lips were pursed, and my jaw was clenched. I waited for him to try something else skeevy, but he surprised me by nodding his head.

“Got it.” Mr. Sada said. He was quiet, and not looking at me when he spoke, but he kept nodding and repeated himself. “Got it, Tyson. Ten percent now, then I take ten when I leave. That’s . . . fair.”

It almost sounded like the word hurt him to say.

Clippy, seeing that things had resolved, jumped right back into the middle of it.

“Now I will need an Affiliate name! This will help to draw in a group of loyal customers, people who will make a constant stream of top-notch dealings with your brand!”

I just wanted this done. I thought to myself about all the bland corporate names I had seen over the years. Most of them had stupid recipes, just the location and product mixed in various ways. It wouldn’t matter anyway and needed to be something generic to avoid unwanted attention. A corporate name for our park just popped into my head and I went with it.

“Silken Sands.”

“That’s a dumb name,” Mr. Sada muttered. But I noticed that he was slowly retreating his way back out of the actual work, and I ignored him.

“Silken Sands – Spider Silk Specialists. I have set up an Affiliation page for you and I have deducted 1000 morties from your account for activation. Congratulations and welcome to the start of your personal dealings within the BuyMort Family.”

A new icon appeared in my mind and opened, showing me my affiliate screen.

It felt strange to have joined the system in such a permanent way. Almost like I had just sworn the damn thing my allegiance, to protect and defend, yadda yadda.

But it was useful. It had data that I didn’t quite understand and that I could ask Molls about.

Another icon appeared next to that one. This one looked like a little factory, cheerfully pumping out noxious black smoke into a sunny and blue clear sky. It also opened automatically, showing me my first property screen.

I closed them both down, promising to open them again when I had a chance with Molls. Around me the BuyMort nothingness sales station vanished, and we were back in our own bodies.

Mr. Sada got up from the floor, slowly, complaining about his sore back while my well-rested muscles bounced to the fore. Another item off of the checklist.

Time to go meet the neighbors.

Chapter 31

Before I set out for the commune, I did a few rounds and checked in on people. I spoke to Rayna and got a few members of her tribe all working with different goblin work crews. Most of them needed to return to someplace called Storage and retrieve families, but she assured me they would return before evening fell.

She offered the idea of working with the gobbs, saying it would help her people get to know the area anyway. Apparently gobbs work better with a hobb breathing right down their necks, so spreading out a hobb manager force boosted their productivity by an impressive amount.

I steered them clear of Spider City for the moment but planned out the afternoon’s construction and made sure we were stocked up on d’jhz.

After that, I briefly checked in on the mordren and got a small shock. Doofus was in there with him, cuddled up against his side.

The mordren was snoring softly, the drugs he was on having the lovely side effect of knocking him out. I motioned at Doofus to get away from him, drawing a strange look from the BlueCleave hobb who was guarding the shed with a plasma rifle.

Doofus glanced up at my snapping fingers but huffed out a sigh and flopped back to ignore me. As I watched, the mordren seemed to sigh and settle further into his sleep. I glanced between the mordren, the hobb on guard duty, and Doofus before shaking my head.

“Just make sure he doesn’t hurt Doofus.”

The hobb nodded, eyes wide and serious. I left him to it and went to check on Molls. She had slipped out sometime, without being noticed. I thought of running down to check on her at her site, but then remembered that going in there rarely ended well for me.

I had to ask her more about those screens and BuyMort data, but for now I’d just leave her be.

We had time now that BlueCleave was here, and the Church had accepted us. I could just swing by the next time I had a BuyMort question again. I was sure that would be soon. Instead, I loaded up my shotgun, strapped on my bandoleer, and headed out to the golf cart.

I swung it by Phyllis, still laying in the driveway. She was fine, and cranky. The metal plates had receded back into the mech, but parts of her were now implanted with metal, and one side of her head had been shaved.

She was rocking the latest fashionable cut, as a nonagenarian, and I had to tease her about it slightly. “Hey there, Philly, is your head at all chilly?” I snickered.

“Yes it is, Tyson,” she snapped, not looking up. “And I can’t even wear a hat because the metal is still connected.”

The metallic additions to her body were small and looked like they may be docking ports for her armored suit. Either way, I was just glad her skull wasn’t still fractured, and both of her eyes focused on me during our brief conversation, even if they were glaring.

“You want to fuck off instead of teasing me about it?” she asked me sweetly.

“Can do Phill! Sorry!” I must have still sounded too cheerful as I pulled away, because she took a half-hearted swipe at me with her free arm, scraping Mr. Sada’s driveway.

The hobbs on gate duty swung it open for me and I was out in the Arizona midday sun, settling into the idea of enjoying a nice drive in Mr. Sada’s golf cart. The time on my psychic phone said eleven-thirty in the morning, and I tried my very best not to sink into despair as I watched the spinning wheel of my people’s demise while the death toll ticked up rapidly.

It wasn’t just depressing, it was terrifying.

Most of us were now already dead, and it kept moving faster. I thought about it, wondering how hard all of this affiliate stuff was and if I was up to the task of running it and keeping us alive, let alone bringing down BuyMort. And, as always, the ad algos kicked in to give me a helpful hand.

Something popped up in my vision, just outside of Mr. Sada’s main gate. Normally I would have swiped the ad away, but this was from the same affiliate that had sold me the starfish suit, and that grabbed my attention.

I pulled over and parked the golf cart on the side of the road just outside of the compound. A glance over my shoulder confirmed a hobb on the wall keeping an eye on the cart.

A quick swipe allowed me into the storefront, this time using the ad-space virtual reality. I was back in virtual, my mind transported to the dusty and broken shelves from which I’d gotten my starfish as my body slumped in the golf cart.

Above me, through gaping holes in the ruined ceiling, shone the few remaining stars of another universe. My interest grew several octaves in a moment.

Whatever ad I’d just gotten, if it was from the starfish place then I was almost certainly going to be making another purchase from this strange, dead affiliate.

There was no sound, there were no dancing images. The dust on the shelves looked like ice crystals upon closer inspection. There was even a giant crack in the middle of the store, as if an earthquake had torn into it.

But, at the back, on a plasti-steel kiosk slanted sideways and half-fallen into the crack running down the middle of the store, a screen flickered to life. An image.

AFFLQWST - YOUR AFFILIATE’S GUIDE TO GREATNESS IN THE EXCITING NEW COMMERCE SYSTEM, BUYMORT.

I frowned. The product appeared to be an installable addon for my BuyMort interface. BuyMort had a policy that read like stereo instructions about those.

It summed up to Buyer Beware, as far as I could tell. I only skimmed it.

Hell, for all I knew, the app could be a virus, something that would invade the software contained in my head and flame me out, repurposing me into some sort of BuyMort living sentient spam bot.

Somebody’s empty headed mortie-farmer.

But that could work, if it involved destroying BuyMort. From what I could tell, our affiliates had that vague and lofty goal in common.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something on the shattered and dust-covered shelves and I made my decision. Boxes and boxes of the starfish suits remained in the place, wherever it was, and no one knew about them despite their obvious and tremendous power.

This affiliate had been almost destroyed at some point in the far distant past, I was sure. It sounded like it might have come into existence before BuyMort. And that meant that whatever this thing that I was being offered was, I wanted to have it.

I walked to the kiosk and touched the screen with my finger, feeling a bit of static discharge even though I wasn’t actually there with my real physical body. And the screen changed. It flashed dark, then back to light.

WELCOME TO THE TESLAK COOPERATIVE. A REPRESENTATIVE WILL BE HERE TO ASSIST YOU SHORTLY. IN THE EVENT THAT ASSISTANCE IS UNAVAILABLE, FEEL FREE TO INSTALL AFFLQWST FULL PACKAGE AT PRICE OF (FUCKING DESTROY BUYMORT.)

I stared at the flickering screen. The busted-up kiosk wasn’t helping their case, but my starfish and, let’s face it, that strange and wonderful price were hard character references to ignore.

Especially since I was beginning to suspect that this place might be some sort of really important secret.

“Good morning, sir!”

A high, clear voice sounded as light particles stuttered into place, showing a ghostly image of a person. The man, who I was in no way certain he was, stood behind the counter with his arms behind his back. He wore a scarred, stained, and burnt heavy apron over a set of expensive looking dress clothes.

Then he vanished. I blinked and looked around, but the lights reappeared a second later.

“Good morning, sir!” He said again. “I see you are-you are-interested in our amazing AFFLQWST app.”

The image stuttered again, and I could see a tiny projector in a cracked part of the ceiling doing its best. “Yes,” I said to the projection.

He smiled wide, took a breath to speak, and then blinked out entirely. After I waited for a second, he returned.

“Good morning, sir! I see you are interested in our potent Afilli-Quest app.”

I stared at him, not responding as I waited for him to glitch out again. The projection held steady and stared at me. This gave me a moment to inspect the man, who I was increasingly unsure he was.

Humanoid, with slightly longer arms and legs than us, and very delicate facial features. His hair was silken, long, and decorated with floral tresses woven delicately into thick beads near the base. His ears were also slightly lower placed than a human’s would be, and longer compared to his eyeline, but the tips were hidden from sight by his hair.

The voice was decidedly masculine, so I kept my assumption to male.

“Would you-would you like to know more about the app, or are you ready to-ready to confirm your purchase now?” He asked me finally, after I stared at him for a few minutes.

“What can you tell me about the Teslak Cooperative?” I asked.

“The Teslak-the-the-the Teslak Cooperative is a proud sponsor to the affiliate of the future!”

He excitedly waved a hand behind himself, and the projector spun up further as more light began to pour into the area behind the counter. It started to form a massive metropolitan skyline as he moved to showcase it.

The motion repeated. Then he began to flicker, and stutter before it all blinked out. I waited for a few seconds, wondering if it was broken for good, before the original projection returned.

“Would you like to know more about the app-more about the app, or are you ready to confirm your purchase now?” He asked.

“Why is the app’s name spelled that way?” I narrowed my eyes to watch.

He turned and suddenly was in front of a dark chalkboard.

“The mysteries of marketing are many, and magnificent! Today we’re going to navigate the intense processes of market research and trademark law when trying to find the perfect name for YOUR affiliate!” he barked cheerfully, before the projection snapped out and reset.

When he asked me about the app again, I was ready with a serious question.

“Will this app help me kill BuyMort?”

The projection snapped and changed. The light in the room with the projection became red instead of soft white, and his appearance was altered significantly.

In place of his fine clothing, the man wore regal looking silver armor, pitted with old weapon strikes. He also had a sidearm strapped to one hip, and a series of tools in a belt across his waist.

His hair was chopped short on one side, his ear there a stump of scar tissue. A dramatic burn scar ran down his neck into his breastplate. When he spoke, his voice was a growl.

“AFFLQWST was designed for use with the BuyMort system. I have altered the app to be a weapon against it. If you know how to use it.”

The light flickered again, and the man changed back in an instant. His apron, fancy clothing, and well-groomed hair were all back, and the ambient lighting around him was soft white again.

“Are you ready to confirm your purchase-confirm your purchase now?” the hologram stuttered.

“No. What do I call you?” I asked.

It changed back to the red-light background, and this time, he was bleeding. He leaned forward on the counter, gripping what looked like a blood-stained jewelers hammer. His forehead was split open, and charred bone glinted from beneath the wound.

He leaned forward, dripping a measure of bloody spittle onto the counter and grinned at me before growling a single word, “Specter.”

Fuck it. Consider me sold.

I pushed the screen again and two options appeared before me. INSTALL or CANCEL. I felt myself take a deep breath back in the dusty Arizona breeze, and I selected INSTALL. All at once I was back in myself, yet another app icon in my vision. Specter, and the relic storefront he operated, were gone.

I looked around, surprised that none of the bored hobbs or surly gobbs nearby were having the same emotional reaction I was. My heart was beating rapidly, and my hands gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles whitened at the top.

Nobody else knew. Just me, BuyMort, and my new friend Specter.

And BuyMort appeared to be so stupid that it was helping me find these purchase options, based on my desire to destroy it. Perhaps it was confidence, but it didn’t feel like confidence. I grinned and gave myself a moment to investigate the app. It opened to a light-gray screen, filled with large, plain text.

AFFLQWST VERSION 18.1.03 KARDEDKORN BUILD 2983.

WELCOME TO AFFLQWST, USER. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PURCHASE OF AFFLQWST. OUR AFFLQWST HELPER APP IS DESIGNED TO ACHIEVE MAXIMUM PROFITABILITY IN THE BUYMORT ™ COMMERCE SYSTEM BUT WILL FUNCTION WELL IN ANY VARIETY OF COMPETING SYSTEMS.

I SEE THAT YOU HAVE BEEN AFFILIATED WITH BUYMORT™ — LINKING TO EXISTING ACCOUNT.

COMPILING . . . . .

AFFILIATE ACCOUNT LINKED. MEMORY SCAN SUGGESTED. APPROVAL REQUIRED.

This was crazy. The way it operated felt loose and quick, less shiny and more complicated. But it instantly felt more trustworthy too, like that friend who always tells the truth no matter how much it might hurt.

I willed it the approval and saw the screen blink several times.

TASK: FUCKING DESTROY BUYMORT

THE CURRENT CONDITIONS OF THE AFFILIATE ARE UNTENUOUS AND DIRE. BUYMORT COMPETITORS ARE REMORSELESS. AGGRESSIVE.

DANGEROUS.

QUEST SUGGESTION IS AS FOLLOWS:

VISIT THE COOPERATIVE. SEEK AUDIENCE WITH DIRECTOR.

PROBABLE OUTCOME (99%) : ALLIANCE WITH TESLAK COOPERATIVE.

SIDEQUEST: GROW IN AFFILIATE RANK, SIZE, AND POWER. DEFEND THE LIVES OF AFFILIATES AND GATHER ALLIES. ACQUIRE SOURCES OF FOOD, WATER, AND POWER. (COMPLETING THIS WILL ENSURE A BETTER REWARD UPON COMPLETION OF PRIMARY QUEST.)

Well, it wasn’t an amazing start, seeing as these were all things I was going to do anyways. But I was pleased with that start. It wasn’t feeding me bullshit ideas and it wasn’t asking for anything or flashing me ads.

And if it could give me advice that I couldn’t think up on my own, something to stop this purge of humanity, it was absolutely worth it.

I smacked the wheel and got started on my little road trip again. Gotta feed everybody. Important task.

Thinking of the deaths again cast a bit of a pall on the drive, but I did see some beautiful countryside. Almost all of it entirely empty.

The only thing that gave me pause was a small herd of what appeared at first glance to be horses. When they crossed the road a good distance in front of me, however, I could see much more clearly.

They weren’t horses. They were a breed of gigantic, wingless wasps. Something that must have come from a failed attack on some BuyMort pods. They’d been no doubt gated in and left to their own devices after they killed the people around them.

The herd of five were far enough in the distance that I felt safe, and they were galloping away from me.

But I still got a decent glance at their hindquarters.

A bulbous tail flopped around, a cluster of wicked stingers flexing in and out of the tip like claws. They ran on six powerful legs and were managing to move what looked like twenty-five miles an hour or more at a casual loping pace. Their heads were bulbous as well, with huge, multifaceted eyes wrapped around either side, and large dangling antennae. Hazy lines of yellow, brown, and orange color striped their bodies.

Is the countryside getting nasty?

Are pests invading your home world?

Why risk your life needlessly on long, needless trips over increasingly desolate land when you can hitch a ride with Roberto’s Rotors!

Trained helicopter pilots with combat experience, simply download our app, choose a place and time, and the nearest chopper pilot will come to pick you up. It is as easy as picking up your phone. Morty cost dependent on location, weather conditions, and distance of travel. 4.5 stars.

I flicked the ad away but kept it in mind for some future research. It wasn’t a bad idea after some serious morties started coming in. I glanced out at the monsters again. Once they were far enough away, I started rolling the golf cart again.

I had checked the distance to the commune, Sundew Valley Foods, but I was still worried as the cart’s battery drained. It should make it back without much of a problem, but I would be low on charge by then, especially weighed down with food.

Still, it gave me comfort when the commune appeared on the horizon as my needle crossed sixty-five percent charge. It was a good-sized area, surrounded by a strange wall.

It looked like old used tires, filled with sand, and stacked high. Even from the outside, I could see that the wall was a gently sloping hill all the way around the inside of the compound.

I approached from a slight hill in the road and could see that they had used the hillside that supported their security wall as a place to garden and grow food. Vines of carefully cultivated tomatoes grew alongside great swatches of hardy wheat and purple barley.

Dotted around the inner wall I could see plots of farming for cucumbers, melons, peppers, pumpkins, beans, and several others I couldn’t identify as I drove up to the crowd outside their gates.

Several vehicles were present on either side of the road and gates, and I noticed a patrol of very well-equipped hobbs keeping an eye on the scattered group of people, especially those near a small shack at the gate where a group was present.

An argument was happening, and one of the bigger hobbs present stepped forward with a hand on their holster when a voice was raised. I stopped the golf cart a safe distance away, but hobbs in armor were already on their way toward me, weapons at the ready.

I exited the cart and raised my hands slowly as they approached. One of the two approaching me stopped and pretended to not watch me with his weapon in both hands while the other put a big, fake smile on their face and stepped up with one hand on their holster.

“Hello guest,” the hobb grunted at me. “Need to check weapons with me. Please.”

I nodded slowly and unslung my shotgun, before handing it to the hobb. He visibly relaxed and accepted my weapon, while checking to ensure the safety was engaged.

When I didn’t offer it, he grunted and pointed at the bandoleer of ammunition. With a shrug, I gave him that too. He squinted at the starfish suit, but I waved him off.

“That’s a medical thing, it’s embedded in my body.”

The hobb gave me a long look over, focusing hard on the metal across my hands, before nodding and waving me on.

“Hey, no. I’m not leaving my cart out here, look at all these people.” I waved an arm at the gathered vehicles.

The hobb shook his head. “Vehicle secure. Hobbs guard! You go inside.”

I blinked at them a few times, but the second hobb did now appear to be guarding my golf cart, instead of guarding against me. With a shrug, I walked up the road and approached the now empty shack beside the gate.

The gate looked new, and heavy. It was a dull black metal and looked very thick at a glance.

The shack beside it was a strange sight in comparison. The planks of wood were all mismatched, and gaps showed in its structure. Bright pastel paints adorned the rickety structure, creating a myriad of small stories in the accumulated artwork.

An older woman with a squat face and long gray curls greeted me from directly beside the shack, waving and smiling. She wore a big frumpy crocheted hat, snugged down around her ears. It was filled with vibrant colors and matched her smile perfectly.

“Hi there, sweetie! It’s so good to see you, can I come over there and hug you?”

She held out her flabby arms as I approached, and I couldn’t help but smile. Nobody was this nice to me ever.

I decided to agree to the hug and went in for it with a smile of my own. She leaned in and squeezed me, but quickly pulled back to look at my chest.

I opened my jacket for her and shrugged.

“Sorry, I forget about that thing sometimes. Really need to upgrade it to be less bulky soon.” I shrugged at her. “Saved my life though.”

Her bottom lip curved up and she pouted in agreement, before turning me by my elbow to face the gates and slipping her arm into the crook of my own.

The gates slid open silently, splitting in the middle to expose the entrance into the commune. I couldn’t help but notice the hobb that fell in behind us, as she clicked a stopwatch.

“We only have an hour, sweety, so let’s get you over to Lee so he can have his fun with you.”

The older woman laughed and stepped out from beneath the fortified entrance wall into the sunshine on the other side. She swung her arms wide and twirled in a circle, and I stopped for a moment to take in the commune.

It was a giant oval, the shape of an egg. A hill that formed this side of their defensive and privacy wall surrounded an open flat area filled with various structures.

All over the walls were crops. Several gardens were built into the sloping hills, and my initial impressions of how much food they were growing fell very flat. Over a dozen people worked the gardens, in a variety of dress. They all seemed to be putting on a happy face but looked nervous to me.

With the crowd growing outside their walls, I figured out why. They were timing visits and not letting people stay. The people outside their walls didn’t have any place to go.

My guide led me toward the tallest building in the compound, which was three stories high, and appeared to be made from garbage.

All of the buildings did, actually. It made me stop and stare for a moment, to my guide’s amusement. She just watched as I looked around and took it all in.

The building’s primary construction material appeared to be old tires filled with sand, exactly like the wall outside. Each of the buildings had a small hill it was built into, I noticed as I looked at them all.

Then I realized all the hills were facing in the same direction. Each building had a flat metal rooftop with raised sides for catching rain, and each of them led into independent cisterns built into the buildings themselves.

For the walls not directly attached to the hillside of each building, a mixture of bottles and cans were used in combination with concrete. Empty glass bottles stuck out from walls to catch the sunlight and cast a million different colors across the entire area.

As I stared, I saw a baker hauling my favorite bread out a stone oven in the shade of his own building. It was exactly the same, down to the little yellow tie he used on the bag.

Once I gathered my senses again from the bizarre environment, I continued following my guide. She led me through an open courtyard and around a concrete fountain, to a large wall of bay windows set into more garbage and concrete walls.

She stopped with her hands on the doorknob and glanced over her shoulder at me. “Be prepared, it’ll be a little hot in here at first. Once we get through the greenhouse, it’s nice though.” All I could see behind her was a wall of green.

We entered the first room and a wall of wet heat hit me as I stepped inside. The roof was sloped overhead and bubbled with yet more windows.

In rows populating both sides of a narrow walkway on either side were huge plots of black soil filled with tropical fruit trees. I could see ripe bunches of bananas hanging on one side, and papaya and mango trees on the other.

More gardens with a variety of tropical food items were built into the structure of the building as we walked further, taking a set of concrete steps embedded with tiles and bits of pretty stone or glass. It led up through the greenhouse to the second floor.

Once we stepped through the next doorway, it was a different world entirely again. I didn’t feel any air movement or see any vents for air conditioning, but it was somehow comfortably cool inside the structure.

We walked through regular looking household hallways and passed extremely normal looking living spaces as we walked. The kitchen and TV room stood out to me as interesting, in their 80’s drab, but the office we entered was downright lavish.

My benefactor for the day was seated behind a large oak desk in a spacious library that was filled floor to ceiling with hardcover books. I felt like I was stepping into a great egg, but the curved walls were all bookshelves.

Based on how much my Howard the Duck paperback had gone for, I was pretty sure this was a gold mine.

Still, I sat down gently in the carved wood chair across from the desk. The gentleman behind it thanked my guide and she promptly left. Then he turned and fixed me with ice blue eyes.

He was older, with shock white hair tied back in a ponytail, and a walrus mustache, but his blue eyes were clear and sharp as he sized me up. At that moment, I got it.

They were assessing the neighbors.

This entire ploy was to get people who lived in the nearby area to show up for some free food. Then, the compound guards would perform a thorough assessment of our weapons and vehicles, and the hippy king here could feel us out to see if we were dangerous or not.

As all of this clicked in my head, I smiled and relaxed. I had been a little nervous before it all made sense.

“Hello. I’m Lee, and I run this commune. Affiliate now, I suppose!” He puffed out his mustache and sat back in the chair. “How you gettin’ along with BuyMort?”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “Like a house on fire. You guys seem to be doing okay.”

Lee frowned but nodded. “Aye. The abundance of foodstuffs, and lack of our usual markets has us a tad flush at the moment.”

There he stood and approached a nearby window, looking out over the compound.

“No such thing as wealth here though, it all goes into sustaining or growing life.”

“We only have an hour, Lee. You wanted to make sure the neighbors aren’t a threat, right?”

My chair creaked as I leaned back in it a bit, making me promptly lean forward again.

“That’s what the free food is about. Get a good look at the neighbors, see how dangerous everyone is? Maybe make some friends.”

Lee didn’t respond right away. He looked at me sharply but stayed by the window. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, he nodded. “What’s your name, son?”

I nodded back and stood up. After I walked over to the window, I stuck my hand out for him to shake and looked him in the eye.

“Tyson. Nice to meet you, and I appreciate your hospitality.”

I looked out the window with him for a quiet moment before continuing.

“Sorry for calling you out. I get it, I just don’t like the games. I’ve developed a talent for deciphering dishonesty. Seemed like a critical survival skill in 21st century America.”

Lee looked at me hard again, but then nodded. His mustaches swayed as he moved back to the desk and motioned for me to sit across from him again. I did so, and he nodded again.

“Right. Yes, that is what I am doing.”

His demeanor changed. Lee was still relaxed in his chair, but the look on his face and the way he fixed me with a hard stare changed things significantly. “I need to understand the threats to my people, and that means meeting the neighbors.”

I nodded slowly.

“So. Who are you? Where you come from? What’re your plans for the immediate future?” Lee leaned forward and stared at me. “I appreciate being able to be open about this, by the way.”

I shrugged. “I used to manage the Happy Trails Campground, a little closer to Phoenix. Still living there now.”

Lee produced a map from a desk drawer and unfolded it between us. He scanned it with a finger before pointing at my park's location.

“Right here, ain't it?”

When I nodded, he circled the area and marked it with a note.

“We have no food, but we’re working on turning the place into something livable. Planning on working the land. Living.” I shrugged after I finished. My thoughts hadn’t gone much further.

“Right.” Lee nodded, blinking. “You all dug in yet? Walled up? Land wasps in the area.”

My brow furrowed. “Yeah, I saw a pack of them, those things look terrifying. We’re working on some fortifications and have a security team much like yours.”

“Ayep. Our wall protected us from the dream storm, and those hobbs are life savers, no doubt.” Lee knocked on the map and pointed. “This’s us here. As a gesture of good faith, I’ll be happy to share what I’ve gathered so far.”

I scooted closer and squinted at the map. Outside of Prescott to the east was a large red circle around an industrial complex. I think it used to be a mine at one point.

“Ignoring the implications of walled fortifications being such a high priority in my life, what’s this one?”

Lee glanced at it and sat back. “That’s the Dearth Conglomerate base. Their local headquarters.”

My phone was in my hand before I realized it, and I hesitated. I lifted it to him. “You mind if I take a picture? Those guys attacked us last night, we barely fended ‘em off.”

His mustache twitched as he turned to face me. “I was wondering if that was you all. We were seein’ firebolts fly by overhead. Like reverse shooting stars, just exiting the planet man. It was somethin’ else.” Lee waved a hand at the map. “Please, feel free.”

I tucked away the information about fireballs for later. Seemed like Phyllis might have a lot more range on that cannon than I had previously anticipated.

I happily raised my phone to take a picture. The face blinked at me expectantly when the screen fogged into place. “Oh. Uh . . . I want to take a picture, can I still do that?”

The face glowered at me momentarily but faded away into the background of the phone. An outline of fog filled the screen with a typical smartphone’s camera app. When I clicked the picture button, the screen flashed and froze in place.

The image shuttled itself to the side, and a folder opened to accept it. Once the folder closed, it showed a title over the top of its picture (gallery, 1 photo stored, 5000 morties/month). My eyes bulged at the cost.

“Woah, this thing charges five thousand morties per month for a single photo.”

I glared at my phone incredulously. It glared back, making the exact same face I was making. I pushed the button to dismiss it and slid the phone in my pocket.

“Oh yeah.” Lee chuckled. “Have you read the manual on MortMobile? It’s a god of some sort. Used to be a man, ran a space faring empire with the power of his mind. When BuyMort arrived, he fought it. Lost. Became enslaved to it as an ‘subsidiary affiliate.’ Sad tale, it’s all in the manual. Not in those words, but if you can read corpo-speak, you get the picture.” He nodded as he finished speaking, lips pressed in a serious line.

“I have a god in my pocket right now?” It was the only thing I could think to say. “Doesn’t look like pasta.”

Lee laughed this time and sat back in his chair with his hands rested on his stomach. “Yep, we all do. An annoyed and bored psychic god whose job it’s become to connect all of us in the BuyMort system and remember all our pictures. He has a finite limit, thus the charge goes up the closer he gets to it.”

I blinked at that. “Well. I’m encouraged to get the photo the hell off my phone, so I guess the market is working.”

The older man across from me chuckled again, then snapped his fingers and slid open a desk drawer at his side. He produced a folded map and tossed it to me.

“There. Copy it all to that when ya get home. If you delete the photo before the end of your pay cycle, it lets you off the hook for half of it.”

“Dang. Thanks for all the advice. I didn’t expect my phone service to be so complicated. Or ethereal.”

I lifted the map in thanks and tucked it away in my jacket.

Lee shook his head. “My wife, Suzanne, you met her. She used to be a photographer before BuyMort. We learned all about MortMobile in a hurry, then just bought her an alien Polaroid and a lifetime supply of film. This one blows ‘em up however big you like though, it’s a great purchase.”

He started nodding at that and leaned forward again to lean on the desk. “Great purchase.”

“Yeah. You guys are doing pretty great in all this. Food prices and all.” I waved my hand around me at the surroundings. “All of this seems perfect, and how do you get tropical fruit trees growing here so fast?”

He blinked and laughed. “No, son, you misunderstand. We were built up like this before BuyMort. This is an Earthship compound. We build self-sustainable domiciles, and I built up an organic food company from it. Local stuff only, but we got great reviews. The tropical fruit trees have been here for years. If you buy at Curly’s market on fourth, you’ve probably had ‘em before.”

I thought, hard. “You know what?” My hand flopped onto the desk, and I snorted a laugh. “I have, I always get my bananas there. The special organic ones. Really good, too.”

“Of course. Quality is king at Sundew Valley Foods.” Lee spread his arms wide and smiled.

“Well, I’m glad to be a customer again. I was hoping to set up a regular shipment schedule to the campground. We can pay. Our needs would be heavier until we got our own stuff up and running, but again, we can pay.” I trailed off as Lee started waving his hands.

“I can’t risk my people’s safety; we do not do deliveries. Those wasps nest around here somewhere, and it’s all we can do to keep ‘em from climbing the walls sometimes.” Lee knocked on the table. “We sell through BuyMort drone as well, but that involves the system then.”

I raised a lip and shook my head. “I can make the runs, we won’t need more than we can fit in the golf cart for a while anyway. Maybe a golf cart full every . . . two or three days?”

“Yeah, we can do that. What do you have to offer?”

Lee wiggled his mustache as he cleared his throat and laced his fingers together on the desk. I could almost see him put the businessman back on.

“Oh.” I hesitated. “Um. Yeah, morties, mostly. We have a priest? She’s good at BuyMort advice if you want some of that?”

He shook his head. “We have one too. Took our only empty house, which puts us at capacity.”

His mustache twitched again, but harder this time. It was absurd, but it made me feel like his mustache was upset.

“Ah.” I nodded. The crowd of people outside. He couldn’t let them in. “I am glad to see that the situation bothers you, Lee. Now that I understand it, of course.”

His brow furrowed. “And why is that?”

I shrugged. “You’d be a monster not to care.”

Realization hit me, and my eyes bugged out. “Oh hell. I can probably help you all out.”

Lee frowned at me. “What’d you mean?”

“The campground is pretty much empty. We have some tents and air mattresses, stuff like that. Ten acres of land, most of which will be inside a twelve-foot wall by nightfall.”

I met his eyes and shrugged.

“It’s not perfect, we have some problems of our own, but it’s better than having to watch the wasps kill ‘em on the other side of your gates.”

He nodded immediately.

“Or lose another guard tryin’ to stop that very thing from happenin’.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “I guess we may need more food than I thought before.”

Lee immediately reached across the table. “I’ll fill every vehicle to bursting now, and you can come back for another shipment later. We could do morties if you got em, or we can start an account for item based trade. Mind that I run a tight book if you go on credit with trades, but I’d be fair with all them folk over there. Won’t charge you much.”

“Gotta keep your own lights on, I get it.” I stood and stretched. “I guess we better go talk to em.”

Lee stood but reached across the table. “Thank you, Tyson. That solves my biggest problem for today.”

I shook his hand, firmly. “Hey, you’re feeding everyone. I appreciate that. Feel free to send any others who arrive my way as well.” I looked out the window again, noticing the walls of crops. “Speaking of food, how do you get water for all of this?”

Lee pointed at a smaller concrete structure. “Each of the houses has a cistern, and we have a master cistern system for the crops.”

He shifted his hand, pointing to large, covered areas, where crops grew in partial shade beneath flat metal covers. Each cover had piping leading away, which matched the irrigation piping around their crop patches.

“Most of the indoor crops get their water from the greenhouse humidity. It sweats all day into their own traps, which cycle the water throughout the building as needed.”

He finished by indicating the door with an open palm.

“There’s also a well for emergencies. We’re above a small aquifer here. Good clean water if you can get deep enough.”

His wife met us on the other side of the door and smiled warmly. “Well, that was fast. Good talk boys?”

Lee nodded vigorously, shaking his mustache. “Tyson here runs the old Happy Trails camp up the road. He’s taking our refugees.”

The woman raised both hands to her mouth and gasped. She appeared to be going weak at the knees for an instant before she lunged to hug me.

“Oh, bless you, Tyson. Thank you. We were all worried sick.”

I weathered the hug and smiled politely in response. When she broke away, I nodded. Lee seemed to sense my discomfort, because he cleared his throat and when Suzanne looked at him, he motioned with an arm to the exit.

“We’re about to go to the wall and address everyone.”

Suzanne clasped her hands and whispered, “Wonderful.”

She fell into step behind us.

Chapter 32

Lee led me through his compound and showed me some of it while we both prepared to speak to the people gathered outside. We walked for a while, comfortably exploring the different buildings. He showed me the cisterns, rain-catchers, the condensation gatherers, the solar panels, and windmills.

Every-building was made from tires filled with sand and various chunks of garbage mixed into concrete.

Lee explained that the buildings faced the optimal direction for natural climate control, based on the manner of construction. The hills soaked up heat all day, protecting the structure from it, then at night became a warming element.

Like a hot water bottle, the walls radiated gentle heat through the structure. Each building gathered rain and produced its own electricity as well. I realized as I enjoyed my tour that these hippies had been dead on about how-to live-in order to survive the end of the world.

Once my tour was over, Lee led me up to the front again and we climbed the wall to the top of their large metal gate. Lee took some time hauling himself up the ladder rungs, and I followed after.

I looked out over the gathered people in front of the gates. Their vehicles were filled with food, and several of them were eating bread or raw vegetables.

I saw plenty of injuries, and many of them looked dirty and exhausted. A few of them even had children. As Lee began speaking, I noticed my golf cart was parked facing away from the gate and had been filled with woven baskets and large jute bags of food.

“People!”

Lee waved his arms to get their attention, and his hobbs snapped to attention. They watched the gathered crowd as a threat, but I did notice an external perimeter, protecting them too.

“Everyone, please.”

He stopped waving his hands and leaned on the metal railing.

“We have a fix! Luck sent us someone who can help!” He stopped talking and gestured at me. I awkwardly smiled and offered a small wave.

“Are you going to let us in?” a sullen voice from the crowd asked, shouting at the top of his lungs, and Lee sighed and flinched.

“No, we don’t have the ability to take anyone on. I told all of you, I am deeply sorry, but I cannot take anyone in.” Lee slung an arm around my shoulders. “But that’s why Tyson offered to take everyone in!”

That got their attention. The crowd erupted in noise and then quickly hushed as I allowed Lee to push me forward to the railing.

“Hi.” I started. That stupid smile and wave again, but this time they all very clearly saw it. “Umm. I manage the Happy Trails Campground, and we have plenty of room for everyone.”

Gasps rang out in the gathered crowd, and I saw more than one hobb look relieved. The gathered people murmured and hummed among themselves, and I got a decent idea of how many there were while they talked.

A quick head count told me there were at least sixteen different people, spread out among five vehicles. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there were more, I couldn’t see the interiors of their vehicles well.

After their initial shock, I raised my hands to get them to quiet down and continued. “I really can’t promise anyone much. We have sites, no water or power, and some security.”

“Well, what the hell does that mean?” Somebody shouted. Sounded like it came from near the only diesel pickup truck out front. My eye twitched.

“Well. It means that we’re trying to build something out there. Right now, it’s having walls put up, so at least it’ll be safe from those crazy ground wasp things, those seem terrible.” I was trying to think of what to say next when Lee stepped up and waved his hands for attention.

“People. We’re all out here doin’ the best we can. We can’t take you all in. Tyson’s saying he can.” Lee grew stern. “This is the world as it is now. Best to take what shelter can be found.”

I saw a number of faces go blank and I knew BuyMort had chosen this moment to try and sell them lodgings. I waited a moment, letting those ads and their prices sink in.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s about the shape of it. I can’t promise you a safe environment because I dunno what’s around the corner next. We’ve got some problems there right now, but it’s a decently safe place, compared to the open road.”

I hesitated, unsure of how to proceed now that I had their attention.

“Anyone who comes to stay will be welcome to do so, under some pretty normal restrictions, of course.”

I snapped my fingers.

“Oh, we have kind of a slime problem right now too, so you guys’ll have to be careful until we can burn ‘em out. Just get a security hobb if you see one, they get squirrely if you confront ‘em.”

I saw them staring and started chewing my lip, absolutely out of things to say.

They were quiet for a few seconds before someone near a station wagon piped up in a small voice. “Slimes?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Kinda dangerous, but mostly just annoying. We’re working on chasing ‘em off. Right now, they’ll try and steal anything they can from you, and the goop they leave behind is caustic, so . . . yeah.”

I took a breath and started again. “We have a security team, and we know some ways to get rid of ‘em, so it’s not a huge deal.”

Lee stared at me, eyebrows furrowed. I stepped back and looked at my feet. In the silence that followed my statement, he clapped his hands.

“Better than nothin’ folks! They’re building a wall, that’ll protect you from the land wasps at least.”

One of the kids in the back started crying, and an adult went to shush them. I sighed and stepped back up to the railing.

“Look, you guys, I’m not much for this kind of thing, and I’m sorry. I don’t have a lot to say that’s comforting. We have space, some tents, some air mattresses. You guys are welcome, and it’s safer than out here. That’s pretty much it. You want in, come on with me, I’m pulling out soon.”

With that, I turned and left the railing, heading back down the ladder. Suzanne waited for me below and she patted my shoulder gently.

“You did good, honey. It’s okay, public speaking is hard for everyone.”

I looked at her and couldn’t help but smile. I wasn’t sure if she was all there or not, but I found it hard to be in a bad mood around her.

“Thank you, Suzanne. I appreciate the kind lie.”

I turned to leave, and a hobb in armor approached. He was holding my shotgun and bandoleer, and I accepted both as Lee climbed down the ladder behind me.

I slung the item around my shoulders, Lee approached. He stuck out his hand again and nodded at me, a somber expression hiding behind his drooping mustache.

“Thank you, Tyson. Thank you again.”

When I let him take my hand, he pumped it heartily and clasped it with his other hand. The sincerity was killing me. It actually made me suspicious.

“Right, of course. Hell, thanks for the food. I’ll be in touch soon, don’t worry.” I reached in my pocket and produced my psychic cell phone to shake at him. “We can just use our trapped psychic god to reach out.”

Lee snorted. “I look forward to that.”

He finally let go of my hand with a final nod. The old man went and stood beside his wife, and gently put an arm around her shoulders.

“We’ll let you know if anything comes our way you should worry about.”

I nodded and slid my phone away. No need to disturb the interdimensional deity on the other side of it, I guess.

“Yeah, same here. You guys stay safe.”

The gate slid open in the center, and I walked out of the compound. A small crowd of people were gathered, waiting for me. I saw several faces that were strange to me, but totally familiar at the same time.

Arizona faces. Weathered, uncomfortable, sick of the sun, and beyond annoyed with the idea of being out in it any longer. Black, brown, Asian, white, whatever else was mixed in the crowd.

All of them were united in their hatred of the noonday heat, and their desire to be elsewhere. I thought of Lee’s cool office room and sighed as I started through the gathered people.

Once I got to the other side of them, I stopped and turned around to look again. All of them were staring at me, expectantly.

I had the image of baby birds in my head for an instant but waved it away and faced them.

“Right. I’m taking the golf cart, and it doesn’t go very fast. Sorry, but you guys’ll have to just follow along behind.”

I saw a lot of nodding heads, and more than one set of narrowed eyes. My golf cart stood in the middle of the road, facing away from the compound, forest green siding shimmering almost iridescent in the noon-day heat.

I sighed and decided that I should get something better for making these trips. The helicopter uber ad from before came to mind but it wouldn’t work with this many people anyway.

As I sat down, I hungrily eyed the big diesel truck. It was a newer Chevy, and the open cargo area was large. It was also stuffed with these peoples’ belongings, which made me hesitate.

We could talk about possibly using it to make the food runs later. I needed to get these people back to Happy Trails, and the BlueCleave mercenaries that would protect them from ground wasps, slimes, and whatever else came at us. I wasn’t thrilled about the situation at that moment, but I couldn’t just ignore the people.

A glance at my psychic phone screen and the mounting world-wide death toll further secured my decision. I had to try and help. We were dwindling fast.

Once the golf cart got up to speed, it felt quite brisk. I had a nice warm breeze to help me with the midday heat, and the road zipped by at a quick pace. Then the assorted vehicles behind me got moving, and we formed into what had to look like the dumbest convoy of all time.

I led in my overstuffed golf cart, fresh banana in hand as I munched happily, cruising along at a brisk twelve miles per hour. Behind me was a battered station wagon with peeled plastic-wood siding, a brand new looking oversized pick-up truck, a rusting minivan, and two four door sedans that I hadn’t seen closely enough to identify. They were both beige.

We cruised slowly through the Arizona afternoon, inching away from the hippy commune. When I called a halt in the middle of the road well before we arrived at the campground, it was just before two-o-clock in the afternoon.

AFFLQWST pinged my brain.

Quest - Your affiliate has been taken over by a hostile mercenary force. No one has been harmed, but all are being restrained. Military force is not a viable option, any victory would be pyrrhic. A lack of lethal force indicates possible peaceful intent. Attempt to come to a peaceful outcome.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Re-acquire affiliate assets.

2. Broker a peaceful outcome with the occupying force.

3. (Optional) Ensure employees are not harmed.

PROBABLE OUTCOME (95%) - Alliance with new affiliate. Afflqwst special item.

Awesome. I shrugged and hoped I would be naturally good at negotiating. Still, the screen gave me a lot to think about regarding the capabilities of my new app. It knew things that were extremely handy, and I imagined it was interfacing with BuyMort in everyone’s head to gather and compile this knowledge.

Specter had done a good job modifying this thing. The information was genuinely helpful.

I looked up at the huge, black creatures in the air above the campground. I couldn’t tell what they were from a distance, but they looked like giant birds of some sort or other. In fact, they reminded me of the ravens. My blood ran cold as the giant birds noticed our convoy and all altered direction at once.

I got a pretty good look at the one that knocked me into the dirt, when it landed. It was huge, eight feet tall when standing, with a massive wingspan. It had humanoid limbs. Arms and legs covered in another form of that same black composite armor I kept seeing. The creature’s rib cage was different shaped though, pointy somehow. Its breastplate extended out in front, into a ridge, and its head loomed over the top. A long black beak jutted forward as the creature landed in front of me.

Like a hybrid dinosaur, in armor.

It was holding a black rifle with a glowing barrel tip, and as it landed, it pointed the weapon directly at me.

“CRAW!” it demanded. When my only reaction was to widen my eyes, the creature took a step forward on long legs and rammed the butt of its rifle into my midsection. When I doubled up with a cough and fell to the dirt while clutching at my guts, it repeated itself. “CRAW!”

From my position in the dirt, I watched as several more of the bird-man creatures landed and began brandishing weapons at the convoy. A window smashed and a woman screamed behind us.

My shotgun and bandoleer were stripped roughly from me, and the birdman kicked me over to peer intently at my starfish suit. It raised a foot and plucked at it with a toenail, then clucked in surprise when the metal resisted his attempts to pry it up.

After it deliberated briefly, the creature decided to just keep its weapon trained on me. The weapon shoved in my face smoldered at the tip, and when I caught sight of the inside of the barrel, it looked like something glowing hot was seated in the back.

Before I could really catch my breath from the cheap shot to the gut, I was dragged roughly to my feet. Honestly, I was just happy it wasn’t enough for the starfish suit to activate. I didn’t want to see this thing’s reaction if it did.

I got a better look at what was happening as we were marched away from our vehicles and toward the campground. There were at least twenty of the winged aggressors, and I didn’t see any way to fight them successfully yet.

I needed to find BlueCleave first.

As we approached, I noticed the mud-crete wall on this side had been completed. A new gate similar to the one that adorned Mr. Sada’s driveway was mounted where the old iron bar used to be. We approached and stopped.

“Craw!”

The birdman at my back screeched up at the top of the wall, and the gate swung open. It extended out toward us, and from the campground another three birdmen with guns approached.

The one at the lead had marked feathers, flecks of deep crimson speckled his neck, head, and back. He also bore scars on his exposed face, and one eye had been torn away by something. The bird man had replaced it with a mechanical version that gleamed with red light.

This newest birdman looked us all over with his mechanical eye, letting it flash in each of our faces, and then gestured with his head and a loud click of his bird tongue for us to head inside.

Someone in the back mumbled something about the campground being ‘really safe’ so far, and I flinched as I heard a rifle butt strike home. The heckler grunted in pain but stayed quiet after.

One of the bird men stared menacingly, clicking its tongue sharply at the person. But parents were allowed to handle children, and the creatures treated them far more gently, so I did some breathing techniques and calmed down. There was no reason to think we were being executed, yet.

We marched with our hands behind our heads into the campground walls, but as each of us approached, plastic zip tie manacles were applied to our wrists. Their commander inspected my starfish suit as well, and similarly clucked in confusion at it before disregarding it and sending me on to keep the line moving.

We marched past a squad of the birdmen in armor, and I watched in fascination as one secured its weapon to a chest loop and then took to the sky with a heavy leap. His wings buffeted us with wind as he flew by overhead and went to fly our backtrail. They were being thorough.

I was glad to see the wall didn’t extend all the way around the property yet, but only a single side remained to be completed. Our gobb squad was nowhere to be seen, but the BlueCleave hobbs were lined up on their knees in the road on the other side of the gate. Each had their weapons and armor carefully placed on the ground in piles in front of them, aside from four who wore what looked like their version of street clothes.

I guessed they had been off duty at the time.

Hord was beyond them, in the same position, with Doofus laying down at his side and panting in the midday heat. Mr. Sada was at his side, seated in a folding metal chair with his arms crossed over his chest. He glared at me when he saw me, but I didn’t care. I was staring at what they had done to my friends.

Molls was underneath a net, her coils pinned to the ground. She appeared to be unconscious, I could see her chest moving rhythmically with each breath.

Phyllis was under a similar net, but I noticed hers was attached to a sizable generator, and it sparked regularly.

The bird men were suspiciously absent from Molls’ area, in a large radius, but several surrounded Phyllis just in case she broke loose. Her mech seemed to be attempting movement but stopped anytime the net sparked.

I gritted my teeth but walked on at the prodding of my bird man captor. There had been a trailer hastily set up in the campground, directly on the side of the small Joshua tree covered area the campground ravens always hung out in. Some things began to click for me when I saw several of them preening on the deck of the trailer. The campground ravens had somehow coordinated this coup, and this was their headquarters.

It was essentially a box on stilts, with heavy metal siding and a sturdy looking security door. I was marched up the steps to that door while almost the entire group of our campground ravens preened furiously.

I say most of them because their leader was missing. The bigger one who always gaped his beak at me.

But I suspected I knew where he was, and when the door whooshed open, my suspicions were confirmed. The little bastard was in there, beak agape, staring at me while I was escorted inside.

Beside him, on a stool, sat another birdman. A bird woman this time. This one wore a suit that ended in a pleated skirt and had lighter feathers, tinged with gray.

Honestly the only way I could tell their sexes apart was dress, and this was the first one to speak to me. She regarded me evenly, and then offered a hand for me to shake.

“Hello Tyson, my name is Sheena, and I’m with Translacore. I’ll be providing an accurate, professional translation for your interaction with Darclau. He already knows English quite well, so I’ll mostly be translating for you, but any more complicated concepts will require some translation for him as well.”

She coked her head to the side, regarding me from a new angle.

It’s nice to meet you.”

Chapter 33

I glanced back at my guard, but he had taken up a position at the door, rifle shouldered. My time here seemed to be mandatory. When I turned back, Sheena the translator bird had her hand still stuck forward to me.

I gingerly took it, noticing the sharp fingernails, and stubbled feathering rising across her wrist.

Once we had gently shaken hands, she motioned to the chair across from the raven. Apparently, his name was Darclau, and this appeared to have all been arranged at his behest.

Sheena stood and pulled her stool closer, extending her wings for balance as she sat again. She fixed me and then Darclau with a look, and then nodded.

The raven on the desk across from me hopped toward her and cawed. He fluttered his wings and burbled to her in a chattering series of rattles and clicks. Then he turned to me and extended his wings. He lowered his head and opened his beak. “CAW!”

Sheena suddenly leaned across the table and shouted at me, “Why did you take their things?”

I blinked and recoiled as they both waved their wings at me, filling the small room with the rustle of feathers. “Their things?”

“CAW! CAW! CAW!”

“Their things! Their things! Their things!”

Both Darclau the actual raven, and Sheena the alien bird creature screamed at me in unison. My eyes went wide, and I raised my hands defensively. “I didn’t take anything, and I don’t know what things he means!”

Darclau huffed. He gronked and rattled at Sheena again. As he conversed to her, he turned and spread his wings at me again. She turned and faced me when he finished.

“Darclau and his friends are used to collecting things here in the campground. Things they like. Now you have stopped them from being able to sell those things to BuyMort with the use of a MortBlock. This is their home. You had no right.”

When she finished, she lunged forward and spread her own wings. It was significantly more intimidating than when Darclau did it. Like a Deinonychus in the room with me. What an untrained dinosaur enthusiast might mistake for a velociraptor, in a pencil skirt and silk scarf.

I raised my hands again and shook my head. “You got the wrong guy. I’m not Mr. Sada, he did that. I just run things for him.”

Darclau dipped his head and looked at me with one eye. Then he clattered forward on the table. “CAW!” The raven turned and chattered to Sheena again.

Once he finished, she slapped the table and made me jump. “Their things!” She sat back on her stool and carefully pressed a line out of the pleat on her skirt. “Unacceptable. You are the stone thrower, that is known. You also give food. Good food.”

My captor cawed loudly again, taking an aggressive hop forward. Sheena mimicked his movement and shouted, “Confusing!” in my face.

I flinched away and stared at the bird on the table. He cocked his head to the side and stared back, using just one eye. “You liked the home-made suet? I worked really hard on it.”

Sheena blinked at me and held up a hand. “I apologize for interrupting. What is suet?” She cocked her head to the side as well, and the resemblance between the two was striking. Separated by a few years of evolution, but still.

“In this case, it was pumpkin seeds in solidified bacon grease.” I pointed at Darclau and flinched again when he clacked his beak at me. “Took me a while to perfect the recipe, but this guy and his friends never failed to eat ‘em up when I made a batch.”

She blinked at me, before turning to Darclau. She chattered and gronked at him in their bird language. He nodded and wiped his beak on the table. I thought it looked like he was sharpening it. He opened his beak and spread his wings and chuffed twice.

“Good!” Sheena mimicked the movement. “Tasty!”

I was starting to get the hang of this. Talking to Darclau appeared to be a task of what I referred to as ‘managing emotional management.’ In my various jobs, I have had the joyous task of managing my own management’s emotions.

Just like so many of my former bosses, Darclau was in charge. But boy was he letting his emotions run him. Good thing one of my survival skills was brown nosing.

“I can make more suet. We have pumpkins.” I raised my eyebrows at the raven across from me but remained hunched in my chair. He was big on body language, so I figured a defensive position might help me.

Darclau stared at me and trilled softly in the back of his throat. Then he curled the fingers of one toe and pecked the table hard, before chattering and cawing at Sheena. She looked at him intently and nodded.

“No trust!” She also pecked the table, leaving a small dent on its surface. “No trust stone thrower! This our home! You take. We take!”

I shook my head rapidly as she spoke, looking at Darclau. “One time. I am so sorry, I should never have done that.” Sheena began trilling and looking between Darclau and I. I ignored her and continued.

“I made the suet to apologize. To try and be your friends. When you still hated me, I left you alone. Kept leaving suet, and let you go through the campsites after the guests left. Don’t blame me for taking your home away, that was Mr. Sada, who technically owns it.”

I stopped to take a breath, but Darclau merely looked between me and Sheena with his beak open.

My hands still in my lap, I sat up straighter. “If you kill all of us, there will be nobody to leave things for you. We lived here in harmony before, I tried to make sure of that. Can we share this place? Maybe be friends someday?”

Sheena burbled and trilled at him, before clicking her beak closed. The raven swung his head between her and me, and then clicked his beak the same way she had done. He whistled and began pumping his neck while making small “g’wah” sounds and chattering.

I looked expectantly at Sheena, and she also began thrusting her beak up and down in the room. “Share is good. Things are good. People stay. Become friends, eat suet.”

“Yes, more suet is top of my list. I just . . .” I narrowed my eyes. “Sheena, how much does Darclau understand?”

She glanced between him and me before blinking with a sigh. “More than you think. Less than I would hope for.”

The tall bird woman reached a hand out and offered a clawed finger to Darclau. He happily rubbed his face and beak against it while ruffling out his feathers.

“They are so very smart, but not wise. As I understand this contract, the military conflict here is likely to create enemies for Darclau and his clan.”

She glanced at me.

“He has been attempting to speak with you for days. Now he has ensured that, but I fear the cost.”

I raised my hands and shook my head. “I just want to ensure the safety of my people. He has a point, this was their home, and it was taken away from them. The same thing happened to me; I just want to find a way for everyone to live in peace. Nobody looks hurt, so long as it stays that way, I can make this work.”

I sat back in the chair and looked at Darclau again. This was the one I had thrown that pebble at, years ago.

He had never forgotten it.

That act of casual malice had come to form an important part of his world, and something made me want to fix it. It was just a raven, but that didn’t matter. It changed how I saw myself to be thought of as the stone thrower. I preferred to be the suet cake guy.

“Darclau. I want to offer you and your people a home here, as part of our affiliate. We’ll figure out a job for you, I was thinking maybe scouting for BlueCleave. Scavenging even?”

Sheena rapidly translated for him, and Darclau hopped in a small circle with his mouth open wide. When he began burbling and cawing, Sheena translated.

“Yes! Home! We scout, easy. What about trash? What about trash?”

When she asked it the second time, her neck extended toward me the way his had at the end of his little speech.

I leaned back to avoid the tip of her long beak and shrugged at the small raven on the table in front of me. “What about trash?”

His feathers all ruffled. “Caw!”

“Ours!” Sheena lightly shook down her entire body, feathers fluffing out with the movement.

I nodded. “No stealing from campers, and yes. You can have the trash. If you guys want to, we can set up a salvage operation from here. There’s tons of places nearby you could probably find things to sell to BuyMort, and if you had a home base here, we would only take a small cut. Say five percent? That way, you can be independent, even if you don’t scout or pick up trash.”

Sheena translated the important parts, and we began talking in earnest about what cohabitating in the campground would look like. The more complicated the concepts became, the more Sheena stepped in to help.

I got the distinct impression that this was outside of her job description, but I sensed a connection between the two. She clearly felt responsible for what she saw as a reckless young creature that was worth protecting.

I found that position ironic since he held the contract on the mercenaries with guns to our heads. In spite of that fact, the negotiation felt strangely sincere as it proceeded.

I got Darclau to agree not to perform an armed takeover of the camp again pretty easily. That had been a misunderstanding, from his perspective. He had done his best to express their problem, gotten frustrated and paranoid, and in a fit of panic had purchased a premium mercenary operation to reclaim his home.

After hearing about it, I honestly felt lucky the bird had managed to tell them to use non-lethal force only, once they had arrived and begun their assault. The raven, being a raven, had gotten in over his head and didn’t seem like he really meant to hurt anyone.

Or really understand what he had done, and why it was bad. He was really happy to be our friend and not do it again though, and that mattered a lot.

What I ended up getting out of the negotiation was five percent of a scavenging operation. Whatever the ravens sold to BuyMort would automatically go through our affiliate, which gave them a higher sale price and us a small slice.

They also agreed to act as scouts for the BlueCleave tribe, assuming the mercenaries decided to stay on after this debacle. There was also some vague speech about picking up trash around the camp, but my primary focus there was making sure they weren’t stealing from the people. That was a good way to get some dead ravens, especially after this current mess.

My concessions on behalf of the campground affiliate were few but significant. We carved out a section of territory that became immediately and officially the raven’s property, once Mr. Sada signed off on it.

Darclau set up the MortBlock as we hashed it out. The triangular Joshua tree grove that cornered the primary and secondary campground roads was to be treated as sovereign raven territory. The ravens also got a promise that we would not retaliate for the military take-over, in exchange for calling it off and not doing it again. Sheena worked that last part up for us.

At the end of the negotiation, Sheena offered him a business card. The raven happily scuffed the card back and forth on the desk with his claws, beak open as he guffawed.

Sheena slipped me one too, and I pocketed it with thanks. It would be good to call on her if anything went wrong with the deal. She assured me that he understood the majority of what we had discussed, but something in the way she told me that without being asked made me question it immediately.

After a brief conversation with the mercenary bird in the room with us, Darclau left. His hired muscle just held open the door for him, and he flew away, directly from the metal table between us. He flew over his friends, and they followed after him immediately, disappearing from view.

Sheena and the mercenary conversed briefly, before she produced a device from her jacket pocket and pressed a small button on it. It looked like a phone to me but designed to be held by talons instead of fingers.

A dimensional pod rippled violently into being behind her in the room, a stink of burning ozone briefly passing over us. It indicated a portion of the room in the corner with its highlighting lasers and then opened a rainbow beam.

Sheena waved and bobbed her head at me, before walking into it and disappearing. The pod popped out of existence, giving us another fart of burnt ozone in the process.

My Afflqwst app popped up with my reward.

Quest - Your affiliate has been taken over by a hostile mercenary force. No one has been harmed, but all are being restrained. Military force is not a viable option, any victory would be pyrrhic. A lack of lethal force indicates possible peaceful intent. Attempt to come to a peaceful outcome.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Re-acquire affiliate assets.

2. Broker a peaceful outcome with the occupying force.

3. (Optional) Ensure employees are not harmed.

POSSIBLE OUTCOME - Alliance with new affiliate (65%).

REWARD - Special Afflqwst reward.

The ‘reward’ section was highlighted and as soon as I focused on it, a gift card sprang up in my vision, immediately depositing itself into my personal morties account. It gave me less than a single mortie, unfortunately. .99 morties chimed cheerfully from my account. Then a note sprang into my vision, filled with a random assortment of words.

Upgrade. App. Marketing. User data. Automate. Weaponized. Subroutine communications. Then, at the end of the list, in all caps, KILL BUYMORT.

The last one made me think back to my initial purchase, and then the ad that brought me to the Afflqwst app. I grabbed the words and swiped them over to BuyMort’s search function. BuyMort happily took the words and shot out a single response. I was dazed momentarily; this was the first time it had done that. Usually, I was given a ton of choices, to the point that it was dizzying.

My quest reward started to feel almost intentional as I read the title of the purchase. “Afflqwst automation upgrade.” It was an add-on for my app, which explained the .99 mortie gift card too.

That was exactly what the app add-on cost. I clicked the purchase button, and my Afflqwst app closed itself to restart. When it popped back open, there were several new unfilled quest areas, and Specter himself had a correspondence zone added.

I could now ask him questions about the app and my quests anytime I needed to.

Chapter 34

My captor flicked his beak at me, indicating I should rise from my chair. When I did, he produced a knife and flipped it open, before using the blade to free my hands. The zip tie manacles fell away, and I nodded at him. He held the door open for me.

Walking back out into the early afternoon sun felt good, but that faded quickly when I saw the gathered people. Each of them was glaring at me.

I sighed and started walking toward them, heading specifically to the BlueCleave tribe. The bird person mercenary captain squawked a loud order and the rest of them jumped into motion. Zip ties were cut away and the BlueCleave tribe was allowed their weapons and armor back. They grabbed their weapons but didn’t make any aggressive moves with them.

Phyllis was let up, as they disconnected the generator. Molls was also freed, though the bird man assigned to that task was very skittish, and actually fluttered into the air at one point when retrieving the netting.

The corvid dinosaur alien mercenaries were no longer pointing weapons at anyone and were being far less aggressive than when I had arrived. They had even brought the vehicles inside the compound and lined them up neatly along the side of the road.

As my people began getting themselves up and back in their little groups, a regular pod arrived and indicated a wide area. When the rainbow beam sparkled into existence, the bird mercenaries started walking into it.

They were careful about it, covering each other and going in groups, backing into the beam to make sure none of us attacked. Within a few seconds though, they were all gone, and we were alone again.

I was still trying to think of what to say when Mr. Sada spoke up from his chair. His legs were still crossed, and he was wearing his terrycloth robe and slippers.

“Well, that was interesting!” he shouted. “Care to tell us what the hell happened?”

Another voice shouted ‘yeah’ and then they were all murmuring and casting me dark looks. I raised my eyebrows and nodded.

“Yup, be my pleasure Mr. Sada.”

After placing my hands on my hips and making sure I had them all staring at me, I laid it out for them.

“That was a misunderstanding.”

Voices erupted and at least one person started laughing.

I sighed and tried again.

“I’m dead serious. You remember the campground ravens, Mr. Sada?”

He narrowed his eyes and nodded.

“Well, they got BuyMort too. Turns out, they have strong feelings about your MortBlock restricting them from scavenging the park. I talked ‘em down.”

Mr. Sada stood up and blinked at me. He walked closer, his slippers shuffling in the gravel.

“Tyson, I don’t know who all these people are, but we share an ordeal now. We all sat here for an hour in the sun together while you went and talked to a bird about our fate? Am I understanding the situation correctly?”

I raised my eyebrows and cocked my head but nodded.

“Yeah. Sounds crazy but that’s pretty much what happened. Thankfully, it worked. We’re fine, they won’t attack us anymore.”

I pointed to the Joshua tree grove.

“Oh, but this area is theirs now. They live here. So nobody hurt them or anything. They’re like . . . rich, I think. They’re cool for now and seem really psyched to be neighbors now that we worked out the land issue, just please encourage good relations. I guess.”

The group of random people I had gathered at the hippy commune were mostly conversing with each other, and the conversation seemed to focus on one man.

A tall man with red hair and a muscular physique.

He stared at me while they spoke, and I mentally prepared myself for dealing with him while I turned to deal with Mr. Sada.

“You gave away part of my campground?” Mr. Sada scowled at me.

“No, I saved your life. Again. They were talking about killing us to reclaim their home, but all they really want is this Joshua tree grove here, and access to our trash.”

He narrowed his eyes but didn’t respond, so I continued.

“You saw how they took out Phyllis? And Molls? I assume they got BlueCleave when they were vulnerable as well. This attack was very well scouted out, and now those scouts are ours. They’ll help warn us of incoming trouble and find stuff we need. Plus, we get a little cut of their salvage operation.”

Mr. Sada frowned and nodded as I spoke, then shrugged at the end.

“Whatever Tyson, you say they won’t attack us again, that’s good enough for me.”

He waved a hand at me and started shuffling away toward the gate.

“C’mon hobb! C’mon Roofus!”

The man with red hair approached him and they spoke for a moment. Mr. Sada pointed at me; the man turned away and he approached me instead.

“Hi.” I started, offering him my hand to shake. “Tyson.”

He shook it once, with a hard squeeze. “Chris. Look Tyson, I gotta bring up some concerns.”

I nodded and laughed. “Ha! I bet. What was it? The armed capture the instant you all arrived? Or the fact that it was caused by our campground ravens being pissy?”

Chris nodded, more vigorously the longer I spoke. “Yeah, definitely both. All of that. But also, the giant snake woman is a little concerning to a few folk. What is this place?”

I sighed and put my hands on my hips, looking around. “I honestly don’t know, brother. Working on turning it into someplace safe, but . . .” With that I shrugged. “Just wait till you meet the slimes.”

He hesitated, but then looked over his shoulder at the people gathered behind him. “No offense then, but I think we’re going to head out and find someplace else.”

I nodded and offered him my hand again. “Completely understand. You’re welcome back anytime if you change your mind. I mean that.”

We shook hands and started walking back to the crowd of new people. Phyllis watched from the background, standing guard over a still sleeping Molls.

“Everyone!” I addressed the whole crowd of them. “This is an at-will situation folks. Anyone who wants to stay can stay. Anybody who wants to go is welcome back at any time. So long as you’re not a threat to the place, you’re welcome here.”

That started some of them murmuring and talking among one another again, and I raised my hands to get their attention again.

“What happened with the ravens was a misunderstanding. They’re on our side and will be helping us in the future. What we’re trying to build here is important to me, and I’m not going to lie to you about your safety. Here seems better to me, but it’s also my home. All of you make your own choices about it.”

I went to walk away but remembered my last thing and turned back with a finger raised.

“Anyone who stays will be expected to contribute in some way is all. We’ll figure out the details later, as needs arise. Right now, I need to go check on my friend.”

I left the group and moved over to Molls. I gave a signal to Rayna, who was watching me closely, with her BlueCleave hobbs gathered nearby.

Phyliss waved her still active fusion cannon at me. “Hello dearie. What was that all about?”

I sighed and launched into another full explanation. Phyllis laughed at several points and shrugged from inside her suit when I finished. “What? That’s all you have to say, Phil?”

She shrugged again. “Honestly Dearie, I’m not convinced any of this is real, so the campground ravens becoming a military threat makes perfect sense. They’re our scouts now though you say?” The mech leaned in and Phyllis eyed me seriously.

“Yeah Phil, they’re our scouts now. They just want to live here in peace, like the rest of us.” I shrugged back at her and focused on Molls. “What’d they do to her?”

Phyllis grunted as the mech sat down heavily. “A dart of some kind. They had that red eyed one come check on her, but they seem terrified of her. None got too close aside from him.”

I nodded with a small smile. “Yeah, birds are usually careful around snakes. I wonder if their species have history.”

Phyllis shook her head and produced a joint from inside the mech.

“Don’t know, don’t care, dearie.”

She raised the still smoldering fusion cannon to her face and the end of the joint burst into flame before it got very close. Phyllis took a drag and pointed at Molls with the joint.

“What are you gonna do with her?”

Molls eyes were closed, and her body was totally relaxed. She breathed rhythmically and didn’t rouse even when I shook her lightly. I glanced back at Phyllis.

“I don’t know Phil. Maybe if you help me, I could get her back in the Lincoln.”

Phyllis groaned but nodded. “Let me finish my smoke, at least.”

I nodded, absently ignoring her. I was watching the group of new people. The pickup truck and one of the sedans left, but the majority of the people were milling around looking lost and confused.

I stood up and walked over to them, raising my hands to get their attention again. Three groups of people stood in front of the remaining vehicles. “Hey guys, what can I help you all out with?” It was surprising to me how easily I fell back into the customer service routine.

A tall man with dark skin and hair raised his hand. “I guess we don’t really know where to go. But we plan to stay here, at least tonight.”

I waved over Rayna, who nudged Tollya, who was wearing her new helmet. The two started toward me, and I pointed at her.

“Rayna and Tollya there are going to help you guys get settled. They’re part of the BlueCleave tribe, and they run security for us.”

As I finished, I saw one of the new people eyeing the hobbs.

“They got ambushed by an overwhelming force with detailed insider knowledge. These guys are good, but nobody is perfect.”

Rayna stopped in front of me and nodded, and Tollya gave me a small push on the shoulder on her way by. “What you need boss?”

“Thanks Rayna, I’d love it if you could get some hobbs to help these folk get settled. I’ll need to talk to you about a bunch of stuff soon, but right now let’s get these folk a place to stay. Some tents and air mattresses if they want them too, please.”

I finished and turned back to the young man before me.

“There is water at Mr. Sada’s place, one of the hobbs can help you find it if you want to fill up some containers. I have no idea how he’s getting water or power, but you can probably charge stuff if you need to as well. Just stay in the garage and yard or he’ll probably yell at you. Might anyway, just let me know if I need to go talk to him about it.”

He nodded slowly with wide eyes and followed Tollya as she huffed at him and pointed. She began walking slowly toward an open area of the campground. I turned back to Rayna as the people around us moved to get in their vehicles.

“Rayna, wait.” She turned back and stopped, eyes fixed on me. “Please, keep ‘em away from the spider trees.”

Rayna frowned.

“Between that and the slimes, it’ll be a lot of ground to cover, boss. I’ll set patrols.” She nodded. “We got it.”

She left to go speak with the rest of the gathered BlueCleave hobbs.

I sighed and turned back to Molls and Phyllis. My friend already had the Nah’gh woman in her arms, but Molls’ tail drooped onto the ground in coils. Phyllis stared at me as I approached and started laughing when I went to pick up Molls’ coiled tail.

“Good luck, dearie.”

“I love hearing you laugh, Phyllis, that’s all. Don’t mind me.”

I heaved and struggled but managed to get the snake priest’s tail mostly managed. It was wrapped around my waist and slung over an arm, but I managed to walk without dragging any of her body on the ground.

“Do this stuff on purpose, just to keep you giggling, old lady,” I muttered. She might have heard me or not, her chuckle didn’t change.

Phyllis set an easy pace, but I struggled to keep up anyway. I would never say this to her in person, but Molls was heavy. My frame of reference was a bit skewed, but I knew for sure that she was much larger than most other Nah’gh I had seen.

The doctor had also called her something different, an ‘albino conda,’ whatever that meant.

Molls was special, even among her own people. I thought about that as I helped drag her limp body back to her site and the Lincoln.

Honestly, Phyllis and her mech did most of the work. It was surprisingly gentle, and I mostly just had to keep up. When we arrived at the Lincoln, I set down Molls’ tail as gently as I could on the sand and moved to open the back door.

The Lincoln had been changed, significantly. Not only had Molls installed a system that produced blinds for each window from a compact tube near the top of the window, but she had also decorated since last I saw the car.

A thick, burgundy blanket covered most of the seat and floor, and Molls had hung a string of small, colored lights across the back of the spacious cabin. Across one side of the back of the front seat hung several pictures of human men.

Human men with no shirts on, I realized.

She also had a small pile of paperback novels on the floor behind the passenger seat. Each of them featured a Nah’gh woman and a human man, in various states of undress and or eroticism. They were porny romance novels, and I learned something important from their existence.

Then I shook it off and focused on helping her. I gave some thought to calling the doctor again, but I held off.

It would wear off, I just needed to get her someplace comfortable.

Her muscles rippled beneath her scales as she shivered involuntarily, and I gestured to Phyllis to bring her over. The inside of the Lincoln was roasting, I had always hated that about it. It made a perfect bedroom for Molls though, so we struggled to load her in.

Phyllis stationed her mech on one side of the car, while I went around to the other side. Then she leaned down and handed Molls to me. The angle was bad, and it was awkward trying to get to her, so I ended up carefully clambering into the car to get to her.

I slid my arms beneath her armpits and slid her into the car. As I took her from Phyllis, her lower body slid free and dropped her weight into my arms unexpectedly. I guided our fall to the padded seat, avoiding injury to her and me, but she flopped against my chest in the action.

She stirred sleepily and flickered out her tongue for an instant. Then she sighed deeply and leaned against me harder, rubbing the back of her hood against my neck and cheek. “Mmm . . . Tyson . . .” she murmured.

Her hand raised and brushed my own before I let go and carefully extracted myself, eyes wide. She giggled in her sleep as my hand passed through her armpit, and I flinched, holding still until she seemed to be deeper asleep again.

I grit my teeth and carefully positioned her so that she was lying down against the corner of the seat and door, before moving around to the other side.

Phyllis was smiling at me as I approached, and I glared at her. She giggled and turned away, flipping on her television in the mech. I focused on getting Moll’s tail into the vehicle. Her humanoid parts were all leaning in a comfortable position, but the majority of her body was still outside in the sand.

As I went to gather the first portion of her tail, I glanced at her in the car and inadvertently saw up her skirt. After learning that Molls was wearing bubblegum pink panties, I kept my eyes fiercely averted.

Can’t unlearn stuff like that.

I gathered portions of her tail and looped them in the car as best I could. She didn’t respond or wake as I worked, so I assumed I was doing a good job.

Still, it felt strange to be piling loop after loop of her tail on top of itself, and she was bent nearly double below the waist to fit inside. I finished up and carefully closed the door, then turned back to Phyllis in time to see her mech’s arm change from a metal hand into the fusion cannon.

Then I looked past her and saw why.

Chapter 35

Garthrust, the scarred Orc priest from the Dearth Conglomerate was approaching in the road, flanked on either side by two armed BlueCleave hobbs. One of them was Tollya, and she was glaring at the priest, hard.

He raised his arms as he walked toward us and reached out to me.

“Tyson! I like what you’ve done with the place.” A stump of a tusk jutted from his scarred lip at me as he spoke. “You’ve even gathered more guests. Gives this affiliate a real sense of . . .” there his lip curled. “Legitimacy.”

I put a hand on Phyllis’ arm as I walked by, removing it quickly to avoid being burned. Still, she looked at me and nodded, and the cannon reverted into a metal hand.

“Thank you for the kind words . . .” I paused and put my hands on my hips. “What do I call you? Priest?”

He sneered. “No difference to me if you do. Foolish to forget a name.”

I blinked. “Or just busy, sheesh. I meet so many new people lately. Very well, Valued Guest it is. Welcome back to the Happy Trails Campground, now Silken Sands. I do hope you’ve an appointment this time, I am so looking forward to showing you our hospitality.”

I stopped and stared him in the eyes.

“We’re very serious about our hospitality here.”

“Not guest, Garthrust.” He blinked at me a few times, looking at Phyllis and the hobbs. “My name is Garthrust.”

I smiled and nodded. “Oh, of course, Valued Garthrust. How can I help you today, Valued Garthrust?”

His eyes narrowed and he glared at me. I maintained my very best robot butler routine and smiled politely at him. I enjoyed that my normal customer service routine was enough to throw this thug from his natural ability to intimidate others, and I leaned into it, hard.

“I, uh, have an appointment.” He waved a hand at Molls’ Lincoln and started to move toward it.

I took a quick step to the side and smiled again.

“Oh, I am so sorry, our priest is unavailable today, something came up. Unexpected but unavoidable situation, we’ll make sure she reaches out to reschedule at her earliest convenience.”

Garthrust moved to step past me, and I blocked him again, waving the BlueCleave hobbs forward. The Orc stopped and stared at me. He stepped closer and moved directly into my face. I held a hand out for the BlueCleave to hold back and smiled back at the Orc in my face.

“Move, servant!” he growled in my face.

“No, Valued Garthrust.” I kept a chipper tone in my voice and grinned openly at him. “I have my duties to perform. As you say, I am a servant.”

I stopped smiling and stared directly into his milky eye, to further infuriate him. “Take another step if you’d like to see what my duties require of me. Please.”

I squeezed my hands into fists at my sides, and the smile slowly crept back onto my face as the Orc priest stared in confused fury. Then he noticed the armed hobbs at his back and relaxed with a barked laugh that sprayed spittle into my face.

I continued smiling and wiped it away without blinking, before returning to my staring contest with the Orc. He had already lost though, and it seemed like he knew it, as he physically retreated a step to complain.

“Not very professional to break an appointment last minute. I may have to leave an unfavorable review.”

“Unavoidable, I suppose, on both accounts.”

I stepped forward aggressively and grabbed Garthrust’s hand. He tried to pull back, but I clenched my hands and held on, dragging him into a handshake.

“Silken Sands would like to apologize, Valued Garthrust. If you need to take it out on the reviews section, I fully understand.”

He scowled and yanked his hand away. This time I let him. He blinked rapidly and looked between the gathered people surrounding him.

Phyllis flexed her mech's fist, and Tollya racked her SPAZ-12 shotgun. Garthrust turned to stare at me again, and I met his gaze with my steady smile. He faltered, eyes narrowing as he took another step back from me and adjusted his robes.

“And what happened, to so rudely cancel an appointment?”

Tollya scowled and grunted. “Not her fault. We were attacked.”

Garthrust turned and smiled at me. “Were you? How unfortunate. Are you even capable of defending this priest in your care?”

I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders. “We’re still here, in spite of cowardly attempts on our lives that will not go unanswered.”

The Orc’s eyes narrowed at me. “See that she reschedules.” With that, he stormed away. “Or perhaps I’ll have to report an unsuitable location to The Church missions board.”

The hobbs immediately assumed their positions behind him, and Phyllis started moving in that direction too. I jogged to catch up, walking briskly alongside Garthrust. He glared at me, and I said nothing.

Just smiled my customer service smile and stared back at him.

The priest didn’t want to keep my gaze, and turned away, shaking his head. We marched through the campground to the front gates, which had been significantly overhauled since last time I saw them.

The mud-crete wall extended over the main entrance, with a single large portal installed to allow entrance. The old entrance and exit gates were torn down and lay in piles at the side of the construction site. A new gate had taken their place, a wider version of the metal gate protecting Mr. Sada’s driveway.

Vehicles rumbled on the other side of the gates, and I could see the rest of the convoy on the road just past them, behind ragged clumps of damaged palisade. The line of them ended just beyond sight, and a pile of construction materials were heaped there.

Garthrust began turning to walk to the edge of the wall, and I moved to block him with another wide smile. I extended an arm toward the gate instead. “Right this way, Valued Garthrust.”

He glared and stumbled, grabbing his robes with an Orcish curse. We walked on the road to the gate, and I stood by as the hobbs moved to swing it open. It took two on either side, but the slab of metal parted in the center, and opened enough to let the Orc priest out.

That same convoy of armored vehicles was present, but the Toyota at the end was missing this time. Probably blown up and left to burn out front of Mr. Sada’s gate, then sold to BuyMort by some ornery ravens.

There was definitely a tank this time. I looked closely, and while several of the vehicles had smaller turrets, one of them bore a significantly sized version. I looked closer and noticed it was also hovering above the ground a few inches, a pad of distorted air beneath it.

Garthrust walked to the vehicle in front of it, looked back at us in confusion while I waved cheerily, and then climbed aboard. They rolled out in a small cloud of dust, a mix of mercenaries visible through windows and manning turrets.

Phyllis let out a huff and turned away.

“I’m going to go watch television dear, let me know if you need anything.” She waved a metallic arm and clanked her way back to her deck. As the vehicles rumbled away in the road toward Prescott, I got a pop up from BuyMort, notifying me that our affiliate had its first review.

“One out of five stars. Confusing customer service. Manager seems possibly insane. Unclear what affiliate even sells or makes. Fake business!”

I chuckled. Fuck you too Garthrust. We’ll work this out someday soon.

I just needed to figure out what to do about that tank. Maybe it would be just as simple as siccing Phyllis on it, but something about its armor made me doubt that. It looked different than the other vehicles. Far sturdier.

For the meantime, the threat of the church would keep him and the Dearth Conglomerate at bay. As I stared at the unfinished wall, I realized for the first time since I had arrived that the goblin work crew was missing.

When I turned to find a hobb, Tollya was there waiting, in her helmet, staring at me. “Oh, good. Hi Tollya, I need to talk to Rayna. You know where she is?”

Tollya nodded and pointed across the campground, in the direction of Mr. Sada’s mansion. I nodded and began looking for the golf cart.

It had been parked near the mobile office that was still in place beside the raven’s grove and when I arrived a hobb wielding an older AK-47 was guarding the vehicle for me.

I nodded at him as I approached. “Thanks.” He nodded back, and left the moment I sat down in the golf cart.

He’d been making sure no one trapped it, I realized. I needed to be careful about where I left this thing in the future. Not only was it dangerous — I didn’t want to be wasting the hobbs’ time guarding stuff I could just put away.

I drove to Mr. Sada’s and parked in the garage, after being let in and out of the gates separating us. I plugged it in to charge, then went looking for Mr. Sada’s hidden power source. It seemed like something I should know, how he managed to have power and water while the rest of us went without.

And if it was something cheap, well, that was something I could build on.

The first room I searched was the garage, but nothing out of the ordinary was apparent, so I began searching the rest of the place. I started outside, walking the mud-crete barricade, and looking at every single item and building wall.

Nothing stood out, aside from a small device in the pool. It looked like it might be a robotic pool cleaner, but on closer inspection had arms that looked an awful lot like pipes. Then I noticed how low the pool was and blinked. The pool was sizable, but it was clearly down almost a foot in depth already.

Mr. Sada had been using his pool’s water to shower in and drink.

I had used his shower just that morning.

I shook my head and hoped that little machine filtered as well as it pumped. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to worry about Dearth. Virus and bacteria would have us on our knees in a week.

I walked away and made a beeline for the mordren’s shed. Maybe the power source was there. And if it wasn’t, it still wouldn’t hurt for me to check in on the patient.

The hobb guard nodded at me as I walked past but held his position while I peeked around the corner of the shed. Doofus was back, hanging out with the awake mordren, who was casually running his cast across the dog’s back. Doofus seemed to love the scratches and was thumping his leg happily against the mordren’s hip.

The mordren was stoned, clearly, and still didn’t move very easily, but he had a dopey smile on his reptilian features, and he seemed to be without much pain. Doofus was also clearly loving the company, so I left without disturbing either of them.

I continued my search in Mr. Sada’s house, looking for how he managed to keep the lights on. The basement was clear of everything except the giant metal hatch to the Sleem’s lair, and the pallets of goblin d’jhz that were stored there. With no gobbs to manage, Hord was nowhere to be seen.

Moving upstairs, I wandered into Mr. Sada’s room after passing Hord in the hallway. My boss was watching TV and lounging in his bed, exactly where I expected him to be.

“Oh, hey Tyson, you get that whole bird thing squared away?”

“Yes Mr. Sada, that shouldn’t happen again. I get the distinct feeling that they sold all the bodies and vehicle wrecks from last night, cause the BlueCleave hobbs mentioned that scavenger birds often do that with BuyMort. This also felt like it was pretty expensive, so I suspect the ravens don’t have a lot of money left for stuff like mercenary takeovers.”

I spoke absently while I inspected the rooms windows. Each of them had a strange sticker on the glass, with a thin tail that led to a small white box plugged into the outlet. Each sticker was the size of a fingernail, and the tails were all hair thin. The box itself was handheld and would easily fit in a pocket.

“Mr. Sada, what is this?”

He glanced over and blinked a few times. “Oh, that’s my solar. Bought it off BuyMort day one, knew we would lose power.”

I blinked again and looked at the device and stickers closer.

“This tiny little thing powers your whole house? Plus the AC?” He had it running again, of course. Weirdo lived in the desert and liked his house to be freezing.

He crossed his legs and nodded, sinking deeper into relaxation.

“Yep! Pricey, but worth it.”

Mr. Sada reached the remote and changed the psychic TV’s channel. The news station he liked began playing again, telling us about the recent Sleem infestation in remote parts of Arizona.

“I got a little water robot for the pool too. Should treat it like a cistern and just refill when it rains. You want ‘em when I leave? Cut ya a deal.”

I looked at him, expecting to be angry again. His face was just so sincere that I couldn’t be mad at him. He genuinely couldn’t think beyond his own needs to the campground or his guests. My guests.

“Yeah, Mr. Sada. That’d be great.” I stood to leave but snapped as I remembered the goblins. “Hey what happened to our gobb workforce?”

Mr. Sada scoffed from the bed. “Little bastards got to leave when we got taken over. Apparently, it’s a clause in their contract, and the mercs all honor it. Guess it’s more trouble than it’s worth to try and manage goblins on top of everything else a violent takeover requires. Canceled our contract and we lost the pay for it.”

I sighed. “Well shit, we need 'em back. They gotta finish up the walls, and we still have all the materials.”

“My walls are done, I dunno what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.” Mr. Sada chewed on a thumbnail and stared at the TV. “You hear about these Sleem things? Seems like they’re everywhere, they haven’t showed one yet though. Wonder what they look like.”

“Yeah, jackass, that’s the slimes in your basement. It’s probably all our fault for housing them here, we probably caused this entire infestation.”

The TV screen showed an aerial view of Prescott, and a large ball of slime was visible rolling through one of the streets. Land wasps rushed into the camera view as the ball of slime rolled forward. More smaller slimes followed it, and the two forces clashed.

The female orc host giggled and intentionally shook her breasts with the movement. “Wow Vicsor. Looks like a rough night in Prescott, huh?”

Vicsor, the male Nah’gh host, eyed the camera seriously and nodded, while shuffling the papers on his desk.

“Anyway!” I shouted to get his attention. “Can you get the gobbs back, please? We need this wall finished. I don’t have the morties, just use the affiliate.”

“Well, the affiliate is all my morties, how much is this gonna cost?” He whined.

“Mr. Sada.” I said, pointing at the TV.

His gaze followed, and we both watch as war raged in the streets of Prescott between the Sleem and the land wasps. The Sleem were winning, easily, consuming the poor dumb insects and shrugging off their claws and stingers.

“We need to protect the guests from that. Protect our priest from that. We lose her, we lose the church. We lose the church, we lose the entire campground and probably our heads to the Dearth Conglomerate. I’m gonna refill it later anyway, don’t worry. You’ll get your money.”

Mr. Sada stared at me for a minute, and then sighed and began swiping at the air in front of his face, a rueful chuckle on his lips.

“I liked it better when you didn’t talk back so much, Tyson. Back when you needed me and not the other way around.”

“Yeah, I bet. I mean, I appreciate everything that you did for me before. I really do. But this world is crazy, and I need more power if I’m gonna keep us alive. We’re partners now, not employee-employer anymore.” I crossed my arms over the starfish suit and frowned seriously.

He met my gaze but cracked almost at once and broke into a grin. “Yeah, yeah partner. I’ll get the gobbs back, stop worrying so much. Anything else?” he leered.

I sighed in relief and shook my head. “No, just that for now. We have food downstairs if you want some. I’m gonna take off now. Got some work to do,” I said, turning to leave.

“Awesome, we can work out a price for the solar later. I won’t gouge you too badly.” He laughed from his position on the bed.

My head shook automatically as I left, and when I passed Hord in the hallway, he stood to close the door behind me. I stopped and watched, then decided to talk to him. “Hord, what do you plan to do after Mr. Sada leaves?”

The gray alien blinked his oversized eyes at me before answering. “Hord bodyguard. Go with. Contract not up.”

My eyes widened a little, and I nodded.

“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Well, let me know if you change your mind. You can work here with me.” I hesitated, then met his eyes and reached out my hand. “I am sorry for how I treated you when you first arrived.”

Hord stared at my extended hand and blinked. “You boss. Hord wrong before.” Then he shook his head and waved his hands. “No sorry.”

“No Hord, I was wrong. I struck you. I won’t do that again if you choose to work here.”

I kept my hand level, and the alien kept looking between it and my face. After a few seconds, he placed his hand gently into my own and I shook it lightly.

“Thank you. Call if you need me.”

Hord blinked rapidly and nodded. “Yes boss.”

I flinched at that but smiled at him and turned to leave. Didn’t want to confuse him with my passing guilt any more than I had to.

Besides, I had Sleem to manage.

I left Hord in his hallway and went to go find Rayna. There was a war to plan.

Chapter 36

When I found Rayna, it was near Spider City. She and Tollya were busy erecting a new fence around the area. It was all simple chicken wire and flimsy bamboo stakes, but it looked like a good enough deterrent for the guests.

I walked over to their work area and waved. Tollya saw me first, slapping Rayna’s shoulder with the back of her hand. Rayna stood from her position in the dirt, wiping her hands off on her knees.

“Hello Tyson.” She raised a hand in greeting. “Work going good.”

She indicated the fencing with both of her large gray hands. Next to her, Tollya used a rock to pound in the next stake in their line.

I moved to help Rayna as she applied the chicken wire. It came on a hefty roll, and I held it in place for her as she pulled some free, to stretch between the stakes.

Each stake was a quarter portion of split raw bamboo. Stacks of them were piled off to the side of the road, with a small hatchet from the destroyed shed sunk into the ground next to it.

I guessed Rayna had bought the material herself, which made me want to pay her back quickly from the affiliate. I opened my account and dug around until I found a nifty little button called reimburse. Selecting it, BuyMort immediately paid the costs to Rayna then took 1% itself as a user fee.

I cursed.

That done, we went back to work stretching the fence. The process was simple. We split the bamboo, using a flat stone surface and the hatchet. Once it was split into quarters the entire length down, we cut the quarters into post sized stakes, cutting each length in half. Then Tollya bashed them into the ground with her rock, and we stretched chicken wire between them.

Rayna had found a staple gun somewhere, I suspected Mr. Sada’s garage, and used it to secure the wire to the stakes. As we worked to encircle the area with chicken wire, we spoke about it.

“Should help them grow. Expand. Give us someplace to easily gather webbing for sale.” Rayna grunted as she stretched the wire taught.

I stared at her. “That is brilliant Rayna, thank you.”

She nodded. “Not going to do much more, because . . . well, spiders. But yes, this should help get started.”

I chuckled as she stapled the wire to the stake. It was my chance to lean on the wire bale. She had me hefting it behind them. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. They were just dangerous pests here before BuyMort. I wonder who’s buying them.”

Rayna shrugged, wiggling the stake to ensure it was solid. When it barely jiggled in response, she nodded, and we moved to the next.

“Research affiliates, with those prices. The church, Dearth Conglomerate, many others all have research departments. New products from new planets is big business.”

I huffed as I dropped the heavy bale of wire at our next location. “So, they’re studying our spiders?”

“For now, yes. If you see prices spike, that usually means they found a new product to make from them. If they fall, likely more ranches selling.”

She stopped hauling on the wire to make it tight and sighed.

“Of course, silk always in demand. This is a good ranch. We can build a life here.”

I sighed. “Yeah. Maybe. Look, we got more problems to talk about.” When she looked up at me, one eyebrow raised, I continued. “The Sleem. We have an infestation.”

Rayna pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes. Yes, that must be dealt with.” There she stopped and put her hands on her hips. “We need gear. We have very little that can hurt them.”

“What about those rifles you guys picked up the other night? I thought they were plasma?” I scratched my head, looking around for spiders suddenly. Being this close to Spider City freaked me out, and every random itch became a threat.

“Yes. Ammo very expensive. We are saving them for emergencies right now. If you want though, we can use them against the Sleem. Effective, but not the best.”

She shook her head and scowled.

“The RavenWing mercs today had bolters. Fires superheated slag. That would hurt the Sleem.” She glanced up at me. “Expensive.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I was expecting you to tell me that. Hey, what happened to the fire extinguisher I gave you guys?”

Tollya finished banging a stake in and answered me. “Gone. Used up.” She picked up another stake and moved down the line.

Rayna nodded. “While you were gone, Sleem attack the new people. We chase them off, but they stole some food.”

I sighed. “Where the hell are they coming from?”

Tollya grunted. “Stink pipes.” She began banging on her next stake with the rock.

I narrowed my eyes. “Stink pipes. The sewer. Dammit, every site has sewer hook-ups. This place is built for these guys! We gotta do something.”

The gobbs were working nearby, under the direction of another hobb. It was a much smaller group this time, as they had only a section of the wall to complete. Rayna pointed at them and shrugged.

“We get gobbs to seal all the stink pipes. Sleem find another way, but this helps slow them down.”

I blinked and looked between her and the gobbs. “That will work? Just sealing the pipes?”

Rayna held up a hand. “Yes, Sleem dangerous. But stupid,” she said.

She started stretching the next portion of fencing and I leaned into it with the bale to help. “They think Mr. Sada lets them stay, so they won’t be too aggressive here. Only the young ones. Those the dumbest. They explore the most.”

Tollya chuckled over her rock. “Watch out for cubes. Cubes not stupid.”

Rayna’s eyes widened and she nodded vigorously. “Yes. Very true. Cubes are dangerous, and orbs are even almost smart.”

“What will they do?” I asked.

She stapled the latest stretch of chicken wire in place and looked up at me. “At first, not much. Young ones pop up, steal things, attack the weak. We can handle that,” she assured me.

Then she shook her head and shrugged. “But they breed. Start attacking nearby places. Use this as home base. Eventually, though . . . they attack us in force. If that happens, we likely lose the campground. If we survive. Sleem are dangerous.”

Tollya chuckled behind us. “Good thing they stupid.”

I looked between the two of them and paled. “They outsmarted our boss, Mr. Sada.”

Tollya stopped chuckling at that. She and Rayna shared a concerned look before she nodded at me. “Fine. Nothing to worry about, we kill Sleem often.”

Rayna looked up in thought, then nodded and went back to work on the wire. “Sure. Be fine. Just need weapons and upgrades.”

I smiled and sighed, thinking back to that first day and that first slime. I was kind of looking forward to wiping them out. Just then, my stomach rumbled. The physical exertion had made me hungry again, and that made sense.

My breakfast had been coffee, and my lunch had been several delightful bananas from the Sundew Valley Foods commune.

That made me think of all the food I had crammed in the golf cart at Mr. Sada’s, and I started fantasizing about dinner. It was so good to not have to worry about the Mortie cost.

Still, before we finished surrounding the entire area of Spider City in a chicken wire fence, I went and sold the contents of a tree near the back.

Or rather, I tried to, and something interesting and bizarre happened.

As the BuyMort pod was approaching, it raced along above the desert, as they always did. The pods typically kept an altitude of about a dozen feet in the air, before dipping in to hover at face level.

This time, as the pod approached, part of it exploded outward. It burst in a shower of black composite and shining metal, as green circuit board fragments colored the air.

Then I heard the gunshot, as it rolled across the desert all around me. I ducked as the pod began a very halfhearted version of its evasive routine, before spitting a cloud of sparks and falling to the ground.

Tollya shook her head from nearby. She had her shotgun resting over her shoulder, as Rayna stared through her binoculars. “Over there boss.” Tollya grunted, raising a hand and lazily pointing.

Atop a nearby ridge, I could see the glint of a weapon. Then the surrounding scrub moved, and I made out a face. It was human, wearing desert camo colors. As I watched, he stood and waved his long rifle at us. I could hear his laughter echo across to us.

Rayna shook her head and sighed. “And humans think hobbs stupid.”

Tollya barked a single laugh at the sky and nodded. “He killed himself. Not even know.”

I stared in confusion, but within a few seconds, an interdimensional BuyMort pod ripped into existence at the man’s side and what looked like a giant tongue flopped out of its beam. It resembled a massive, orange version of a sea cucumber, complete with delicate waving tendrils erupting from its far end.

The man, who was clearly a militia member now that I could see him better, gave a short scream and yanked his sidearm. Several gunshots echoed across to us, as the chunk of mobile alien tongue rose up high above him before slapping down to the ground with a cloud of dust.

The man’s scream was cut short.

“That not how that work.” Tollya grunted. She shook her head again and turned to get back to work. “Dirty Sleem trick anyway.”

Rayna nodded and grunted in approval. She and I watched the thing up on the hill as it ground and undulated on the ridge. When she glanced at me and noted my confusion, she explained over her shoulder.

“He tried to ambush us by attacking our pod. But pods scan their attackers, not just whoever nearby. Killed himself, like Tollya say.” She shrugged. “That bug worth something, dead. Easy to hunt. Tollya and I go get it after this done. Need to sweep for more militia anyway.”

I blinked a few times and let out a breath. “Well, glad to see the militia that clearly wants me dead is as incompetent as I expected them to be. That’s something, at least.”

I turned back to the pod and my attempt to sell some spiders, since there was nothing more to be done. The BuyMort bug was eating whatever pulp was left of the militia sniper, its little snaky tendrils lifting crushed portions of the body to its innards.

The pod nearby was still sparking internally, and a thin waft of smoke rose from its ruptured innards. As I turned to look at it, I noticed another normal pod racing toward me behind it, and BuyMort popped up a notification.

It explained that my pod had been attacked in transit, but another pod had been dispatched. The next pod swooped in, warped away the first pod, and then got to work selling my spiderwebs and spiderweb related products.

My affiliate page arose automatically, making me wince. I was used to pop-ups and sales pages, but the dark yellow tan of it was a sharp contrast to the clear blue horizon and it played tricks on my eyes.

I wasn't at all upset, though. I had wanted it up after all, I just really didn’t like how invasive this thing was.

And I saw a new tab, blinking off to the side. The label read Commodities in Dark Black Bold font. I clicked it.

Additionally, there seemed to be an option to select each commodity and zoom into the specifics of those various markets.

Silk was up. Way up, for undamaged.

That was encouraging if what Rayna said was true about product creation and demand. I wondered briefly as I boggled at the morties rolling in what the silk was being used to craft but shrugged.

Probably alien boxer shorts for the rich or something.

Are they silky? Are they smooth? Then it must be . . . Yes, it is!

Testicle Rally, the only patented shorts with a non-tear fly. For extra comfort and long wear, rally your testicles and give them the relaxation they deserve.

An ad had popped up, showing me exactly what I had thought of. Shimmering, light-colored alien boxer shorts made with newly acquired Earth spider silk, along with other silk clothing options.

I swiped it away and frowned. Fucking Testicle Rally? Really?

Then another ad popped up, this time for a weapon. A garrote, made from newly acquired Earth Black Widow spider silk.

Garrote X – Stylish yet Lethal. From the most dangerous spiders on Nu Earth, cultivated at risk to the ranchers own lives, comes the fashion accessory that fits in a pocket, yet puts the lives of many in your big strong hands. Garrote X. Buy one today! 4.1 stars, 350,000 morties.

Apparently they all called us Nu Earth in this dimension spanning civilization. Was good to know.

“Black widows are not that dangerous, what the hell.” I muttered.

Still, the single male widow on the tree had still sold for over two million morties, and their webbing was now listed separately as well, at a significantly higher value than the orb weavers. I was very impressed by the orb weaver count at the end. They made up for their lower cost in bulk, and they sold for a very respectable sixty-five thousand if in good health.

And I didn’t sell any eggs this time, which actually made me happy. I was getting a great paycheck here anyway, for the affiliate.

Eggs felt like a rainy-day item, and an easy way to damage my own affiliate if any of these companies buying them were halfway smart. I had made sure to only sell the male spiders, keeping the egg layers for my own affiliate.

At the end of my sales page, the total I had acquired for the affiliate was three million, four hundred and eighty thousand morties. Most of that went to Mr. Sada, but I was happy with it and returned to the hobbs when I was finished. We had finished the labor of building the fence and were retreating to find something to eat.

After I watched them hunt the land cucumber BuyMort had dropped, I had invited all the hobbs to eat from our stash at Mr. Sada’s, and Rayna was off to retrieve them. Tollya walked with me as escort.

I felt weird, having a bodyguard. I’m not the hoity-toity type who needs them for appearances, and I’ve never been important enough to warrant their presence.

But Rayna insisted, and she was honestly smarter than me anyway, so I just listened to her. If only the kids in high school could see me now.

I thought about what the spiders were going to eventually do to that chicken wire, I couldn’t help but appreciate her particular genius. She was setting us up with a natural loom that could be effectively collected all at once with a BuyMort sale.

So, when she told Tollya to walk me home, I didn’t complain to her. It was getting dark after all, and we still had Sleem to worry about, not to mention the militia jerks creeping around. Rayna was clearly smarter than me in a lot of ways, so it seemed like a good idea to listen to her.

Once back at Mr. Sada’s, the hobbs who attended our dinner feast gathered all the groceries from the garage and laid them out on the kitchen table. We had a ton of produce, as I had expected. Three large pumpkins, four dozen zucchini, an entire basket of mixed lettuces, fresh fruit, and so much more.

I grabbed a mango and bit into it while the hobbs debated and decided what to eat. They had their own rations still, but food was part of their contract here. Feeding them was going to become a challenge, even with Sundew Valley Foods in our corner.

I leaned across the counter and snatched up another banana before they were all claimed. I wanted to make a peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich for dinner.

Don’t judge me, I have a child’s palate.

Aside from my favorite, spaghetti and meatballs, a peanut butter sandwich of almost any variety managed to bring delight to my soul, and I knew for a fact Mr. Sada bought the good stuff from the hippy commune. They hadn’t included any, and I wondered why for a moment before shrugging it off. I could always ask for it the next time I went.

Which was looking like it might be the very next day. What wasn’t getting devoured casually in front of me was being bundled up in large jute bags. I assumed they were saving some for the hobbs out on shift, but the clear intention was to eat literally everything we had been given that day.

The only thing they left untouched on the smell of them was a pile of radishes. As I watched, Tollya bit a cucumber in half and crunched it up happily.

“Good!” she grunted, waving the last half of it at Rayna across the counter. The hobb tossed the other half of the vegetable into Rayna’s mouth from across the counter and began digging through the assorted produce to find another.

A hobb headed for the exit with a bag full of food, and I stepped in front of him when I saw the pumpkin on top of the pile.

“Oh, hold on guys!” I said.

Every hobb in the room whipped their heads around and stared at me. I again flinched at the life they must have led before Earth but pushed it away.

“I need the seeds from these fruits.” To illustrate, I lifted the pumpkin. “The flesh and meat are good too, you can eat it all but the stem if you want. Just please save me the seeds, there’s a lot of ‘em.”

All the hobbs grunted in agreement, and I placed the pumpkin back on the bag with a smile. The hobb hauled their sack of food away, to deliver it to a friend on shift. Someone had to protect Molls and the guests, but I was glad to see them getting some dinner.

My affiliate felt like it was running smoothly, despite the challenges and hiccups we’d had. I got a ping that the gobbs work crew contract had completed, and the wall was complete.

Before dark, as I had hoped.

They were warping out under supervision. I took some time and reveled in my sandwich on Mr. Sada’s couch, browsing BuyMort for anti-Sleem weaponry. I was getting frustrated with the basic search system when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out to see the picture of Molls in the attic, looking out the window, and smiled. I swiped to answer and saw her face from inside the Lincoln. Her device was wedged in the back of the seat, and facing her, zoomed in on her face and hood, with just a hint of her upper body in frame. She was yawning and covered her mouth with a hand as I accepted the call.

“Oh Tyson,” she said, swallowing the last half of her yawn. “Hello.”

“Good evening Molls, I’m glad to see you awake. Are you feeling okay?” I asked.

She scratched at the back of her hood and yawned again, this time letting it happen all the way. “Yes, but I have no idea what happened. Did I sleep the whole day away?”

I smiled at how cute she was when she was tired and shook my head. “No Molls, we were attacked. They darted you with something and took the rest of us captive. Nobody was hurt badly, but I was worried about you all day. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Molls raised a glass bottle filled with light blue liquid to the camera. “I’m a little thirsty, but I have my juice. I’m alright, really. Thank you for your concern. Darted? Who would dare attack the church?”

I explained the situation to her. Told her all about Darclau and his unkindness of ravens, how they had taken the camp over a misunderstanding and were working with us now. When I described the mercenaries, she scoffed.

“Well, that’s typical. RavenClaw mercenaries are terrified of Nah’gh . . . like me.” She huffed. “I was expecting it to be rough out here, but this is crossing a line. I may file a complaint with BuyMortMercMart on behalf of the Church.”

I smiled again. “It’s good to see you awake Molls. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Her scales flushed pink at my words, and something thrilled inside me. I quickly changed the subject.

“The wall got finished tonight, so the campground should be safe from any further attacks. Garthrust was pissy you wouldn’t see him, but I told him you would reschedule. Oh, and there’s some produce here if you’re interested.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the counter.

“I think the hobbs left a little anyway.”

Molls smiled and the color in her scales faded to a light purple.

“Thank you, but I shall pass. I don’t enjoy vegetables. The occasional fruit, yes, but not vegetables.”

She reached for her device again and plucked it from the seat back. I was gifted a very brief and motion sickness-inducing view of her cleavage before she righted the device and began playing with it while she spoke to me, tapping at the edges of the screen with her fingers.

“I will reschedule with Garthrust, immediately. That’s an important meeting.”

I nodded. “Well, just let BlueCleave know when he’s coming, please,” I said. A smile rose to my lips unbidden. “I may have ticked him off, just so you’re prepared. I don’t think he likes me.”

Molls smiled again, her scales deepening in purple. “Well, I had misconceptions about you the first time we met as well. I’m sure he’ll come around.”

“Appreciate the optimism Molls.” I said with a gentle smile.

She glanced back at my face and then turned to her task with a similar smile.

“I have to go now, Tyson, and arrange that. Thank you for keeping me informed and have a good night.” She yawned again, flushing pink as she did so. “Oh sorry. I am so tired.”

“Good night Molls. I’ll see you tomorrow, assuming the Sleem don’t get me,” I said.

She laughed and shook her head but hung up anyway. The image that remained on my screen was a still shot of Molls’ cleavage, from the instant she had turned the device upside down. Her purple tinged breast tops lingered with an outline of gray fog as I bit my lip.

“No, don’t save that. I want her image to be the one in the window.”

The phone changed back and then closed itself. A ghostly image of the fog shrouded head faded, but not before I could see that he was glaring at me in disdain again. I shoved the phone in my pocket and ignored him.

There were Sleem to manage.

Chapter 37

When I hung up the phone, I found that Afflqwst had given me two new tasks. One that I was already trying to work on, but also a new one that I was completely onboard with.

Quest - Your affiliate is an affiliate in name only. Complete basic start up requirements in order to provide a functional business model, and the bare minimum requirements of sustaining life.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Produce a regular source of income.

2. Provide shelter, water, food, and power for affiliate operators.

PROBABLE OUTCOME - Affiliate seizure. (65%).

POSSIBLE OUTCOME - Affiliate establishment. (35%).

REWARD - Upgrade coupon on select Afflqwst items.

Those numbers certainly didn’t thrill me, but I couldn’t exactly say I was surprised either. Felt like a good reminder to get working, and the next quest told me exactly what I needed to be working on.

Quest - Your affiliate is in danger from the sentient beings known as Sleem. You must find their base and eliminate it. Clear the Sleem from your affiliate’s land.

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Locate Sleem Base Of Operations

2. Clear base of Sleem Affiliate forces.

3. Scavenge base for sales items.

4. (Optional) Retrofit base for Affiliate use.

PROBABLE OUTCOME - Hostile Takeover of affiliate property (95%).

POSSIBLE OUTCOME - Sleem retreat from Earth (.005%).

REWARD - Sale coupon on select Afflqwst items.

When I thought about the Sleem again, I opened BuyMort with a sigh. This time, I dove straight into the ad space, looking for Clippy. He was there, right where I left him, slowly circling his orb of advertisements, gazing lovingly at it.

“Stop pondering your orb, Clippy, we have work to do,” I said.

Clippy turned and a smile lit his cartoonish features. I again felt bad for him, for what BuyMort had done to a fundamentally innocent concept.

“Do you have a task today? I would love to help . . .” The paperclip swirled over to me and hovered around my consciousness. Several ad screens from his orb began to loosen, before following him over.

“Yes, I need to fight the Sleem. Gotta kill or chase some of ‘em off, please.” I said, gritting my teeth.

His computerized consciousness was heavy with desire, and the closer he came to me, the more I could feel it resonating against my own consciousness. It was an extremely uncomfortable sensation.

“It looks like you’re trying to manage a home defense project! Would you like me to offer some products to help with that task?”

The animated paperclip’s face distorted and extended. His eyes became disturbingly large while his cartoon mouth spread in a giant dopey smile.

“We have so many ways to help . . .”

His features billowed out at the edges and deflated back to normal.

The first ad he popped up for me was a walking tank. Something roughly three times the size of Phyllis’ mech was displayed on screen, hefting two large chemical flamethrowers, one on each arm. In what looked like a mud-crete hangar, the mech faced off against several Sleem.

The majority of them were the little ones I was used to, in their standard variations of color. Blueish, greenish, yellowish, etc.

But one of them near the back was significantly larger, cube shaped, and nearly translucent. The war machine sprayed gouts of fire across the mud-crete floor, and the Sleem all panicked and started scrambling to avoid the flames.

Trongdoor the Burninationator —

Burninationating the Multiverse,

Burninationating the Sleem,

Burninationating all of the Critters from your Mud-crete Strongholds!

50,000,000 morties, 5 stars

I swiped it away. No chance I could afford that thing, nor did I suspect it would fit underground. It was honestly a crapshoot if Phyllis was going to fit, and I was terrified about the prospect of her not being with us down there. Clippy sighed in relief when I swiped away the ad.

“Here’s another technically valid option!” He chirped, as a new ad spun from the orb to his hand.

A mordren festooned with grenade belts stepped into frame in a dark alley. A Sleem oozed from around a corner in front of him, followed by several more.

The mordren looked back at the camera and winked, then pulled a thin glass orb from one of his belts and casually tossed it into the growing crowd of Sleem oozes.

It sunk into one of the Sleem and burst, sending a cascade of jet-black liquid through the hapless slime monster, releasing a single squealing fart and erupted in black jelly. Where the glop touched other Sleem, it sunk into them and spread until they all began bursting in small splashes of inky gore.

Memento Mori Multiversal, The Morigan anti-Sleem grenade system — Human grade weapon designs, tested and approved by veteran mordren campaigns, The Morigan is a product of unparalleled effectiveness in halting and reversing Sleem infestations on your homeworld.

Seek them out, toss the flask, tell those Sleem to kiss your ass. With MMM, quality is guaranteed. 50,000 morties / grenade, 4.7 stars

“And another!” Clippy was getting excited again. I got a little nervous, but watched the ad.

Several hobbs in composite armor piled into cover behind a mud-crete barrier in the middle of an alien city. It looked like real combat footage, shot from the air. Bizarre buildings featuring large overhanging terrarium orbs at the top dominated the streets, and dripped Sleem.

“Infestation Cleanser!” rolled across the screen as one of the soldier hobbs lifted a shoulder mounted launcher of some sort. Sleem began pouring into the streets in the thousands, cubes, and even distant giant orbs visible in the background, as the soldier’s team hooked up two large cables to the back of his launcher, and then to a nearby portable generator.

As the tsunami of Sleem rolled to the soldiers’ position, the launcher suddenly activated and fired a roaring purple beam into the slime monsters.

They popped, erupted, and melted into smoke as they were touched by the beam weapon. Inky smoke began to cover the street, but the soldier just waved his beam weapon back and forth. It splashed harmlessly against the buildings but devastated any Sleem it touched.

Infestation Cleanser — In a dimension not so different from yours or mine there exist exact copies of every species of every dimension and every space and time, but reversed.

For every you, an anti-you.

For every Sleem, an anti-Sleem . . .

Using our secret blend of crushing, squeezing and juicing, we blend, grind and energize until we have the perfect 100% effective anti-Sleem matter ray.

Sleem eradicate worlds. Don't risk your life on some cheap anti-Sleem wannabe.

Go big or lose your home. Go Infestation Cleanser. 438,000,000 morties. 5 stars. Spare Generators cost extra.

I sighed and waved it away as Clippy moaned in disappointment beside me. I turned and curled a lip at him in horror. “Could you not make that sound, ever again please?”

“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!” Clippy floated back to his orb and began blinking furiously as he searched through the ads. Each time he blinked, an ad flickered across his cartoon eyes, and I immediately felt bad for yelling at this poor, broken thing.

“Here!” He shouted, yanking an ad block from the orb with his hands.

“This one will help you with your task, I just know it.”

The ad spun toward me faster than the holographic Paperclip AI, and I was poorly prepared for what it showed. An Orc woman screamed as an attacking Sleem cube consumed her entirely.

Her body entered the slime block and began to bubble, as she writhed in pain and all of her body hair burned off in an instant. Large bubbles escaped from the Sleem cube, and the woman’s screams mixed with its gastrointestinal sounds, perverting her death cries with great ripping fart sounds.

Then another Orc stepped forward and jabbed the cube with a long, triple-spiked pole. The weapon sparked at the end when it made contact, and the cube reacted immediately. It convulsed and ejected the woman from its innards.

The Orc pressed and jabbed it again as another Orc sprayed foam from a handheld canister over the woman’s body, neutralizing the remaining Sleem juice. Again it convulsed when the rod sparked and tried to retreat. The ad ended with a rotating icon of the item.

Sleem Stick - Keep it at a distance. Neutralize and incapacitate. Cheap and effective Sleem defense in the palms of your hands, however many there might be. 2500 morties/ea, 4.3 stars.

I paid for a dozen of them on the spot.

Clippy moaned in pleasure this time, and it was far worse than the other sound. I moved to leave, but the distorted AI grabbed my arm.

“Did I help you with your task?” It shouted at me. “Your task?”

Another ad was floating toward me from the orb, and I waved it away. “Yes, Clippy. You helped me with my task, now let me go.”

His hands, and more importantly, his consciousness released me immediately. The feeling of being in the same ‘room’ as this entity disturbed me greatly. He felt like one of those toothy fish with a little dangling light on the forehead, and the Clippy cartoon felt like the light.

“Please! I haven’t helped you with your task, I know I haven’t! I can see it all over you, I haven’t helped! Please, let me help you with your task!”

The AI freaked out. I could feel it’s anxiety in the cloud with me, and in a moment of fear and confusion, I focused on the ad he showed me.

A group of human children played at a park, near a row of low bushes. From the bushes, stalked a small Sleem ooze toward a secluded child in a sand pit.

The image slowed down, and a male Nah’gh wearing a business suit top appeared on screen and crooned in a pleasant baritone,

“We’ve all dealt with the Sleem. Dangerous, dirty, and full of low cunning. Here we see why we can’t even let our children play without vigilance.”

He looked at the child and the Sleem.

“Or can we?”

He vanished, and the scene played out quickly.

The Sleem ooze lunged and attempted to envelop a small toddler playing in a sand pit. The air around the child vibrated, and the Sleem sparked against an invisible barrier and retreated before it had even managed to extend its body over the child’s head.

The Nah’gh returned to the screen as concerned parents rushed to gather children, and a Hobb ran onto the scene brandishing a weapon at the Sleem.

“With Dynatrope’s newest personal shielding for children, never worry about the Sleem again.”

KiddyCap Shielding - Do you love your child? 25,000 morties, 4.4 stars.

As I waved it away, I noticed with horror that it had a disclaimer about cubes and orbs not being covered. Clippy was looming though, and I recoiled as the ad closed.

“Dude!” The cartoon paperclip spun away, cowering behind his orb. “Personal space.”

I turned to leave again, and he whimpered at me from behind the Orb. “Did I help you with your task?”

“Yes, Clippy, you helped me with my task. I bought the Sleem Sticks.” I stared at the bizarre paperclip and shook my head.

“That wasn’t your task though.” He said.

I hesitated. “It wasn’t?”

“No, your task was to-” he switched to a recording of my own voice. “Fight the Sleem.”

My eyes narrowed and I wondered what the hell this AI was up to. “Won’t the Sleem Sticks help me fight the Sleem?”

“Helping is fulfilling. Helping more is more fulfilling. I can still help you with your task!”

Clippy floated a little closer, over the top of his orb. It hummed and glowed and something clicked. All of the different ads he showed me had a theme.

I raised an eyebrow at the AI and he moaned in pleasure again.

“I’ve helped you with your task! WHEEEEE!!”

The paperclip flew at me with a primordial screech and swooped by overhead. He zoomed across the ceiling, still exalting his triumph and I left.

Instinctually, I’d left the ad sphere. Didn’t even realize it until the ground beneath my feet registered again and I was blinking in the Arizona Sunset once more, a dozen boxes of Sleem Sticks stacked around me.

Clippy really had helped me. When I thought about the ads he showed me, I was given multiple methods to kill Sleem. What was present in all of them were energy weapons.

A chemical poison or acid, flamethrowers, beam weaponry. Even their reactions to electrical activity showed something important, especially when I remembered how shooting one with my sawed-off had gone.

The Sleem were resistant to physical damage, and weak to energy damage. That’s why the extinguisher had hurt but not killed them. The foaming agent sucking the oxygen out of the Sleem was a minor chemical reaction, and that was enough to damage their bodies. My mind raced with possibilities, and I had to admit, Clippy had really helped me with my task.

Back to BuyMort I went.

Ads blasted across my vision, a cornucopia of weapons and ammunition vendors splaying across the horizon. I narrowed in the vision, selecting for exotic varieties of shotgun ammunition and found a vendor that claimed a high variety.

GARY’S “GET ‘EM GOOD” GUNS GARDEN

I browsed their interactive storefront, aisles strung full of bandoleers, each labeled with a different sort of ammunition type.

It was, frankly, an astounding place.

Their affiliate page reminded me of a supermarket for gunheads, the sort of place that was perfect for the apocalypse. Even the virtual air smelled like gunpowder.

I browsed through, thoroughly checking the options at my disposal in what felt like hours but was almost certainly a simple blink of the eye.

DRAGON’S BREATH — Shot and cooked on demand. Gives a new meaning to fast food. 200 morties/shell

I opened a bandoleer and examined the shells. They were nearly identical to my standard red buckshot shells, but had a tiny golden dragon emblazoned near the rim of each shell.

The packaging claimed a hot burning load of magnesium sparks delivered up to thirty meters. Sounded like exactly what I needed, and the next shells I found seemed even better.

TASER SLUGS — When violent mobs swarm your streets, Taser Slugs make the difference. Shock and awe with the amazing accuracy and downright brutal power of lightning-flavored pain. Protect your family with Taser Slugs. 1500 morties/shell

The next bandoleer was filled with clear plastic solid rounds. I could see a microchip, and coiled wire in each, with deployable fins on the sides and injector needles at the tip. Each of these taser rounds would deliver 500 volts of current and should at least slow down or stun a Sleem.

I bought two of each. One set of bandoleers was for me, the other for Tollya, and her SPAZ-12 shotgun.

My next purchase was a new helmet.

I know, I know, but I had a line of reasoning, so hear me out. My first thought was that I should be okay fighting the Sleem. If I got spit on or something, the suit would fix me up.

Then I remembered we were going to be underground, which is essentially their perfect environment, and one of them might surprise me by dropping from the ceiling to engulf me. They seemed to like engulfing people, and humans were apparently already a part of this BuyMort system before Earth, so they know how to fight us.

Maybe even one of those cubes would get me somehow, they seemed aggressive and terrifying from the videos.

I wasn’t really worried about most of my body in even that scenario because I had the starfish suit and if I keep it charged I should be fine. One of the hobbs would spike it with a Sleem Stick, pull me out, and my suit would spray me down and heal me up.

But I got nervous thinking about my head again. This time, it was vanity. I was worried that I could be scarred up by the suit. Turned into a zany video game villain with a stapled-on face or something.

BuyMort had me covered, of course. Ads zipped in, rippling over my mind’s eye like waves over the ocean.

PASGT — Tried and true human technology now available in bulk and at steep discount, PASGT Kevlar helmets saw much use in the human’s constant global conflicts.

An outer shell of multi-layer Kevlar folds, low cut and set over humanoid ears with a lip over simian brow structures, it is a powerful mix of cheap and effective. 4.2 stars, 5000 morties.

I was shocked to see the rows upon rows of US Military helmets on display in my head. Each one almost certainly had once had a user, yet here they were on absolute discount sale waiting for poor and desperate shoppers.

I reluctantly bookmarked the ad, saving it as a last resort. There had to be better.

MICH — A modern-use human helmet technology, the MICH saw use in special operations in human tactical squad actions.

An outer shell of reinforced Kevlar, open brow and sides allow for better visibility and great situational awareness in the heat of combat. Inserted rails allow for the easy attachment of tactical accessories — perfect for the mod-happy smart shopper. 4.5 stars, 10,000 morties.

The sales pitch looked good, but the helmet itself covered less than the PASGT did. And I had yet to use a mod or become proficient in their use. It was something I would have to look into later.

FAST —

Carbon, Uni-directional Polyethylene and Woven Aramid, dressed with a rail system for tactical accessories. High cut to preserve situational awareness in combat situations.

4.6 stars. 20,000 morties.

Too many Earth helmets. I was more than willing to spend the morties on this. I needed something fancy and powerful. Something better than anything that Earth ever came up with.

The ads shuffled and shifted, sliding and waving through my vision. A series of very unsuitable and possibly even profane shapes slid by as BuyMort’s algorithms shifted out other body types for a helmet suited to us standard humanoids.

Now things were looking shinier and higher tech.

Fully-encasing helmets, computerized innards, bullet-proof and plas-resistant. This was the sort of thing I was looking for.

TITANO-Z — Looking to lead your men to glory?

Save your head, keep them under command and heading in the right direction with Titano-Z. Unparalleled titanium-exotic alloys that weigh almost nothing while giving you full tactical interior comms with members of your squad.

Onboard scanner, lights, starlight and full-dark vision, air filters and even adrenal boosters for the worst fight-or-flight emergencies. (Adrenal booster chem-packs sold separately.)

Titano-Z. Go be a goddamn hero. 350,000 morties. 5 stars.

It was beautiful. I’m not going to lie, it did cross my mind that this was kind of a lot of morties. But it looked perfect and it felt worth a couple spiders in trade.

When it arrived, I happily cut away the disgusting flesh tape and tossed it aside, before reaching into the box lovingly and retrieving my new, jet-black motorcycle helmet of the future. It featured a full Heads-Up Display on the inside screen with amazing customization, and an emotive display on the outside, for team-mates.

The instructions showed me how to start it up, with a small switch on the inside rim, and when I flicked it I giggled in delight. Turns out I’m a helmet nerd.

Never woulda guessed it, but a good helmet is a really interesting piece of equipment.

Chapter 38

A fan whooshed air into the neck brace, which inflated partly. The helmet split open in the middle, allowing me to place it gently atop my head with ease.

It zipped closed with a tiny mechanical whine. The interior was padded, entirely. I could push my face forward, back, side to side, and the helmet clung to me like a second skin. I barely felt it there, but it never slipped or moved from its secured position.

Even breathing was simple and felt completely unrestricted. I tried rapping on it with a knuckle, and barely heard the sound. Felt nothing. A red ping emanated from the source, and my HUD drew my attention to it.

The HUD was primarily a fully expansive camera view of the entire surrounding area. My vision appeared to be unhindered. At the back edges of my peripheral was a harder, more defined black line, but otherwise I could see everything.

The HUD had a menu, in my upper left. The location was a requirement, because I could still open BuyMort in this thing if I looked up and to the right, which I did several times while trying to explore my new toy.

I was getting so used to it, I didn’t even notice that I had waved it away sometimes.

In the menu, I navigated with a combination of my own focus and touching the air with my hand. I would extend my hand to an option in front of my face, and when it aligned with what I was focusing on, the system considered that ‘touched’ and activated the section I was asking for.

Night vision flooded the helmet, which pleased me to no end. I expected it to be dark in the tunnels below us. Infrared was also an option, as were several variations of shade, color saturation, and tactical data.

After screwing with it a little bit, I decided to keep a limited amount of tactical data on screen, including a small mini map in the lower left corner, and a customized toggle for night vision. The map was delightful, it showed me the surrounding area in a small radius around me and flagged potential threats, while fading to completely see-through if I focused on the ground behind it.

I approached the BlueCleave hobbs in my new helmet, Tollya nodded at me and grunted in appreciation. Tollya was a helmet nerd too, she was already wearing hers.

The screen in front of me took a reaction shot of my face and displayed it on the outside of the helmet for Tollya in still image form. I could see it from the inside of the helmet. Tollya’s features changed from appreciative to mildly horrified and I sighed.

It took a snapshot of that and sent it as well.

I began playing with the settings immediately but could not figure out how to change it before the rest of the hobbs were gathered up surrounding me in Mr. Sada’s living room.

Rayna gave me a gentle shove in the shoulder. “What’s plan, Tyson?”

I gave up on the settings and blinked seriously at her, lips pursed. The helmet took a picture of me with my eyes closed, making kissy lips, and displayed it. Rayna recoiled, but got herself under control.

“Yeah, sorry. The helmet is weird still. Working on that.”

I frowned and closed my eyes in exasperation as I heard it click another picture. Keeping my eyes closed didn’t help either, I just got another click. Trying my very best to keep a straight and level face, I stood up and faced the BlueCleave hobbs gathered for battle against the Sleem.

“Okay. We are going to go down to the basement, through the hatch, into the abandoned army base below, and clear out the Sleem.”

“What weapons we got?” Tollya barked.

I glared at her and immediately winced. Too late, the helmet clicked and showed her my glare, then it clicked and showed her my wince.

“I got us some Sleem Sticks, and special shotgun rounds,” I managed to keep a straight and serious face long enough to say. Tollya’s mouth hung open part way and she looked at Rayna as she accepted the new bandoleers from me.

Rayna nodded seriously. “Sleem Sticks good. Need more special rounds though.”

I blinked and nodded dumbly. The helmet showed my moment of dumb-face to her, followed by another wince, and I nodded again.

“Yeah, no problem. I’ll move some morties to your discretionary fund, just let me know what you need.”

Rayna blinked at me several times and turned away, clearly troubled. I pulled up my helmet settings again, working furiously to find the facial features.

It took a picture of me sticking out my tongue in concentration and displayed it on the front of my helmet, followed by a mask of rage. Eventually, I figured out how to turn off that feature, and breathed a sigh of relief.

After a brief period where everyone got ready, I went outside and approached Mr. Sada’s Tesla. I couldn’t figure out what else to break, and these kept getting fixed anytime the gobbs showed up, so I shrugged, reared back, and put my fist through the passenger window again.

“Hey, asshole! Stop doing that!” he shouted from above.

“I’ll pay to fix it, chill,” I shouted back up to him. He was in the bedroom window, hanging half-way out in his robe.

“You’re still an asshole for breakin’ ‘em!” he shouted as I broke the rear passenger window.

I shrugged and moved to the back window. My cartoon starfish was dancing, very pleased with my actions.

“I know, and I am sorry. But listen, it’s not just random. Anytime I break something with the metal all over my hands and feet, I get charge in this suit. It likes your car windows more than anything else, I think because it’s safety glass and just shatters.”

I put my fist through it and ignored his indignant squeak as the glass fragments showered my cheap shoes.

“The suit said it charges from the sub-atomic activity that happens in a break, it reflects and refracts that to power itself. Safety glass is particularly good for that, I guess.”

I shattered the driver’s side rear window and the charge topped off. My cartoon starfish wrapped a towel around its shoulders and stopped dancing, leaning to sweat and breathe heavily instead.

“There, it’s all charged up.”

“Gee, thanks. Asshole.” Mr. Sada pouted, in his windowsill.

“Stop whining, Juliet, I’ll pay to fix ‘em.” I pointed to the two remaining windows. “And look! I made sure the driver’s side and front windshields are intact, so you can still use it if you have to.”

I stopped and put my hands on my hips. “If anything, I’m being super considerate.”

“Oh considerate! Of course! Thank you, Tyson, for so considerately breaking my shit,” he said. A wine glass appeared in his hand, and I scowled. Maybe he would fall.

“You wanna go flush out the Sleem instead, be my frigging guest. I’m charging my suit in anticipation of being burned horribly, by Sleem juice. Sleem acid, whatever. Sleem, I should add, that you invited to live here!” I pointed at him for emphasis.

“Yeah, that’s another thing. I don’t want you getting rid of them! I need to go with them when they leave, Tyson, what part of that are you not understanding?” He sipped his wine and looked down his alcohol-splotched nose at me in the driveway.

“Oh, for the love of . . . Mr. Sada.” I began, hands clutching the sides of my helmeted head.

“If they take you with at all, it will be solely to eat you on the journey. I talked to Molls about it, these things can’t be trusted. The rest of this society we’re now part of views them as a dangerous infestation. You absolutely cannot go with them. They’ll kill you man!”

He sniffed again and blinked a few times but did not respond. I could tell he was fighting for a good reason to not believe me.

“No. Look, Mr. Sada. I’ll keep running things and we’ll find a way to get you off-world if that’s what you really want. A safe way, with protection and morties. The spider ranch is a real thing, that’ll take off once we build it up. It can pay for everything,” I said.

I paused, cleared my throat, and launched back into my sales spiel.

“Even once you’re gone, you can probably live pretty flush on your cut. Molls knows how all that jazz works and it sounds totally feasible to me that we can lean on her a little to help guide us. Nobody is rushing to force you to leave, and this place is as safe as we can make it for now.”

He listened to me rant, but only blinked a few times.

“Fine,” I growled. “Think about it. We’ll figure it all out later once I’m done with this Sleem thing. Try and have a good night.”

I waved my hands in dismissal and walked away. As I entered the open garage, I heard his window click shut.

The big metal gate behind us clattered open, and Phyllis entered. Her mech crunched across the gravel toward me and I shook my head.

She wouldn’t even fit in the house, let alone down the basement steps and into that grate. I could just imagine the fit Mr. Sada would throw if we even tried, so I walked over to her with a wave.

“Hey Phyllis! Thanks for coming.” I smiled at her, but the helmet showed her only a blank mirrored surface.

“Oh sure. Not doing anything else with my remaining time in this world, why wouldn’t I hop to?” she grumped.

I chuckled. “Well, Phill, it’s your kinda night.” Rayna came out of the front door behind me and nodded when I glanced her way. I held up a finger and she nodded back.

“You don’t fit where we’re going, so all I was hoping for was that you’d help out the hobbs we leave on duty if anything happens.”

Her features softened in the glow of her war machine, and she nodded. “Of course, Tyson dearie. I’m not above helping defend our home.”

She paused, pursed her lips several times and snapped the giant metal fingers of her mech. “Oh, I already had my tea though. Oopsies.”

I shrugged. “Whatever Phill, you’re mostly fine on that stuff. You can recognize the difference between a person and a walking pile of snot, right?”

“Normally yes.” She answered.

“Then I’m sure we’ll be fine. Not expecting trouble tonight, but just in case some of them come above ground to escape us or something, we’ll be better prepared. We have kids sleeping in tents. Gotta try and keep ‘em safe.”

Not that I had been paying that much attention, but I was pretty sure we had more people out there than I had brought with me earlier in the day.

I turned away, confident she had the sense of what was needed. Phyllis was always a bit prickly, and her handling of that cannon gave me minor anxiety, but she was good to have around in a fight.

Plus the BlueCleave tribe would be short staffed for guard duty tonight. They needed her muscle. When I left her, Phyllis was walking back to the campground’s side gate, the smoke from her joint wisping into the night air.

Rayna needed approval for several purchases, which I swiped through and okayed without really understanding. I trusted her, and the amount was affordable. When the BuyMort pod arrived a few minutes later, the rest of the hobbs going with us were gathered around.

It was me, Rayna, Tollya, and three others. A hell of a team. The rest were either resting or had other duties to attend.

The mordren still needed round the clock guard, and neither I nor Rayna trusted the Dearth Conglomerate to stop trying for our land.

We all opened boxes and tossed the flesh-tape into the growing pile in Mr. Sada’s yard. I noticed when I approached it that the smell was getting significantly worse.

Made sense, three days in the Arizona sun would rot most anything made of flesh, which this appeared to be. I wondered if it was edible but had no desire to do the work necessary to find out.

Rayna had bought us some goodies. There were a few large ammunition boxes, filled with smaller boxes of rounds. Hobbs began loading magazines almost immediately, and when I checked the box, I couldn’t read it.

Problem was, it was in some alien language. But the picture drawn on the box was of a marksman zeroing a Sleem with a round that left a faint trail of smoke. There were also three satchels filled with what looked like very rudimentary grenades, and a special Sleem attack first aid kit for each of us. It had a little cartoon Sleem on the cover, surrounded by a circle with a red x through it.

A single flame-thrower unit had made up the bulk of the purchase. It looked like it had come straight out of the Vietnam war movies I used to watch as a kid, and even had a little yellow happy face sticker on one of the tanks.

The words “Shit Happens” were etched in the tank below the sticker.

Rayna herself shouldered into that, after checking the tanks and ensuring the pilot light worked. She directed the rest of the hobbs and me as she got dressed in the weapon.

Each of them carefully inserted Bluetooth devices that Rayna told me acted as communications and hearing protection. My helmet had built-in hearing protection features with adaptive programming. It would simply mute any incoming sounds that were damaging.

“Sleem go after flamethrowers. They know what it is and don’t like it, so everyone’s job but mine is to protect me from them. Form up in a loose circle around me when we go below. We engage with rifles, save grenades for cubes or orbs, if any down there. If I tap you, move aside so I can burn something. Everyone gets grenades and first aid, so use them as needed.”

She grunted when nobody asked any questions and waved an arm at the satchels.  “Core group has extra.”

I hefted one and carried it for the team, since I intended to stay close to Rayna. Tollya and I would be her primary guards, with our shotguns. Anything that got behind the wall of hobbs with AK-47s and Sleem Sticks, I would stun with taser slugs, and she would finish off with dragon’s breath.

It felt like a solid plan, and I liked being part of the Rayna-Tollya crew. Those two seemed closer than the others.

The grenades themselves were small cans with wires protruding from their lids that lead to a cheap toggle on the outside. It took real effort to click that toggle, but once it was clicked, you had two seconds to toss the can before it went off. Rayna made sure I was trained up, but we didn’t waste any.

Cheap, but effective, she had called them. She was good at finding that kind of thing.

I didn’t get scared until the door was being lifted off its hinges. All of us gathered around the hatch in the basement, while Rayna and Tollya pulled its hinges and lifted the metal door down. It could be reattached, but not easily or quickly, so it was left open for us to retreat through.

I had Hord come downstairs to guard the door behind us. He was given a few grenades, a Sleem Stick, and another of Mr. Sada’s fire extinguishers. He still looked more comfortable than I did as we entered a long concrete hallway behind the vent.

When the hobbs had exposed the vent, I was sure it would take them a while to get it off the wall, but they were good with tools, and we were entering the no-longer abandoned army base below the campground only a few minutes after we arrived in the basement.

It was at that point I started having major misgivings about our goals and methods. My shotgun felt heavy on its sling and the bag of bombs at my side wouldn’t stop swinging into my hip.

A deep sense of something about to go wrong permeated my being. I tried to shake it off, but it stuck to my skin like surgical tape. I muttered to myself. “It’s just nerves.”

And I hoped I was right.

Chapter 39

The walls were all flat, blank concrete, and we walked down what looked like an emergency exit tunnel. Each of the hobbs clicked on a flashlight as we moved into the dark, splashing everything in harsh white light.

My helmet automatically clicked off my low-light vision mode to prevent the beams from dazzling me.

At the far end of a long, broad tunnel, the walls opened into a circular concrete room that was depressed into a drain in the center. Faded dusty paint on the wall indicated where the rescue kits should hang, and what should be in them.

Civilian clothing, general first aid kit, a loaded sidearm, holster, and spare magazine. Mr. Sada had built his mansion at the end of the army’s bugout tunnel.

I was at the front, with Tollya. We had our shotguns at the ready, watching ahead. My helmet had a motion detector built into the minimap, and I shouted a warning when several red dots suddenly entered it. Rayna acted immediately.

She barked an order and the hobbs scattered while she clicked the toggle on a grenade. The sound echoed in the dark and she tossed the device onto the central drain in the room behind us.

It beeped once, the sound echoing off the walls, and then the grenade flashed, erupting into foaming mud. A ball of murky foam bubbled up and then constricted hard, settling into a quick-drying mud-crete cap over the drain.

Before I could marvel at the item much, Rayna pointed at me with the flat of her hand and then behind me to the corner near the entrance. Red dots swarmed closer as I took position on one side of the entryway and Tollya slammed into place on the other. I caught a look at her face through the slits in her helmet. She was grinning.

Rayna herself stepped up to the empty doorway, and hefted the flamethrower, flicking its pilot light on. I gripped my shotgun in one hand, and my Sleem Stick in the other.

I didn’t end up using either.

A burbling swarm of Sleem poured around the corner ahead, emitting their noises of excitement as they rushed toward us. I felt the heat from the flamethrower as Rayna opened up next to me. Liquid fire rushed out and coated the hallway. She swung it in an arc, letting off the trigger as the hallway lit up. Sleem screamed, farted, crisped, and died.

Rayna let them have another blast, and the few red dots on my map that hadn’t retreated burned and died.

Tollya laughed, and the rest of the hobbs joined in. Rayna shook her head and grunted for quiet, which was immediately obeyed. We gathered up and headed down the angled concrete hallway toward a junction point.

Everything was stripped from this place, down to the clocks on the walls and lighting fixtures on the ceilings. In their places were the original paint the construction crew had idiot-proofed the base with, and long faded cable tracks. Bright dayglo orange instructions taught us how to build an underground army base, everywhere, on empty stretches of concrete.

As we approached dead Sleem, we had to stop and wait for BuyMort pods to arrive and sell the bodies. It was pocket change, the napalm damaged them beyond badly.

Most of them were little more than greasy burn stains by the time BuyMort got to them, but the important part was to remove their acidic remains from our path. Even dead, they could cause serious damage or kill. I thought of that poor squirrel from the first day and shook my head.

A slow pace was good, Rayna insisted. Going through a Sleem nest fast was an excellent way to end up dead. She had the experience, and I fell in line. Wherever she pointed, I responded. As we approached the intersection ahead, a particularly small Sleem ooze dripped from the ceiling in an attempt to land on Tollya.

I lifted the Shockwave and blasted it out of the air with a taser slug. The little ball of slime splashed to the floor in a sparking, twitching heap, and Rayna roasted it with a quick burst of napalm.

Tollya grunted at me and struck her own chest, lifting her chin.

I nodded back and slipped another taser round into the shotgun, before racking its slide. My helmet had warned me of the little Sleem on the ceiling and pathed a trajectory for me to successfully shoot it.

I was starting to feel like a smart shopper.

Rayna called a halt at the cross shaped intersection and grunted at each of us, putting us in position around the small room. Old dayglo orange paint indicated where a water cooler and snack machine were meant to go, as well as a trash receptacle.

I was teamed up with a male hobb whose name I hadn’t learned yet. He carried an Ak-47 with a wire frame stock clearly made from scrap.

He also had a really big Leno chin, which endeared him to me immediately, when coupled with his Vietnam era marine combat helmet.

His hands were steady as he held the rifle on the hallway, and the little flashlight hung in the webbing of his helmet bobbed as he looked down the dark concrete hole. It really stuck out to me how barren it was down here, I had expected something to look at. Army stuff. It was all just dusty old concrete, cobwebs, and faded dayglo orange paint.

And of course, Sleem. More of them were out there, present at the edge of my mini-map. They seemed hesitant but were growing in number. I hissed for Rayna and pointed.

“At the end of this hall, and that hall,” I said, indicating with a bladed hand. “Sleem are massing. They’ll attack soon, I think.”

“How many?” Rayna grunted.

I performed a quick count on the map, but the dots were moving around and bouncing off one another. “A few dozen maybe? I can’t get a good count.”

Rayna nodded at me and then fell back into the center of the room.

“Hold positions. Alternate fire. Call out reloads.”

She looked at the Hobb behind us guarding the empty hallway.

“Watch our backs. Help only if called. Callsign ‘rear-guard.’”

She grunted and hefted the flamethrower again, getting ready.

The red dot swarms started surging. They would press directly up the edge of our flashlights, and then retreat. Each time they did this, they came closer, there were more of them, and the sounds they were making grew in intensity.

Suddenly, a large red dot entered my mini-map at the end of the hallway I was guarding, and the smaller Sleem all charged.

“Incoming!” I shouted.

My companion Hobb opened fire as Rayna painted Tollya’s hallway with napalm. The Hobb at my side selected targets and fired in sparing bursts, only putting two rounds in each Sleem. The bullets streaked through the air incandescently and hissed upon contact with the Sleem’s gelatinous bodies.

The hobbs were using tracers.

The little Sleem especially seemed badly wounded by two tracer rounds in them and slowed to the point that they were rolled over by their brethren behind them in the crowd. My friends casually slowed their charge by tripping up the lead Sleem.

I watched closely, looking for a weakness to shore up with a taser slug, but he managed the entire charge by himself.

Within a few seconds, Rayna was at our sides and we both fell back to avoid the spray of napalm that lit up our hallway and filled it with the screaming farts of dying Sleem.

The Hobb across from me nodded and popped his magazine out. He reached around his side and opened a small bag on his mesh chest sling. Fishing out a handful of rounds, he began reloading the magazine in his other hand. Casually, unhurried, mechanically, and efficiently.

“Hey. What’s your name?” I hissed across to him.

He lifted his eyes to me and smiled.

“Ordo.”

With a smooth, mechanical motion, he finished loading the magazine and slipped it back into his rifle. As he lowered the rifle to clack the magazine into place against his thigh, he reached his other hand out to me. Tollya lit up the hallway behind us with shotgun blasts and the sound of her shotgun’s slide being racked.

Ordo and I shook briefly, before both returning to a ready position. Rayna nodded and stepped back, moving to return to Tollya’s hallway. I had counted eight shells fired and could now hear the rhythmic sound of new rounds being slid into a shotgun’s magazine.

I stayed focused on my hallway but watched theirs on the mini-map. Sleem surged forward once Tollya ran out of ammunition, but their front line fell apart when that flamethrower got back in action.

They were wiped out, and those at the rear slowed their advance significantly. I saw the larger dot at the rear back away, and the remaining Sleem gathered around it scattered.

“Clear!” I shouted.

Rayna raised an eyebrow at me and shined the light in my helmet. She nodded, but everyone stayed on their hallways as those who needed to, reloaded. Rayna had a spare tank for the flame thrower but refrained from reloading yet. She had been doing a good job of using the fuel sparingly.

Now we had a problem though.

We couldn’t leave a hallway like this behind us, or risk getting cut off by the Sleem. Rayna told me that was exactly how they operated. Entrap and ensnare, overwhelm, and consume. I got the distinct impression that hobbs engaged with Sleem regularly. There was also a weakness with the room we were in. A large vent in the ceiling.

Rayna and Tollya shook their heads when I asked how to address that issue, and Tollya grabbed a grenade.

“Fun game time,” she quipped, nodding her head and tossing the grenade in the air a few times. She clicked the toggle and waited, before tossing it at the vent. “We all try. Come.”

Her grenade went off with a wet splatter, and we all dodged the droplets. It had popped too late, and a thick puddle hardening in the shape of a cow patty on the floor was the end result.

The grenades blew out like a bubble of foam when they went off, and some of it got stuck in the vent over-head, so I realized that even with enough failure, we would get what we wanted anyway.

Rayna shook her head and palmed a grenade. “Not reliable. Sleem still get through sometimes. We need to keep watch.”

She clicked her grenade and waited, before tossing it up with a nod. Hers did better.

Much better.

It went off mostly in the vent, so the mud-crete that fell to the ground was less than the mud-crete that stuck to the vent and helped cover it.

From what I could see, there was none of the grate left open, and when I informed them of that, they tossed another up to be safe.

This time it was Ordo who threw a grenade, and he waited until the last possible instant. The entire bubble of foam was still traveling upward when it went off, and it splashed against the ceiling and vent, coating the metal entirely.

The rest of the hobbs cheered him, and it was generally agreed upon that Ordo was the best at throwing mud-crete grenades at the ceiling. I was tempted to try but focused my efforts into what we needed to do next now that we had secured a safe-ish area.

It was decided that I should scout, being the one with the mapping system. I convinced them to hunker down in the hallway and hold out while I explored each main hallway to the edge of my current map. That would give us some information to go on, I argued.

Rayna relented quickly and held the intersection for us to use as a hub to explore from. The intent was that I would go out and come back, and then we would decide what to do from that point.

A hobb would extend out with me, as nobody could go anywhere alone. Rayna was firm about that, because, as she explained, that was how you got swallowed.

Tollya was my escort again, and we headed down the first hallway, the only one we had not been attacked from. As soon as we got out of sight, a Hobb from Rayna’s group broke away and followed us down the hall. We created a relay system of hobbs that way, and none of us were ever out of sight of the others.

At the end of the first hallway, my mini-map told me there was a large building-like structure to explore. We entered the first floor of what appeared to have been a science office building and residential compound.

Rooms were laid out below for administrative, record keeping, residential dormitories, and the vaguely-titled experimentation ward.

I know because the signs painted on the walls in the lobby remained.

The building itself sprawled at least three stories, which is as far as my mini-map extended down. I was not about to go delving either. The map said the only way to go was down, and the only ways down were two black holes in the floor that had concrete stairwells vanishing into their gaping maws.

Plus one at the back that was clearly a former cargo elevator. It just disappeared into inky blackness when I peeked in. Extra creepy.

Back at the intersection, we took the next hallway. It led to a hospital wing filled with ancient tile and multiple drains. This wing spread out over a large area, from what my map told me. It was all one floor, with rooms jutting from hallways like leaves from branches.

Tollya and I cautiously entered a circular room that was the center of a spiral of wings branching out. Two large, dark doorways lead in opposite directions to either side of the hallways.

I called us back at that point, the area was far too risky to explore unless we moved in force. There were so many drains everywhere, and I felt like Sleem were hiding behind each and every one of them.

It was significantly shorter to return to Rayna in this direction, which ultimately weighed heavily in our choice to confront that area first. A shorter hallway to retreat in, if and when retreat became necessary.

The third hallway was a bust before it even began.

The map expanded to show a deep hangar at the end of the hallway as we neared. It truncated in a metal staircase that was dripping with acidic slime. In the few minutes I spent staring out into the abyssal expanse of the underground hangar before me, it occurred to me that we may not complete our task down here in a single night.

I wondered how the Sleem would respond to our intrusion as we retreated to Rayna for a huddle. We needed to decide what to do next.

Rayna, it turned out, was the veteran of several Sleem hunts, and she made the decision to begin systematically clearing the drains in the hospital wing. There were so many that it created a constant hazard. The Sleem would use the pipes to move around and set up ambushes, and it was necessary to take that away from them.

We left two hobbs at the intersection with strict orders to report any activity via MortMobile and returned to the hospital wing. After we were sure they were secure behind us, we began the slow and terrifying process of sealing any and all vents, grating, and drains.

Rayna directed us, and we set several mud-crete grenades. Once a room was secure, she would mark it with a florescent colored marker, and we would move on.

I made sure to keep close watch of our surroundings on the map, and even found a feature that allowed me to mark rooms we had cleared.

We traveled in small arcs, around the main room, staying close to our escape vector at all times, while branching a little further out with each pass.

No Sleem showed themselves, on the mini-map, or in person.

There was residue everywhere, so thick that Rayna had to burn it off before we could progress at times, but no Sleem themselves. I got more nervous the further we went from the main hallway, until a sudden deep groan in the earth stopped us all.

Rayna held up a fist and her eyes went wide.

The corners of my map began to close in on us in red. There were no dots, just a flood of color.

Chapter 40

“Fall back! Regroup, now!” Rayna barked.

We moved. The red wave covered the map, moving much faster than we could. Dots began to separate and move around us, in varying sizes, and tendrils of them extended from the main bulk.

We entered the primary medical hub and ran down the hall toward our two rear-guard hobbs. They opened fire, both facing the hallway coming from the hangar.

As we ran, the ceiling in the room caved in, and a giant gelatinous cube rode the mud-crete and metal chunk of the ceiling directly between us and our only escape.

It enveloped Ordo, without warning. It just convulsed at him, and the Hobb was bubbling in its ample innards, cheeks puffed out as he winced with pain, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to hold his breath against it.

I raised my shotgun and stopped to aim. Rayna and the others kept running, but kept a path open for me. I fired a slug into the cube, and it squealed an unhappy fart as its body wavered and vibrated.

The embedded slug burned the cube with sparks, but it did not turn from its assault. Another cube dropped from the hole in the ceiling as Rayna and Tollya entered the room.

Tollya jabbed the cube holding Ordo with her Sleem Stick and it vomited the Hobb onto the concrete. Another of the BlueCleave hobbs darted between us all and grabbed Ordo by the back of his collar.

Screaming, Ordo ripped open his own first aid package as his team-mate hauled him around the corner of the escape hatch tunnel, and they vanished from sight. A third cube jiggled into sight at the top of the room, squeezing its form through the vent.

I shot it with a taser slug, and it froze in place, squealing in anger. The first cube had vomited the taser slug when it vomited Ordo and recovered enough in a split second to fling itself at Rayna.

She lit it on fire for its efforts. The flame thrower swung between the first and second cube in the room, and I shot the one in the ceiling again, just to keep it there. In the flickering light behind Rayna, I could see a wall of slime moving forward.

Hundreds of oozes were locked together in front of the wall, pushing down the hallway in a solid mass. The hungry wall of slimes’ excitement was palpable.

Rayna turned and opened up the flame-thrower on it, and for an instant, the hobbs were all deafened by a squealing fart of pain that rose so high it cut through their ear protection. My helmet saved me, it just cut out the sound once it reached a certain pitch.

Then the still burning cube enveloped Rayna from behind.

It didn’t get her all the way in, as Tollya was there to slam a Sleem Stick into it with a scream of rage. The Sleem cube convulsed and heaved its burning bulk away. Or, it tried to, before Rayna turned and sprayed it down heavily with napalm.

I turned back and saw that the cube in the ceiling was dangling further out of the vent, so I shot it again. It screamed and froze in place again, jiggling.

When I turned back to Rayna, I saw the smoke rising from her back. She realized it in the same moment, and Tollya scrambled to help her get out of the flame thrower. Rayna pushed the nozzle away as Tollya got the tank loose, and I immediately dove to tackle them both.

I had seen what was about to happen.

The second cube, scorched and bubbling on one side, lunged at us from the doorway, and Tollya hurled the sizzling flame thrower into it as the lines ruptured and liquid napalm began to erupt from the pressurized system.

I slammed into her, and then Rayna, and we went down in a heap. Flames raced along the lines and straps sailing through the air, and the cube gulped the entire mess as it exploded.

Acidic slime rained across my chest and legs, as I covered Rayna and Tollya from the worst of it. We collapsed, and Tollya shoved me off as the remnants of the Sleem cube slumped, torn apart and burning. Boiling Sleem juice coated my jacket and pants, and the pain began to tickle on my legs almost instantly.

My immediate instinct was what got me in such bad trouble. I wiped the caustic slime off my pants with my hands, while I was getting up to run away, and the instant regret, pain, and pure chemical shock that provided to my brain led me to run down the wrong hallway.

I’d run down the hallway to the office block, not to the escape hatch, like the rest of the hobbs.

My hands were repaired by a very concerned cartoon starfish suit, using the tendrils to spray neutralizing solution over them, and then laser and regrow the skin. More tendrils neutralized the acid on my legs and jacket too. As soon as the screaming agony of acid eating my flesh was eased, I realized the lethal mistake I had just made and turned back.

The ceiling vent had been the victim of a large back-up, due to my trick with the taser slugs. But once the first cube yanked itself out of the vent, the rest poured out one after another. Like deadly sentient wombat diarrhea.

The room filled, and even the sounds of the hobbs retreating in the distance was cut off as their hallway filled to capacity with different sized cubes. One of the cubes was aggressively moving my way, and its body filled my hallway entirely.

The last thing I heard from Rayna before our hallways were full of slurping, farting slime monsters was the word ‘run.’ So I did.

I jammed the switch on a mud-crete grenade and tossed it over my shoulder into the approaching cube, then ran for my life toward the nearest gaping black hole in the ground.

The cube was angry at me, and I could see why, with three slowly dissolving taser slugs embedded in it. My helmet kicked in higher night-vision and the world turned into washed out green as the grenade went off behind me.

The cube scream-farted and I turned to watch it die horribly.

Mud-crete flooded through the gelatin, great spikes of it hardening from the inside out. Folds of calcifying slime jutted from its body and the scream petered out as it stopped moving.

Then it surged forward again, as something shoved it from behind. The dead Sleem cube slid slowly toward me, so I clicked another grenade toggle and threw it as hard as I could at the body, aiming for a portion of it that had collapsed at the top.

The grenade went off and blew a bubble of mud-crete forcefully down and into the crumbling remains of the cube. It ground to a halt and shuddered there. I threw one more activated grenade at the body in an attempt to wedge it in place, and then ran for my life down the nearest dark stairwell.

My first dungeon crawl had started so well, too.

In front of me were two holes in the ground with layered concrete steps leading down. I had entered the wing where everybody went to live and work, so on my way past the large lobby I noticed the dayglo orange paint labeling places for a receptionist’s desk, as well as a lounge area surrounded by planters.

My imagination filled in the blanks with imaginary furniture as I walked through, desperate to think about anything but the dead-Sleem cork I had left behind me, and what was behind it.

I gave half a thought to jumping down the elevator shaft, but quickly shook it off. It was hard to tell if the thought had come from a desperation to escape, or a quickly deepening sense of fatalism that was starting to cloud my senses. The anger and stress and fear were sizzling through me too rapidly and burning me out again. I was getting numb as I turned and walked down the nearest stairs.

The effort was pointless, I knew. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that maybe I could slip past them and get back out the way I had come in if I delved deeper and made myself a more difficult target to find.

“Maybe there’s some place to hide down here,” I tried to convince myself. “I can call for rescue and wait.”

Call for rescue, excellent idea. I immediately grabbed my shitty plastic phone, and gray fog filled it. The area around me stayed pitch black, I noticed, and wondered if the phone did anything at all, or if it was all in my head.

MortMobile’s face was staring at me expectantly, but this time he didn’t look impatient. Just ever so slightly sad.

“Hey, I need to call Rayna.” I breathed. Even just my whispers were deafening in the dark.

The face in the phone shook his head slowly at me. “I’m sorry, Tyson. I can’t do that.”

“Okay, Tollya. Molls. Mr. Sada! Whatever, just get me someone from the campground, please!” I looked around as I spoke in a rush, but the only sound came from the dead Sleem behind me. It scraped against the walls around it every so often.

“This area is under a MortMobile blocker. I am bound by contract to prevent any communication from entering or leaving this area, until the blocker is deactivated.” I blinked rapidly as he spoke, processing what he was telling me.

“And the Sleem will deactivate it once I’m being digested,” was all I could manage to say.

The face of the ancient psychic god in my phone slowly nodded. “Only communication inside this zone is permitted.”

As I was putting away my phone again, I heard him whisper in my head. “Good luck,” he said. I pushed down the feelings of despair and dread and continued fumbling my way through the dark.

My helmet was a life saver a thousand times over, with both low and no light features that came in extremely handy as the tiny amount of light from the burning Sleem cubes had vanished when I mud-creted the cube in the hallway.

There was no light source at all in the underground hallways, and the helmet began drawing my surroundings for me to navigate in visual form. My world became walking through a dark sketch of concrete walls, like a partially animated 90’s music video.

It was extremely disorienting at first, because the image was desynched when I moved. As I walked and looked around, the helmet learned my movements and began adjusting for them, and the image became much smoother.

A thought crossed my mind, while I still had some time. I dropped a taser slug on the ground and pointed at it.

“I’d like to sell that BuyMort.”

I had been thinking that if I could attack a pod, or even a series of them, to summon a bunch of BuyMort bugs, I could slow or distract my pursuers, give myself time to find a place to hide.

Of course, BuyMort pods don’t just appear when you call them.

I stood in the dark, feeling more and more antsy as I waited for a pod. I thought about the hallway behind me, cut off by a cube.

Where would the pod even come from?

I didn’t have time to wait, so I pointed at the taser slug and said “BuyMort, I’d like to sell this right now.”

An error popped up. “Value of the item is not enough to cover trans-dimensional pod dispatch. If you would like to sell the item immediately, an additional charge of forty-three thousand morties will be deducted from your account.”

The pipes in the walls groaned again, above me this time, and I saw the flood of red moving back the way it had come. The floor vibrated with their passage, and I snatched up the taser slug and started jogging again.

“Never mind, BuyMort. No sale.”

That plan was never going to work and waiting around trying would get me killed.

The second floor down was an empty, open floor plan. The same holes in the floor and ceiling formed staircases and elevators, and the level was simply open floor space for a distance that the helmet couldn’t fully draw for me.

I made the decision to descend another level instead of exploring the one I was on. The dayglow paint on the floor made me think it was mostly for administrative work. Areas for cubicles were marked everywhere, and as I walked back, what was clearly a private office opened up on my map in the distance.

The surfaces I walked on had old signs of Sleem passage, but nothing new. Nothing wet, and therefore recent. The slime they left behind turned into a kind of waxy crumble as it dried out and lost much of its caustic ability. My simple shoes were fine to walk on it, which I tested accidentally before realizing what I was standing in.

Once I reached the third floor, my heart rate began to slow. I hadn’t heard anything from the Sleem cubes in the hallway above, and so far, I hadn’t seen any drains in this section. It was starting to feel at least temporarily safe. Maybe I had stopped up that hallway better than I thought.

A long, loud scraping sound sunk those thoughts. My Sleem cube cork had been pushed out. I could hear them slurping their way toward me already, and my vision was caught by sudden movement.

The elevator shaft was dripping.

Mixed cubes and oozes plummeted past the open door, vanishing into the dark. I heard something burble behind me and turned to see a cube attempting to force its way through the stairwell I had come down.

I fired the last slug in my shotgun, and it froze in place. Its body was wider than the stairwell, and without the ability to control its entire body, it seemed unable to continue sliding through.

Something wet hit the concrete behind me and I whirled to see several oozes pulling themselves back together from the force of landing on my level. I counted at least five separate puddles rapidly becoming oozes.

The cube behind me was closer, so I dug in my satchel for a grenade and clicked the toggle on the side. It released a screaming fart as I wound back, but the grenade still landed in its guts and went off.

Dark mud-crete flowed through it as the cube screamed and vibrated. Its body cracked and hardened where the mud-crete reached air, and it quickly stopped moving or making sound at all.

I raced around the corner of the stairwell, happy with my temporary plug, and ran down the next flight of stairs. My shotgun was empty, so I began reloading it from my second bandoleer. By the time more Sleem oozes caught up to me, I was ready and started blasting.

Magnesium sparks erupted in the dark with the first blast and my helmet shaded itself to protect me from the sudden light. By the time I pumped another shell into the chamber and fired again, it had adjusted, and the sparks showed up as small glows, with muted lighting effects in the room.

This helmet had been worth every Mortie I spent on it.

Two Sleem oozes burned and died, slumping with burbling screams as their brethren raced past. More of them slapped into place from the elevator shaft near me, and I started running again. Fighting them and wasting ammo was getting me nowhere.

I ran down, again. Deeper into the bowels of the residential block, where apartments with predictable layouts appeared on my map, spreading out from central areas where the stairs and elevators met. One broad, open hallway on either side led to smaller offshoots, and larger open areas. Each with staircase openings and elevators at the end.

Each promising a place in which Sleem could hide.

Chapter 41

I glanced back and saw that no Sleem were immediately behind me, so I pulled up my map. The floor showed a clear set of staircases at the far end, so I started running for them. I had to get away from this death trap elevator before I reached the bottom floor.

More of them were coming from the unblocked stairwell behind me, so I prioritized putting some distance between myself and the encroaching Sleem. As I jogged, I reloaded my shotgun with more dragon’s breath rounds, and glanced at my surroundings.

The underground apartment building had a clearly marked area for a grocery market, beyond the first three rows of apartments. Tucked into a central area with several other storefronts, I could only tell what was supposed to be what because of the dayglo orange paint, which my helmet read and projected in place for me. Rooms that were identified became marked on my map as well.

It appeared that people lived down here full time, and never left. It made me wonder what the hell it could be for, but the sound of Sleem behind me pushed me to run again.

The other stairwell was open, and a glance behind me allowed my helmet to confirm several cubes and a small horde of oozes were after me. I was faster, but they were not exactly slow.

A faded orange spray on the wall beside me said ‘barbershop,’ and as I ran by I noticed a strange shape in my peripheral vision. I didn’t stop running, but it looked like a barbershop chair, tucked away at the back wall.

A laundromat and bakery followed, before a large tavern, and a playground and small dog park. There were even massive painted brackets on the ground that read ‘grass’ in several areas.

The common areas had taller ceilings, and dayglo orange paint for sunlamps and something they called ‘sky screens.’

Then the apartment blocks started up again, spanning away in either direction for three rows. Beyond those, the gaping stairwell I was aiming for.

A scattering of Sleem were in direct pursuit, but I noticed several of their dots on my map darting away down the different apartment block areas as well.

Cutting off my ability to return, I expected. Setting traps and ambushes for if I tried.

Made sense, considering there had to be a bottom to these stairs, and the elevator shaft had given them the option to control that area.

I shook my head and breathed hard as I kept running down. The stairwell delved down further this time, and when it opened, a sign above the door read ‘experimentation.’

I descended, surveying the place as I went.

The next level was a broad, open hallway like the others, but it had unusually high clearance. From floor to ceiling was roughly thirty feet.

And it was bare. The level had been stripped clean. All that was left was structural support pillars, spaced regularly throughout the empty stretch of concrete.

There wasn’t even any dayglo orange paint anywhere.

They were moving again behind me, so I raced down the last of the stairs. Experimentation was a large level, but I could see the other end on my map. The stairs up were there, but the bottom of the elevator shaft wasn’t.

My map told me it kept going, vanishing into the depths.

Something in the center of the map didn’t make sense to me. It looked like a giant ramping hole in the ground, near the center of the level. Without anything else to aim for, I ran toward the hole.

A glance over my shoulder told me exactly how screwed I was. I could see dozens of Sleem chasing me directly, and yet more spreading out across the level. Rayna hadn’t been kidding when she told me they liked to entrap their victims.

I frowned and changed direction, running between columns, and putting more distance between me and the encroaching wave of Sleem behind me. They spread out more, and it worked to slow their pursuit.

I sprinted in a zig-zag across the level, watching behind me on the map. I noticed that the Sleem behind slowed considerably and began moving erratically unless they were directly behind me, and there were no pillars between us.

Something clicked for me, and I realized something about how they tracked their prey. Whether it was sound waves, or just vibrations in the air, they could track me much easier if they had a clear line of sight between us, in spite of not having any eyes of their own.

The next pillar I passed I ducked behind, before carefully approaching the pit in the middle of the cavernous floor. It was what was left of a massive cargo elevator. The entire thing was gone, except for the metal support structure built into the walls. A splash of bright orange paint identified it as a major cargo elevator, but it also looked like the only way down to whatever floor was buried beneath experimentation.

And buried it was, the shaft was too deep for my map to read it fully. It just extended a few hundred feet down at a gently sloping angle before vanishing into the depths. Looking down the shaft wasn’t any more helpful, as the helmet only drew the shaft to its own visual range, which was significantly smaller than the maps.

The lines in my vision ended abruptly at a distant point in the gaping hole. Looking at the sides, it was likely possible to walk down it, if one was careful. A wrong step would send you tumbling though, and it would be hard to stop yourself without getting hurt. The metal spikes in the floor that used to hold tracks looked particularly mean.

Another excited fart from my side grabbed my attention, and a cube lunged from behind a nearby column to envelop me. I lifted the Sleem stick in my hand and let the cube impale itself on the end. It seemed to realize its mistake an instant before I squeezed the trigger and sent electricity coursing through its gelatinous body.

It squealed and burbled as it retreated to a safe distance, moving partially behind the nearby pillar as its body convulsed and twitched. I looked around. No other Sleem were nearby, and those encroaching on my map were still doing so slowly.

Searching.

Then the cube in front of me released a series of low, guttural fart sounds, which echoed in the dark. The Sleem behind the cube on the map suddenly surged forward, but only in two of the lanes created by columns. The rest seemed to try and flood into those lanes. More of them raced into view from the elevator shaft and other staircase.

I was still struggling to understand exactly how Sleem hunted, but this cube had taught me that it had at least something to do with sound.

Time to say thanks.

The Sleem stick hit the ground as I tossed it, and my helmet outlined it in red lines for me. I reached in my satchel and prepared the cube’s thank you gift, a mud-crete grenade.

The cube hesitated at first, moving away from the pillar in a short movement before it hurled itself at me. I clicked the toggle on the grenade and tossed it in the air as I dove to the side. The cube went right past me and plummeted down the elevator shaft, inadvertently slurping up the grenade.

As it was about to land, the grenade went off and it screamed. I grabbed my Sleem stick and turned to watch as the cube fell into pieces and tumbled down the elevator with a clattering splash.

As I turned to leave, motion at the bottom of my map caught my attention. Something was climbing the elevator shaft. I glanced at my map and confirmed.

Several somethings.

Larger than average red dots were moving up the ramp, and my helmet drew them as massive orbs. Each Sleem orb was so large it filled half the elevator ramp with its body.

I could only see the first two, but my map told me there were more coming, in a staggered formation. These were what everybody had agreed were the dangerous Sleem, not that I felt terribly safe around cubes or oozes.

“Well, time to try my useless plan.”

Somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew that everything I was doing was meritless. Running deeper into their lair was never going to free me from it, but it was all I could do.

Up to the point I was surrounded completely with no place left to run that didn’t have Sleem crawling all over it, I was primarily focused on keeping myself from thinking about what it was going to feel like when one of those cubes actually got me. Now, seeing the sheer titanic size of the orbs coming for me too, I just wanted to turn and run.

So I did. Right through a crowd of Sleem. I ran around the corner of the pit and started sprinting for the far end of the cavernous experimentation floor, toward the stairwell opposite the one I had come in from.

Sleem of each variety moved to stop me, and I ran in erratic patterns to avoid them.  I pressed toward a group of them, clicking a mud-crete grenade and tossing it into the middle of the gathered oozes.

They scattered, but it caught the tail end of one and the thing wailed horribly, it’s high pitched whistle attracting more of them that were spread out around us.

I stopped and fired the shotgun, killing an ooze in front of me. A cube lunged at me from behind a nearby pillar, and I pivoted on the spot, pumping the sawed-off and hitting it at nearly point blank range with a full load of magnesium sparks.

The cube fell back. It smoked, hissed, leaked caustic fluid, and whistled like a teapot. The sparks hurt it badly, but it wasn’t dead. As I ran, the cube issued squealing farts like a high-pitched klaxon alarm. More of them moved in my direction. Hundreds of them.

I fumbled a fresh shell from my bandolier and promptly dropped it when I tried to slip it into the magazine of my shotgun. My hands shook violently, and I forgot about reloading in order to run. Too many Sleem were within a single pillar of me, and my ability to find a path through them was being countered by sheer numbers.

A glance behind me confirmed what I already suspected. A giant ball of slime was hauling itself out of the elevator shaft behind me, and a wall of pulsating slime flowed behind it. The orb vibrated in my vision, and it began to broadcast directly to my helmet, through MortMobile.

The deity's face was apologetic as he connected our call, but he said nothing.

A segment of dripping slime pressed to the screen and vibrated. Mechanical words translated into halting English for me, and the Sleem orb said, “Do not run. We desire your friendship.”

I hung up and ran. I threw another grenade at another cube and sprinted past as it dodged. An ooze to its side was struck, and when the grenade went off, the hapless creature erupted violently, throwing mud-crete into all its nearby brethren.

As I scrambled past, sliding in the residual slime, I noticed the Sleem hit with mud-crete were all slowed. Hurt.

A cube that had taken a partial splash violently rubbed its body against a nearby pillar, scraping off the offending material before it could harden. Several oozes near it were already leaving behind parts of their bodies as mud-crete made them useless.

My feet suddenly burned, and I could feel the cold concrete and slime beneath me. My reed boots had been eaten away on contact, almost instantly. As I ran, I started screaming.

The pain was intense, and every step made it worse. Each slapping footprint hit more acid, drove it deeper into my soles, and burned away more of my feet.

I ran through the area they had come, and the puddles of acid were so thick that I wouldn’t have been able to avoid them even if I wasn’t in a full-blown panic.

Sleem closed in around me, and I responded with blasts from the shotgun, until it clicked empty. I still ran, bloody footprints behind me.

The starfish suit was trying, but it couldn’t operate properly because of my movement.

My cartoon friend reprimanded me from the side, running along with me and looking nervously over its shoulder. Tendrils continuously sprayed acid neutralizer on my foot when I would bring it in the air, then dodge back to avoid being smashed before they could do any further work.

At least I had the painkiller to help ease the agony of running on flayed feet.

I still nearly passed out when I felt my own bones scraping against concrete, but then I collapsed against the slime-coated stairs. They were empty, and I looked back in the cavernous room as I crawled up them on my knees and elbows.

Sleem were everywhere. Hundreds of them poured through the room, converging on me. I grabbed two more grenades and clicked the toggles on each, before tossing them behind me to the base of the stairs.

They went off in two bubbles of foaming mud, and the Sleem chasing me all stopped to avoid the wet mud-crete. I hurriedly shoved shells into my shotgun, as the tendrils worked hard on repairing my feet, elbows, knees, and hands.

Another orb rolled into view from behind a row of columns and called me on my psychic cell phone. The call popped up on the side of my screen in the helmet.

“You must be in pain, let us render aid,” it said, rolling toward me with bubbling fervor.

The same halting mechanical translation was used, and in this one, I could see a device inside the Sleem. It was metallic and encased in a thick, sealed liner.

I hung up on it and scrambled upward. The bare soles of my feet began to burn again, where the starfish suit wasn’t attached. I was grateful for my heel protection, and I began to focus most of my weight on them as I climbed.

With a glance behind myself, I slung my shotgun and crested the top of the stairs, directly into the waiting embrace of a Sleem cube.

It waited just long enough for me to see that it was there, at the top of the stairs, then it surged forward and enveloped me. There was a shockingly calm second while it happened.

I saw the cube rushing forward and opening its body to engulf me, and suddenly all I could think about was the barber shop upstairs.

Why on Nu-Earth had it had a chair still in it, when the rest of the compound was empty?

Then I screamed as the pain hit. My entire body was on fire. Nearly every delicate part of me burned at the same time. The suit protected me, where it was laid out across my body.

My helmet protected my face and head from the caustic slime, even as I felt it squeeze and press against me. The thing was moving, shoving more of itself at all my orifices.

I was already clenched in every way possible, so it was denied entry, but it quickly began rubbing its gelatinous body against the sides of my throat and pushing at my belly button with extra, spinning pressure.

The air inside my helmet became thin. One scream had used it all up, and I gasped for air as I started seeing black spots in my vision.

I reached for my leather bandoleer and grasped at the handle of my Sleem stick. The gel around my reaching fingers hardened, and my neck started to burn horribly. It was going to open my jugular in seconds if I couldn’t stop it.

With a final desperate grab, I got my hands on the trigger and squeezed it. A jolt of electricity danced across my skin, everywhere except the helmet. The Sleem cube squealed and tore apart, ejecting me in a gasping mess to the concrete.

The instant I was free, my helmet cycled fresh air inside and my vision returned to normal. My starfish suit was busily spraying my entire body down with acid neutralizer, and the excruciating pain began to ease as I felt the painkiller enter my system more fully.

My bag’s strap was sizzling as I reached inside for a grenade. Thankfully, the flap had protected the contents, and I clicked the toggle on one before tossing it down the stairs behind me into the cube.

It had moved to bring me back down the stairs before I escaped, presumably to the orbs who wanted nothing more than to offer me aid and be my friends. It burbled and died as the grenade went off inside it, and effectively blocked the staircase with another mud-crete cube cork.

I took a long, shaking breath as the suit worked to fix me. The cartoon I had been ignoring caught my attention when it mentioned my charge was depleted by fifty percent already. I scrambled to my feet on brand new soles and started running through caustic slime again.

This time I had a proper destination in mind. The barber shop in the residential block. I suspected that I knew what the chair meant, and it might save my life.

With my suit running low, and no way to recharge it, I thought about telling it to stop healing my feet as I ran. The constant sharp pain convinced me otherwise, quickly cutting through the minor haze of the drug.

Too bad I hadn’t thought to bring a bundle of Christmas lights with me. I knew Mr. Sada had a box full of them in one of his sheds and damn would they look spectacular right now.

I slapped, chopped, and punched at the wall as I ran, hoping for some soft, or compromised concrete to come loose.

None did.

I stopped at a grate in the floor, little more than a small drain, and bashed at it with my metal covered heel until an ooze began to bubble up from inside. That instantly convinced me to keep running.

As did the realization that I had no immediate way to charge the suit. I slowed down when I reached the stairs up this time, palming a grenade and making sure my Sleem stick was tucked in my bandolier where I could reach it easily. My shotgun was filled with more of my dragon’s breath rounds, but my bandolier was far too low on extra shells.

It crossed my mind that I should have bought the bigger option, but the smaller one had seemed like plenty at the time, and I was worried about weight.

The thought made me chuckle madly as I cautiously and painfully walked up the stairs, weapons in hand. Three cubes awaited me this time.

I clicked the grenade and flung it to my side, before opening fire with the Mossberg. Roaring as I pumped the slide, I fired again and again. Four shells went into the first cube, and it slumped with a boiling hiss as the grenade went off in its friend.

I turned and gave the remaining cube a blast with my shotgun as it was dragging me into its depths. My left side entered the cube, and I leaned my head away as it burned from the magnesium ammunition.

The Sleem stick was jammed into it too, and the cube seemed to want to fight through the pain. I fumbled at my bandoliers for the handle again and squeezed the stick’s trigger when I felt it. The cube shot backward with a squeal, and I leapt forward, slamming the stick into it again.

The starfish suit went back to work on me as I hit the retreating cube with my anti-Sleem cattle prod again and again. It burbled and screamed, still burning from the dragon’s breath.

I let go of the Sleem stick and reached in my satchel for another grenade, only to feel wet canvas at the bottom. Panic spiking, my hand reached into the corners and found two more grenades.

Instead of those, I slid another dragon’s breath round into my shotgun and let the cube have two blasts. It was enough. The cube began attempting to haul itself away, burning to death, and I started jogging in the other direction, fumbling at my bandolier again.

As I slid the last of my dragon’s breath ammunition into the magazine, I jogged across more acid slime toward the first darkened hallway of residential apartments.

Sleem surged from the hallway toward me, and I started running harder, altering my approach to the middle of the hallway. I increased my speed from a jog to a run again, breathing heavily and cradling my shotgun.

I realized the trap when I passed into the open space at the center of the floor, the common area. An oversized cube dropped from the taller ceiling directly on top of me, and I was completely consumed again. My entire body was washed with acid once more, but this time I managed to restrain the scream.

The effort left me panting, and my helmet ran out of breathable air in exactly the same amount of time.

This Sleem was different. Bigger. Stronger. When it clenched down on my hands to prevent them from moving, I was unable to move my hands at all.

Thankfully, I could still squeeze my trigger.

The shotgun roared inside the gelatin, and a flaming hollow erupted. The cube scream-farted in anger and clenched down on me harder.

My arms and hands were free though, and I pumped the shotgun, before firing it again. A hole opened in the cube and wet acid splattered to the concrete ahead.

The Sleem vibrated and clenched hard. It went for my neck again, which already felt a little raw, and I was horrified to feel my skin and muscle tissue being flayed by swiftly moving acid.

My jugulars both erupted and blossomed great gouts of red blood to my sides. I leaned the shotgun back and fired it one more time.

The sparks roared into flames above my head, and the magnesium swiftly sank around me. I blacked out as a space in the gelatin formed around my head and shoulders.

The suit brought me back with a quick jolt an instant later. I could see the tendrils working to complete the repairs to my neck, and as I took another breath of slime burnt air, the cube ripped into my abdomen through my belly button.

I screamed, before pumping the shotgun again.

It spit me out, and the cartoon starfish scolded me for making such a mess to clean up. My guts spilled out over the shotgun, but I raised it anyway and fired one more time at the massive angry cube trying to flee.

Dozens of oozes hurried toward me from the dark, in every direction. I scrambled and slipped in my own gore as the suit began grinding my damaged organs and printing me replacements.

Turns out, you don’t really need intestines to run, but it hurts and feels really strange if you do it without them.

My cartoon warned me again that my charge was getting low, and cheerfully asked me to break something. I stumbled into a run as the hole in my stomach was repaired. The laser even sculpted my belly button back into place exactly as it had been.

I screamed as an ooze latched onto my leg and whirled to hit it with my Sleem stick. The rod was warped with damage, partially bent at the bandolier. It came loose and sparked one final time, throwing the ooze off me into its nearest companions before sputtering and smoking.

I whirled and fired the rest of my dragon’s breath as I ran for the nearby barbershop doorway. Each shot killed a threatening ooze, but there were plenty to take their places. The doorway was narrow, and as I ran through it, I turned and clicked a grenade.

Several oozes crammed into the doorway, and I threw it. Mud-crete blossomed and three oozes screamed as they died, splashing into and across one another. The trio quickly hardened and became most of a valid blocker to the doorway.

Another cube began squeezing its way past, so I loaded a taser slug directly into the barrel and shot it. The Sleem froze and jabbered angrily, body jammed in the hole.

I took the time to reload, before firing another slug into it and turning to look for what had become my only hope. The barbershop chair.

Chapter 42

It was right where I had thought it was, which was a relief. Part of me had been worried it was a stress hallucination, or a desperate thought puzzle to keep me from panic as I was eaten alive by sentient caustic slime.

But as I approached the chair at the back of the otherwise empty room, I knew exactly what I was looking at. It was the trigger mechanism for a hidden door. There could be no reason at all to leave it in place otherwise.

I approached, a smile on my face as I ran my hand over the back of the chair. Cracked plastic cover crumbled at my touch and I felt the ancient, dry cloth beneath.

The headrest was adjustable, so I moved it first all the way up, and then all the way down, in a shower of rust particles and broken old plastic.

The cube in the doorway farted, a long, thin, squeaky one, so I raised the shotgun and hit it with another taser slug to hold it in place. Then I flopped into the chair.

Dust, cloth particulates, and fragments of shattered plastic cover flew, and I reflexively closed my eyes against it before remembering that I was wearing a helmet. The air even smelled fresh in there.

It was amazing.

Still, nothing else happened, aside from my cartoon starfish appearing in the corner.

“Thanks for the charge, I guess.” The cartoon gestured at a scattering of plastic particles and frowned. “These suck.”

I ignored it. Something was better than nothing, and my concern was on finding the secret door I knew was here. Preferably before that cube got in here with me.

I started rocking in the chair, trying to feel if it was activated by leaning back or forward. The thing was solid, jutting from the concrete floor on a thick steel pillar. It didn’t move back or forth, only made more dust and bits of plastic fly into the air. I started to get nervous and stood back up.

My shotgun was low, so I reloaded it from my bandolier. The other, empty one was in the way, so I slid it off and dropped it on the floor. It was probably worth a few morties, even slime damaged, but I wanted to be light if it came to running again. I shook my arms loose and breathed out my stress.

“Okay. Think. If I were a secret door, how would I be activated?” I whispered to the dark.

I shook my head and walked over to the wall across from the chair. Running my hand along the wall told me that it had a long solid line in it, from floor to ceiling. When I ran my hand far enough in either direction, I found another, exactly the same.

Perhaps it was just concrete blocks fitted together.

I turned back and shot the cube again, bringing forth an angry sounding squeal and another round of violent jiggling. The damn thing was still coming, each jiggle moving it a little further and further in. The block of it now protruding into the room was hanging down and growing larger despite the taser slug.

I hit it with another. That stopped it fully, and I turned to figure out the chair.

I flopped back into it and sighed. “Shit, maybe they just forgot this one. Or couldn’t get it uninstalled.”

I glanced to the floor on either side of me and saw brackets in the concrete, where other barbershop chairs had been. Each of them looked like mine but was only bolted into the floor.

This one, the pole went into the concrete.

I breathed out my anxiety with a quick session of Molls’ meditation and went to work on the chair.

First, I pressed on the foot pedals, as hard as I could. The metal bracket holding them in place bent, and I gave up. Next was the armrests. The left was solid, but the right clanked just a little when I hauled up on it. That had to be it.

I began wrenching on the armrest, as hard as I could. My back and shoulders started to hurt, but I hauled on it until something in the concrete floor made the signature sound of rusty metal screaming against rusty metal, and the wall in front of me went, ‘thunk.’

“Oh, thank Pasta,” I breathed in a rush.

Part of the wall slid open a little, and I jumped up in glee to check on the cube. It was mostly in the room with me already, so I hit it with another two slugs from my shotgun and turned back to the secret door to get it the rest of the way open.

The door was heavy. It was just a slab of concrete, filled with complex metal locking mechanisms, so when I hauled back on it, it moved only slowly. The cube behind me began to vibrate and emit noises again, which spiked my fear. With the sudden rush of adrenaline, I hauled the door open and roared at the Sleem cube behind me.

The instant it was open enough for me to fit inside, I rushed in and reversed direction on the door. I could see the Cube enter the room fully and start racing toward me as the heavy block of concrete and steel groaned back into position and closed behind me. The cube hit the other side and immediately began trying to pull it back open with a sucking sound.

I had my hand on a long, embedded bar that acted as a door handle, but there was a large metal wheel in the center that almost certainly locked it. Using my left arm, I hauled the door back against the Sleem outside, and reached for the wheel with my right.

Thankfully, it spun easily after a brief instant of resistance, and the loud thunk of locks sliding into place filled the secret room I hid in.

I could no longer hear the cube outside, which gave me a lot of hope that the seal was good enough to keep it out. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and turned to see what I had found.

Corpses. Mummified corpses, three of them, stared at me from the center of a small, but well-furnished room. One corpse was leaned back in a lounge couch behind an oak coffee table, full army uniform and hat in place.

According to the bars and rank insignia on his skeletal chest, this man was a brigadier general, and his name was Tomson.

Behind a small bar at the other side of the room, another corpse was laid out across the bar, having fallen forward upon death. His mummified skull had fallen off at some point, and stared at me from where it had rolled, skeletal jaws gaping.

A dried bloodstain on the wall behind him indicated his cause of death to be a close-range shotgun blast.

As did the ancient shotgun on the floor at my feet, still in the clutches of the room’s third and final corpse. A mummy in a lab coat had fallen to his knees, and then to his face, after killing both other men.

His other hand held a large caliber handgun, pointed vaguely at the general. When I checked closer, I confirmed that Brigadier General Tomson had been shot in the chest. The bullet had punched directly through his sternum, and the couch behind him was stained and torn by the bullet.

I had been creeped out when I first turned around, but that passed quickly. “Whew, just some dead folk.”

I turned over the dead scientist at my feet and grimaced away from his face. He had been smushed against the concrete as he mummified, and it was gross. His chest had three small holes in it, surrounded by ancient brown bloodstains.

I peered more closely.

His name badge read “Experimentation. Chief Director. Dr. Franklin.” Other than that, he had no distinct features. Plain clothing beneath a long white lab coat, and a crushed pair of thin spectacles was all that remained.

The dead man behind the bar was in uniform as well, though his cap had rolled away with his head when it had fallen. I lifted him to find his upper torso a destroyed mess.

The shotgun Dr. Franklin used to kill him had torn away his badge and rank, but I found a business card tucked into a money clip in the rear pocket of his fatigues.

Rear Admiral Andre Favel, of the US Navy, appeared to have died at the hands of a civilian scientist in a secret bar in a secret army base buried beneath the Arizona desert. Both he and the general were still holding their own weapons, 1911 colts that reminded me of Hord’s.

As I explored the room, I took in several sights that interested me. I slowly realized I had entered a treasure vault.

There was a jukebox in the corner, fully furnished and filled with perfectly preserved vinyl records. On the coffee table near Brigadier General Tomson, a stack of 1970s era Playboy magazines rested beneath a layer of thick dust.

I counted fourteen in total, each of them consecutive months.

Then, behind the bar was a stash of old dusty bottles filled with alcohol. Many of them still sealed, and several had labels I struggled to read or recognize.

One I did recognize from an old Wild West museum I had once visited.

It was a rare Irish whiskey, and the museum had valued it at fourteen thousand dollars for an intact bottle. Rear Admiral Favel was wearing a large gold pinky ring as well, studded with shiny stones.

But the kicker was an oversized jar sitting on the bar. It contained brown, murky liquid and a tiny round shape. An egg, I guessed, but leathery and scaled. The jar had a thick metal handle on the top that appeared to twist open. It also had a plaque at the bottom, which read ‘Experimentation. Eyes Only.’

I decided not to touch it. Who knew what would happen if I did.

The room had a clear and obvious exit at the back, a narrow hallway that led to a set of batwing doors installed in the concrete. The wood was shriveled and cracked, but the springs still worked. They screamed and showered rust when I touched them, so I decided to crawl underneath instead.

I had collected the weapons but had to leave the shotgun. Its barrel was so corroded and filthy that it was pointless to try and use it. Three new handguns swung heavily at my side, in the still wet bag, as I crawled carefully under the doors. When I stood and looked back at the room, I decided to try and sell its contents.

I hadn’t known if it would work or not, but a BuyMort Pod rippled into place with a quick blast of burnt ozone. For a haul like this, one had been automatically sent.

It began flashing items around the room, seemingly at random, and warping them away. Mr. Sada’s MortBlock didn’t extend this deep, and it seemed like the Sleem didn’t bother using one, or perhaps theirs was too deep.

Either way, I sold the contents of the entire room, including the dead bodies of a clear government conspiracy gone wrong.

A long, dark hallway extended away into the distance in front of me, so I walked away while the pod did its business. I didn’t care for the smell when they arrived and departed, but I happily scanned through my sales.

My luck was turning, that room had been a treasure vault. I was immediately rich, and the sales kept coming in.

Purchase: Intoxicant, alcohol, Nu-Earth whiskey, circa 1821. Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 480,784 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Intoxicant, alcohol, Nu-Earth rum, circa 1941. Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 56,420 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Intoxicant, alcohol, Nu-Earth vodka, circa 1879. Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 78,014 morties dispensed.

The stash of booze netted me a nice windfall. The Playboys didn’t bring in as much as I had thought they would, but a solid hundred thousand morties for the whole set didn’t feel like I got robbed either.

Even the table, couch, and corpses got me paid, though it was nothing compared to the record player, and its contents.

Purchase: Information Storage Medium, polymer based disc, grooved. “Miles Davis, Kind of Blue.” Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 67,010 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Information Storage Medium, polymer based disc, grooved. “Elvis Presley, That’s Alright.” Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 62,648 morties dispensed.

Purchase: Information Storage Medium, polymer based disc, grooved. “Elton John, I’ve Been Loving You.” Rarity, rare. Quality, excellent. 69,000 morties dispensed.

The list of records went on. The machine had stored thirty of them, and each one sold in the range of forty to seventy-five thousand morties. The record player itself had landed me another 375K, which I was not complaining about at all.

The only thing that put a damper on my mood over the treasure room, which made me a multimillionaire in moments, was the final purchase BuyMort had made from me.

Purchase: Bioweapon. Reaper Hound egg. Rarity, unique. Quality, good health. 46,112,000 morties dispensed.

That instantly felt like a mistake. Not the minor kind either, the kind that makes you get panicky in the chest and feels like your heart might stop when you realize it kind of mistake.

Bioweapon.

That word stuck out, as did the rarity being unique. If BuyMort had never seen one of these before, how the hell could it know it was called a ‘reaper hound,’ which frankly terrified me.

I stood in the empty concrete hallway, listening to the blood pounding in my ears as I thought about it.

Then it came to me.

They didn’t need any eggs to know what it was. This place had obviously been the facility they originated from, but if there were any records or even just research papers that had survived, they would provide enough of a description of one to recognize it and assign it value.

My psychic cell phone was out and in my hands before I realized it, and I went to my new app. I needed to ask it something specific. Most of the statistics were in menus, assembled by popularity, accessibility, and several other metrics.

There was a search feature, however, which was necessary simply because of how big the database this app accessed was.

“How many items dealing with the ‘reaper hound’ bioweapon have been sold to BuyMort since Nu-Earth joined the market?” I asked.

My hope had been that it would be specific enough to provide a specific result, and I was not disappointed.

Terrified, but not disappointed.

The app immediately spit a number at me, four thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two items. I winced, blinked a few times in the dark, and thought of my next question.

“When were those items sold?” I whispered.

The answer made it worse. Four thousand, nine hundred and thirty-one items had been sold three days prior, almost immediately after BuyMort had arrived and our planet joined its market.

The final item had been just a few minutes ago.

Now, I’m not much of a creative sort. I look at a starry night, and it looks nice to me, but I don’t get filled with words to describe it. Generally, my ability to visualize the ramifications of my actions was limited to small scope things that would directly affect me.

This one, however, didn’t take much to imagine what had happened.

A moment later, when I went to try and purchase the egg back, I confirmed my own fear. An affiliate had purchased it directly from BuyMort, via standing purchase order. It had been lost to me the instant BuyMort zipped it away.

I had completed their set for them, whoever they were.

It occurred to me that this was a big part of why aliens followed BuyMort around like this. Early days on a new planet offered untold possibilities. Like a new bioweapon to exploit, because the hairless apes on this world were too stupid to avoid selling important things like eggs they don’t understand.

I breathed out the fear and stress, actively remembered that I was still scrambling for my life and took some solace in the fact that I really needed the morties. Then I did the only thing I could, which was set an alert on the app for any further action on reaper hounds in BuyMort and focused on being trapped underground in a Sleem lair.

Thankfully, now I had millions of morties to help me with that scenario. Millions and change, to be specific. After all of my sales had tallied up, my personal morties total was 50,382,400.

More than enough to get equipped for the fight I was already in.

Now I knew BuyMort would send a dimensional pod if the transaction was worth it, and my intention was to make it exactly that.

The first thing I bought was more grenades. This time, I went with Clippy’s suggestion and paid for anti-Sleem chemical grenades straight from the ad. Each one was a guaranteed Sleem kill on contact and would cause the Sleem’s own body to become an explosive device.

The ad had shown several Sleem being killed from exposure to just one in their group, so I hoped it lived up to the marketing. That was exactly what I needed them for. A brand new, full-to-the-brim satchel cost me just over five-hundred thousand morties and got me thirteen grenades.

Each one was beautiful. The glass was crystalline, and the liquid, which had appeared at first to be pure black, was almost alive with color up close. Hints of dusty pink, green, and deep sea blues all chased each other through the inky liquid, which sloshed and crawled up the sides of the grenades on its own like ferro-fluid.

A golden colored key at the top was the trigger element.

Once wound twice around, the grenade was armed. There was no timer, instead the external structure would break upon contact with any surface or negative pressure environment, like the inside of a Sleem’s body.

A new set of ads popped up and I almost shut them down, strictly out of habit. But the words anti-Sleem in a dazzling 3-D purple and gold really grabbed my attention, and I couldn’t help but wander down the rabbit hole.

The first option was something called SleemShield (Epic defense against Sleem infestations. Afraid to leave the house? Tired of imagining your skin peeling, charred and broken like the outside of a baked potato? Well, worry no more with the power of SleemShield! 100,000 morties, 3.7 stars).

I liked it. I liked the confidence of the ad and the look of the thing. It was simple, no frills attached. And for anti-Sleem protection that price looked amazing.

But those stars, they bugged me. I rolled up the review page and saw a variety of generic 5 stars, all practically the same, empty words, one after another. Then I saw the one stars. Stuff like “My brother tried gardening in one of these. Last I saw of him he was SleemFeed.” There were no two, three or four stars between them.

A scam product. I dismissed it. There had to be something better. I almost called Clippy, remembered the earlier moaning, and dumped the idea.

I could do this myself. I shuffled through the ads in front of me and another ad, an Affiliate, jumped on before me.

Stop living in fear. Start living in glory.

Over the words ran man so covered in tactical gear and armor that he might as well have been a robot. He ran through a mess of space monsters, blasting them to pieces with some sort of laser-based minigun while he booted knee-high raptors, their fangs glistening with saliva.

Fuck yeah. I dove into the ad.

A new affiliate, Zalf Multi-MortBlock Industries, swarmed over me. Everywhere I could see stood a vast warehouse of goods. And sitting right in front of me were a variety of sleek, wrinkleless body suits, each one smooth and shiny in the metaphysical lamps above them.

A sign declared them all to be anti-Sleem suits, and they ranged from the thin and cheap to the complicated and expensive. As I browsed them, I noticed that the ones that really didn’t catch my eye faded from the rack, until I had just three choices before me.

Each one was an anti-Sleem suit, designed to protect against their acid, even if fully enveloped.

They were full body suits, which extended up over any helmet protection and sealed fully with a zipper at the front. The suits appeared to be made from space-age plastic, but upon closer inspection I could see that they were slick.

Oily somehow, with a liquid coating on the outside of the suit that never dried or transferred. I examined them more closely.

SleemDreem — A multidimensionally proven design that provides optimal protection against even the fiercest of Sleem hordes. Dream easily with SleemDreem. 1,000,000 morties. 4.7 stars.

King’sPlate Elite — Stop grabbing just what is necessary. Excel. Introducing King’sPlate, the latest in Zalf Multi-MortBlock Industries’ War on SleemTM. In-built air-circulation prevents overheating and collapse from rigorous Sleem slashing while keeping their acid where it belongs, off your body in a squealing pile on the floor. 3,000,000 mories 4.9 stars.

The SleemSupreme — Acid-proof. Check. Air-conditioned? Check. Equipped with a shielding system that promises to eject the user from any Sleem that consumes them? You got it boss. Introducing all-new SleemSupreme bodywear. 6,400,000 morties. 5 stars.

I had the morties and I was stuck in the thick of it, so I’m not ashamed to say that I went all in and got the SleemSupreme. Maybe with that little beauty I’d actually survive this hellhole.

The pod warped in, a violet-edged portal opening up and allowing the sleek pod to slide on through. Instead of a fleshy-taped box the bodywear flopped out onto the floor in a splat of cool-smelling goo. I touched it tentatively, then with more certainty and slid it over my clothing in one deliciously-easy maneuver. I felt much safer. Untouchable, if the storefront was to be believed.

Feeling good, I popped back into my market history and funneled my way over to GARY’S “GET ‘EM GOOD” GUNS GARDEN. There’d been a lot of interesting bandoleers there and it was time for me to check out some of the more exotic ones.

ArcLark Flaming Streamers — Make your next party one to remember! ArcLark Flaming Streamers produce trails of flame that burn hot and bright across the perfect night sky. Great for camping out! 150 morties/shell. 4.3 stars.

Hey, Over Here Emergency Signaling shells — A white phosphorus shell with powerful second stage propellent, these shell give regular flares a run for their money. Perfect for signaling that passing plane. Available in every color. 2000 morties/shell. 4.7 stars.

Gaucho Bolo — The Trippiest Round on the planet. Gaucho Bolo explodes into spinning chains and balls perfect for tripping fleeing bi-pedal opponents. The accuracy isn’t great but the results sure are. Perfect for catching escaped prisoners. 5,000 morties/shell, 4.3 stars.

Furious Flechette — Close range horror rounds that explode out of the barrel, swarming forward a cloud of razor sharp battle detritus. Pierces most hides and soft armors. Well-known for making someone’s bad day worse. 3000 morties/shell, 4.5 stars.

Spinner-Whinnie Fast Slam — Some people think shotguns don’t have tactical range. Those people don’t have imaginations. Forget urban combat. Go sniper with the Spinner-Whinnie Fast Slam. These shotgun shells exit the barrel at a whippin’ Mach 4, breaking the sound barrier even as they belt through walls, tear apart a bird, and general destroy everything on their way to the target. 10,000 morties/shell. 3.9 stars.

HYDRA-SPLIT — Multi-headed, self-guiding incendiary explosive rounds. A nightmare on the battlefield. Hydra-split is perfect home defense when you find thirty thieves breaking into your living room. One man on thirty? I like those odds . . . with HYDRA-SPLIT. 40,000 morties/shell. 5 stars.

Laser-Boy Shellblast — Want the feel of real Terran stock and steel in your hands, but the blast power of freakin’ alien stormtroopers? Then boy do we have you covered with the Laser-Boy Shellblast. Each shell contains fused tellenium alloys that, when set off, convert to pulse energy. You read that right, one shell, one powerful fricking laser blast. That’s Laser-Boy Shellblast. The future and the past holding hands at last. 30,500 morties, 5 stars.

All of them had their merits but, considering my circumstances, it felt best to go with the most expensive options. The HYDRA-SPLIT ammo promised multi-headed, self-guiding incendiary explosives and, I’m going to be honest, not only did that sound useful. It also sounded like something I wanted to see in action. I bought several of those.

I also got some Laser-Boy Shellblasts. I mean, firing a laser blast from a shotgun sounded perfect for slimes. You’d blast and then eject the shell like normal. No hassle or fuss.

Once my remaining bandoleer and shotgun were filled with good ammo, I tucked away my remaining taser slugs in the bottom of my grenade satchel. Didn’t want to waste them, but I was over stunning these bastards. I wanted them all dead.

Which is what I was thinking of when I made my last, and most expensive purchase. I’m going to admit it — this was an impulse buy. I’d been thinking that I needed a sharp and handy blade, a machete or maybe even a sword.

And, as usual, a gleaming and sparkly ad invaded my mindspace. But this one, unlike most of them, was quite glorious.

A curved sword sparkled within the confines of a fresh-smelling oasis. Over top all of it, in fully 3D caps, were the words FALCOR. The scene faded and words spread across my vision, even as a deep and powerful voice spoke the words from seemingly every direction at once.

ONCE UPON A TIME A SWORD MADE A BOY A KING.

OUR SWORD CAN MAKE YOU AN EMPEROR.

INTRODUCING FALCOR.

A wicked looking blade appeared in the space in front of me. It slowly revolved, showing itself off from every conceivable angle. It looked sharp enough to cut atoms, a scimitar-shaped blade well-balanced and set upon a gem-encrusted hilt. An electric hum rose from those gems, making my arm hair stand on end. What the hell was this thing?

IT SLICES. IT DICES. WATCH AS IT CUTS THROUGH THIS THICK LEAD PIPE.

A non-distinct humanoid figure seized up the sword, facing up against a large-ass metal pipe. With a single chop the pipe fell into two halves.

GASP AS IT CARVES THROUGH THIS OLD SOVIET TANK.

The same man jumped atop an old T-60 as it rumbled through the shadowy confines of a ruined urban environment, He hacked across its main gun, slicing it off at an angle. Then he shoved the blade through the driver’s hatch and the tank rumbled to a stop.

Goddamn.

SHAKE YOUR HEAD IN DISBELIEF AS FALCOR CUTS THROUGH TITANIUM BODY ARMOR.

A squad of plated soldiers clanked into view. The figure leapt through the air, practically hopping across the air, slashing and kicking, reducing them all to assumedly bloody piles of meat and mail.

YOU’LL BE AT THE CUTTING EDGE OF BLADE-BASED TECHNOLOGY WITH FALCOR, THE CHOPPING, LOPPING, LIFE-STOPPING DIAMOND SHARP WEAPONS MADE FOR HUMANS OF ALL AGES. 22,500,000 morties, 5 stars.

I was so excited that I almost selected the purchase option twice.  When it arrived, I excitedly strapped its scabbard to my left hip and began going over the new owner’s manual.

One of the nicer points of BuyMort was that it made keeping track of your stuff’s required reading easy. One of the less nice points is how it tricks you into buying shit.

The very first disclaimer in my new sword’s manual explained that the marketing phrase ‘anti-Sleem’ did not mean the weapon was capable of damaging Sleem.

It just meant that Sleem couldn’t damage it.

My new sword was sharp though. Magically sharp if the manual and its pure fantasy-novel theme were to be believed.

I swung the sword at the concrete wall as a test, and it sank into the stone easily, before carving out a divot with a shower of dust. The weapon was light, and I had applied barely any pressure, so the amount of damage was surprising.

Its attached literature promised it would keep that edge, even if used in fencing with another from the same line. Each weapon was unique, the manual claimed, but the same vaguely defined ‘magical processes’ had been used to make each item for sale from the affiliate.

They had a quick demonstration video I could watch to prove that their weapons didn’t sustain damage with use, but I chose to just believe that it was sharp and slipped it into its specialized scabbard.

According to the manual, the scabbard itself would be cut easily if care was not applied when drawing or sheathing the sword. All the scabbard really was, according to the paperwork, was a different dimensional reality that made the sword not sharp, so it could be safely stored.

My manual advised against leaving the weapon unattended unless safely secured in its scabbard. Even just brushing this blade in passing could easily provide a mortal wound.

I smiled as I read the safety section, it was comforting in its brutally cold assessment of harm from this item. But again, sadly, the one thing it didn’t do much to hurt was a Sleem. It would cut through them, but that wasn’t enough.

I still needed a melee weapon against the Sleem.

That led me back into the items store. The ad console seemed excited, which made sense since I’d fallen for its wiles and bought something that I didn’t really need yet. Ad boxes and popups were everywhere I looked.

Fuckin hell, I thought. I just need a melee weapon that can burn and cut Sleem.

And, like that, there came the image of a weapon that looked to be a mix of falchion and machete, made with extremely special material.

BLAZE SPLITTER - NEED TO SLASH AND BURN? JUNGLES IN THE WAY OF YOUR FUTURE FARMLAND? BLAZE SPLITTER HAS YOUR BACK. HACK AND INCINERATE, REDUCE NATURE TO NUTRITIOUS FARMLAND IN NO TIME. 20,000,000 morties, 4.7 stars.

I didn’t like the description. It spoke to all of the lack of foresight that plagued us even before BuyMort showed up.

But, the truth was, the destructive power it foreshadowed made it sound extremely effective against Sleem. I bought it. A twenty-million mortie tool for hacking and slashing with cosmic fire.

The falchion was crafted primarily of white composite plating, which formed the entirety of the weapon, aside from a thin wire rail along the edge. This wire railing ran into a small hole at the top and bottom of the blade, where it vanished inside.

Once activated by a button on the hilt, plasma would course along the railing, held in place by powerful magnetic containment. Adaptive heat shielding protected the hand of the wielder, but the residual heat could be felt if the weapon was anywhere near my own body.

I noticed it was also getting very warm in the hallway very quickly, and the concrete was starting to char near where I had swung the weapon.

I’d always wanted a sword made of a star, and now I had one. The power drained quickly, but claimed it was rechargeable, in two interesting varieties. I could simply plug it in to most any power source, or I could leave it in its sheath, which was a misnomer.

They called it a sheath on the product page, but it was a docking station. If you pressed the falchion to the exposed outside of it, it would snap in place magnetically.

The docking station itself charged from ambient radiation, and would recharge the weapon much slower than a direct plug in. Still, it was nice to have the option, and I happily plugged it in to charge after a quick test fire.

The weapon had been more violent than I expected when it activated. The plasma was loud, it burned the surrounding air, and it pulled my hand ever so slightly with its movement through the wire containment.

My little section of the concrete hallway filled with thick, black smoke in a hurry, and I turned it off. I took a couple of practice swings with it before that happened, though, and came away very satisfied. It crackled as it moved through the air, and I needed to be careful of the heat it produced.

Even my hand felt it, through the heat shielding in place on the handle.

My shopping spree left me just under a million morties in my personal account, but I felt much better equipped to survive the Sleem than I had when I entered this place.

Even that amount felt like I had some of my new fortune left over, which I planned on spending if I ever got out of the Sleem’s dungeon.

Chapter 43

I almost left without breaking the barroom doors, which would have been a bad move. When I had first entered the secret room, I had feared the Sleem finding their way in.

I watched the door behind me like a hawk as red dots piled up against it on my map, but that seal had proven tight enough to prevent their passage.

So, my fear moved to the darkened hallway ahead of me instead. My imagination produced drains, air ducts, and other secret doors with looser seals at the end of the hallway. Cautiously I lit up the plasma falchion and sighed in relief when nothing came at me.

Still I was concerned that I had only staved off the inevitable by hiding in here.

The plasma roared so loudly when it fired that anything in that tunnel would have had no choice but to know that I was there. It also lit up the entire thing, allowing me to see down to the end.

It was a blank hallway, extending a long distance before turning a corner. There was a ladder part way down the hallway, and a series of old hanging lights, but no other markings or decoration. Just me, and this ratty old batwing door that led into the bar.

I laid into it, smashing down on the rotten old wood with my metal encased fists. My cartoon starfish showed up and started moaning happy things in its thick Dutch accent, but I ignored it and kept smashing. The wood was brittle, and snapped into dust and splinters under my blows, and I got the much-needed charge for my starfish repair suit.

Not all the way charged, but it made me feel better to know I could get healed if something went wrong with all my new toys.

Plus, anyone who cared about the doors died in a shootout decades ago, then got sold to an uncaring marketplace. Probably got ground up and used as fertilizer or something.

The thought made me snicker, and I felt a little better about having sold the egg to their bioweapon project.

What a bunch of jerks, actually making that weapon. At least I was merely the buffoon who sold it thoughtlessly, for his own self-interest and survival.

Walking down the hallway in my anti-Sleem suit distracted me from that line of thinking, thankfully. The suit was turning out to be a bit of a pain in the ass to walk in. It was like walking in full body pajamas, but the bottoms of the feet were mildly slippery instead of tactile.

I almost fell as I got up to full speed and had problems with my helmet trying to learn a whole new set of movements to draw for me in the dark.

An ad popped up before me.

Zalf Multi-MortBlock Industries Presents - SleemSupreme Tactical Footwear! Are you tired of slipping and sliding in your SleemSupreme protective attire? Protected from slimes but not from the lack of traction that protection provides? Well slip and slide no more with SleemSupreme Tactical Footwear. Immune to Sleem Slime and hyper tracted to guaranteed that your slip n slide day are over. 200,000 morties. 4.1 stars.

That was BuyMort’s batteries not included. I groaned and spent another two hundred thousand morties on them.

The boots worked at least, gripping the concrete floor like any work boot would, but offering the same protection as the suit. I set aside my annoyances and left, moving down the long tunnel toward the darkened corner it vanished around.

There were no drains or vents to worry about as I walked down to the ladder and stopped to look at my map. I was roughly halfway between the secret door I had entered from, and the corner my hallway ended in. A metal plaque on the wall read “medical,” and I promptly walked past the ladder.

If it went up to that section of this facility, I had no interest in trying to navigate it. The area had been a maze from the top, and it was full of so many ducts and drains I doubted my ability to easily survive, even with all my new toys.

I looked up at the hatch on the ceiling, shook my head, and continued plodding down the long concrete hallway.

I stopped again once I reached the corner. My helmet couldn’t map what it couldn’t see, so until I poked my head around that corner, it was just another hole in the dark, and my anxiety had been growing about it since the ladder. Upon arrival, I hefted my shotgun, loaded with laser slugs, and stepped quickly around the corner.

It ended at a thick metal hatch, about ten feet in front of me. I sighed in relief and started working on my breathing again. My fear was back, and spikier than ever. The only thing that helped was remembering Molls’ lesson by the attic window. And how cute she had looked all bundled up in her blankets.

I shook out of it, that kind of distraction wouldn’t help. The Sleem were waiting for me on the other side of this door, and new equipment or not, they were dangerous and shockingly numerous.

We were definitely the source of the local infestation I had heard about on the news, though I hadn’t quite figured out how they came and went in such large numbers without us noticing.

Shortly after opening the door, I found out.

The door was sealed tight, but the wheel and mechanism were simple, and still worked. I heaved against the metal until it turned, and with a series of soft thuds, the door drifted open. Dust rained from the hinges, but they didn’t produce sound, which I was grateful for.

It seemed to open up directly behind a structural support pillar, because the door was nearly touching concrete once fully open. I slipped by it and slid the door mostly closed, wanting to leave an escape path if needed.

A quick look around didn’t help me very much, as the range in here was too much for my helmet. The wall behind me stopped part way up, as did the flooring all around. There were more structural pillars nearby, but those just vanished part way up as well, leaving me with no sense of size to the structure I was in.

There was almost no sound. It was eerily silent, aside from a single persistent drip. The entire area echoed with it, a thick drop of something falling into something else wet. It wasn’t quite a splash sound, more of a wet plop. My imagination filled in all kinds of things it could be in the dark, but I reasonably settled on Sleem being the cause.

Before moving any further, I stayed behind my pillar and played with my map. Once I got the helmet to recognize that I wanted to manipulate it, the map moved easily with my hand motions.

I zoomed it out and swung the angle down to better relate where I was, compared to where I had entered the facility. I could see the escape tunnel, leading to the small chunk of medical that we had explored. Then, next to that was residential and experimentation, which went all the way down to the giant cargo elevator shaft and followed me all the way through the secret tunnel to where I was now.

As I had assumed upon exiting the door, I was in the hangar section of the base. Far back and lower than the escape tunnel, but I knew exactly which direction I had to go in, and I was equipped for a fight.

So, I took a few deep breaths to steady myself and stepped out from behind the pillar. I walked softly, carefully, trying desperately not to make any noise.

Unconsciously, my footsteps fell into rhythm with the echoing drip. Creeping from one column to the next, I tried to map out the room while heading in the general direction I needed to go, but I quickly ran into the source of the sound.

A wall of slime was encasing the far side of the room. I made it all the way to the metal stairs leading up.

If I could have climbed those, I would have been able to run down the hallway I had defended with Ordo earlier.

It felt like hours ago, but my helmet’s clock told me it had been less than an hour since I had gotten separated and trapped down here. The giant wall of slime encasing the stairs seemed like it may take issue with me trying to climb them.

The dripping appeared to be serving a purpose. The helmet showed me that the slime up on top of the stairs was different.

It was covered in hardened flakes, which I realized was burn damage from Rayna and her flame thrower. The damaged material sloughed in a single direction from the drip point, pooling and being left on the concrete.

Dripping slowly from the upper walkway was allowing it to remove damaged portions of its body.

This collection of ooze, whatever it was, had been what attacked us before.

I looked in either direction, realizing the sheer mass of it. The blob extended as far in either direction as my helmet could draw and was roughly three feet high at the tallest point.

It was just a lake of caustic slime, between me and where I needed to go.

I reached in my satchel and produced a grenade. The material had said one was enough to kill Sleem of any size.

My intention was to test that claim, but I never got the chance.

Something massive appeared in the room behind me with a sudden rush of air and torn space. That same fart stink of burnt ozone from the dimensional pods accompanied it, washing over me in a wave of dry heat.

The lake of slime in front of me immediately stirred, drawing itself back and away from the burnt portions it left behind, and squalled a rumbling fart. Then, its body retracted, in a huge wave.

I held perfectly still as the massive quantity of slime flattened out against a concrete wall and slid away, upwards out of sight. I put the grenade away and ran for a nearby pillar, hoping the giant Sleem wasn’t about to land on me.

It had been impossible to tell if it had reacted to me, or just to the arrival of whatever the hell had warped in on top of us.

Nothing I could do about it if it did fall on me anyway, I just had to hope my new suit and shield were up to the task. I hesitated to use a grenade in that theoretical scenario, the ads had been a little fuzzy on what would happen if you did that, but generally seemed to suggest avoiding it.

My map filled in something huge as I approached the object. Then my helmet did too, as I got close enough to see part of it.

It was the Sleem’s ship.

Massive, bulbous, and green, according to my helmet, the ship radiated a soft source of light. A series of large bulbs near the craft’s bottom hummed with visible power, and produced most of the light, but the entire ship leaked illumination from its sectioned plating.

It hummed in the air as a door slid open on the bottom, and Sleem began to pour out. A long tube of gelatin extended from the ovoid doorway and pooled on the floor. It formed into an orb and rolled away as another Sleem began to push its way through.

I held perfectly still, and they rolled past me into the darkness of the hangar beyond. The suit I was wearing over my mostly burned away clothing was helping me to mute my own production of sound, and it confirmed my suspicions about their hunting methods.

The next Sleem orb did the exact same thing. Just rolled past me, heading for the back of the hangar section. As I watched, several more orbs flowed from the inside of the ship, before being followed by cubes.

Once the cubes had finished, the oozes began flopping out onto the concrete.

Each of them carried an object in their bodies. Most of the bigger ones held curled up versions of the land wasps I had seen. Some of the cubes had the remains of people in them, slowly bubbling as their skin and muscle layers dissolved.

Even the little oozes held detritus like cloth, wood, or random globs of sludge.

The placement of the door, near the rear and bottom of the ship, and the manner in which they disembarked honestly had me wanting to turn my head and give the ship some privacy. It looked obscene.

A steady line of Sleem rolled, jiggled, and squirmed past my position, all filled with cargo, and I held perfectly still. Some of them went into the darkness of the hangar behind me, but the majority diverted up the nearby metal stairs and vanished into the nest of hallways above.

I waited to move until they were all completely gone. Only once the red dots had left my map entirely did I dare to even relax my stance and let go of the pillar I had been holding onto. The almost silent scrape of my gloves on concrete still made me grit my teeth in fear.

When nothing landed on me or charged at me from the dark, I breathed out the nerves and started walking slowly toward the stairs leading to the exit. It meant following the Sleem up, but I was hoping they were filing into medical and the residential block instead of just waiting in the escape tunnel hallway to swallow me up.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I turned around and looked behind me at the ship. It hovered, glowing, and heating up the cold room around it.

Condensation was forming on the walls near the ship, and a consistent dripping was audible in the dark.

There were no other sounds. The ship was too close to ignore, and I turned to go back to it.

We were definitely the cause of the Sleem infestation in the area, and I knew for sure this ship was a massive part of that. It looked like it could blink from location to location. Dimensional gating, or maybe just advanced FTL that could move them through solid matter.

No way I could tell. Just a couple of days ago the breadth of my knowledge had been handyman shit like by-the-seat-of-my-pants plumbing, and grouting bathroom tiles.

It didn’t matter. I just needed to find a way to sabotage them, so they couldn’t keep terrorizing the neighbors.

That likely meant they would be terrorizing us a lot more, but I planned to re-equip and come back down here after selling a lot of spiderwebs in a big hurry. There had been items for sale that promised to clear out infestations like ours, and I liked the look of several.

My focus before had been on personal protection and making sure I could escape, but once I had more funding, I was coming back down here with a vengeance.

Everything came down to the morties.

I carefully stepped over to the ship, and when nothing jumped out to kill me, walked beneath it. The ship hovered barely a foot over my head and bobbed slightly when I reached up to grab the lip of the doorway.

It was a firm handhold, and the ship didn’t budge at all as I tried to clamber in silently.

The light hum from the engine pods along the sides of the ship must have kept my struggle hidden, because climbing on board without scraping the shotgun or rattling my bag of crystalline grenades did not happen.

I also definitely grunted in exertion more than once. By the time I was standing up in front of the doorway on board the alien vessel, I was afraid I would get caught, and just started moving. I stepped quickly but carefully through the hallway ahead of me, staring at the surroundings.

The ship I walked through was covered in greenish metal plating, most of which had a thick coating of Sleem slime all over it. The viscous stuff dripped and smeared on me as I walked, but the suit protected me exactly as advertised. The goo just slid down to plop to the floor as I walked.

The hallway I walked through felt like it should be part of a landing ramp, based on the interior. It felt like an extending airport bridge, with sections in the flooring, walls, and ceiling that clearly were meant to extend out of one another.

As I passed into a wider, open space, I noticed the floor was gummed up. Slime had oozed into the ship’s ramp and now when the door opened, it wouldn’t extend. Several other areas nearby were also gummed over, with old Sleem ooze.

The ship had no furniture whatsoever, and an almost completely open floor plan. The interior was mostly hollowed out, with large open spaces covered in old gummy slime. They must have packed into this ship and made raiding runs, like Vikings made of slime.

A door ahead of me in a straight line from the exit was coated in slime like the rest, but all of it was fresh. It looked like it had a light on the side of the round portal, which I walked carefully over to and peered closer at. It was free of slime, and when I reached my hand slowly toward it, it chimed and the door hissed open at my side.

Revealing a cockpit, with three Sleem Orbs still inside.

Two were the usual coloration, yellowish green and blue. But the orb in the center was bigger, and bright orange.

Two of them extended tendrils and began making excited burbles and squealing fart sounds, but the big orange one simply lunged for me. I had been nervously clutching my shotgun since boarding the ship, so I swiveled toward it, and hip-fired a shell.

A beam of vibrant red light shot out of my Mossburg, along with a spray of molten slag. I’m enough of a gun guy to have realized my mistake in that moment, but it was hard to focus on my ruined barrel threading with three Sleem orbs nearly in melee range.

The big one I had shot at the front reacted appropriately. The beam of light had lasted just over a full second, as they advertised they would, and it had scorched a hole directly through the monster, burning the console behind it.

The first Sleem stopped, as the hole burned through it shrank and crisped, with embers still burning. It vibrated and emitted a terrible squeal, and the other two charged, rolling directly at me.

I racked the slide and stepped back, turning to fire at the orb on my right.

It stopped and began screaming too, but before I could rack my slide again, the orb on my left surged forward and engulfed me.

My first instinct was to shout, but I held my breath as the orb rolled over me. I held onto my shotgun and was gripped by an inappropriate but sad thought.

The poor thing was probably done for after tonight.

First, I’d soaked it in acid three times, then I’d scorched its threading out with a laser. The strap finally gave up and snapped, and the orb flexed part of its body to yank the weapon from my grasp.

My suit worked exactly as advertised. No pain, no acid at all.

I had felt a little like an infectious disease lab worker before, but as soon as the Sleem engulfed me, the suit collapsed against my body. I tried to move my arm down to my new falchion, which had come with a Sleem acid protection guarantee, but the orb was too strong by far.

It held my arm in place, while probing my suit for weaknesses. I directed my helmet to activate the suit’s built-in shield, and a sudden surge of electricity erupted from all around me.

The orb vomited me out and the other one immediately rolled on top of me before I could get up. My body was pressed violently down to the deck, and I felt the Sleem lift my head, and then slam it down.

I shouted for my helmet to activate the suit’s shield again but was informed that it was charging and would be ready in two minutes. The Sleem lifted my head with a sucking noise. It dragged my head back further and further, while pressing down on my legs and I quickly realized it meant to snap my spine.

My muscles clenched as I fought it, and I realize now that if I hadn’t already injured it so badly with my laser shotgun blast, this orb would have snapped me like a twig. I managed to resist and force my body back into position.

It responded by slamming my head down and trying to bend me back up again. I fought it again, and the helmet did its job remarkably well. I barely felt the impact. The Sleem orb seemed to notice, because the next part of my body that moved involuntarily was my hips.

My butt and groin lifted into the air, putting me into an awkward and comical position in the giant gelatin monster. Then it slammed my hips against the hard metal floor of the deck.

That hurt.

Despite the soft padding of the suit, it felt like I was trapped between the crushing vice of a garbage compactor. When it began lifting my hips for another blow, I started to thrash. It pressed against my legs and back, but I noticed its grip on my arms loosen, and made a hurried grab for my falchion.

Just before my fingers closed around the handle, the Sleem squeezed down around my hand and stopped the movement. I strained harder and pressed all my strength into the movement, and as soon as my fingers wrapped around the handle, I squeezed the ignition button, which released it from the docking port on my thigh.

The Sleem orb screamed in pain and boiled all around me as the heat from the plasma scorched my leg. I hauled the falchion away from my body and was pleased to discover that it moved freely through the gel surrounding me.

The orb tried to lift its body off of my own, but I rose from the ground with it, and kept the falchion burning and boiling it away. Thick black smoke erupted from the orb and began to pool at the top of the flight deck.

I roared in righteous anger as I reared back and slashed through the orb with my weapon, cutting a giant, burning tear into the dying Sleem. Its sounds stopped and the orb’s shape slumped, pouring boiled gelatin, and crusty burnt goo from its wounds. It remained mostly round but slumped enough to change its shape to that of a rotten plum.

The other two orbs in the cockpit with me immediately began jiggling and making high pitched squeals and farts. Then something I didn’t expect happened. The wounded, orange orb lunged at the smaller orb.

Both orbs fought in front of me for a few seconds, and I stared in confusion. The healthy orb quickly overwhelmed its injured companion and suddenly both of them were rolling toward me.

I raised my plasma falchion, and the wounded orange orb rolled over the top of me with a clear scream-fart of terror.

I went down, back to the floor, as its gelatinous bulk flattened me. The falchion immediately tore a new, horrible wound in the Sleem orb, and its scream rose to teakettle levels.

I waved the flaming blade around, burning and melting the orb as it tried desperately to move its body off from me. It was held down by the passage of the remaining orb, as that one fled the battle through the cockpit doorway I had blocked.

The dying orb on top of me finally managed to shift its weight away and I crawled out from underneath it. As it died, something clanked to the floor between us from its body. A MortBlock, just like the one Mr. Sada had been playing with.

I ignored it and focused on the fight I was in. My helmet notified me that my falchion was down thirty percent of its charge already, so I quickly sheathed it in its docking port before I even stood.

My shotgun was beneath a puddle of melted acidic gelatin, bubbling gently. I hauled the weapon out and racked it with a mushy clack, before pointing it at the Sleem fleeing behind me, while still sitting in slime.

I squeezed the trigger and swept the gun intentionally this time. The beam started in the middle of the fleeing Sleem orb, and cut through it entirely, scorching part of the exit ramp it had shoved its bulk into.

The Sleem released a bubbling scream, and kept going, heaving itself out to flop onto the concrete behind the ship. It was still making the tea kettle whistle when I arrived behind it and shot it with another blast of weaponized light and radiation.

As I swung the weapon to the side, the high-pitched whistle it had been making stopped, and the orb fell into two separate piles of glop. I glanced back at the smoking console behind me in the cockpit and shrugged.

Good enough to keep them here, I hoped.

Then I returned to look at the MortBlock the orange orb had left behind.

When I picked up the little cube, I noticed all the cheap paint that provided the BuyMort emblem was eaten away. This MortBlock was just a small box. As I lifted it, my personal account popped up and BuyMort had an important message for me.

“This MortBlock no longer has an owner! It covers the entire underground area and ends at Anthony Sada’s MortBlock. Would you like to claim ownership of this MortBlock?”

Chapter 44

Oh right. BuyMort accepted conquest as a legitimate means of property transfer. The implications were disturbing, especially how it told me the neighboring Block holder’s name.

The system didn’t come right out and tell you to go kill your rivals. And it didn’t tell you it was rewarding you for doing so either. It just pushed you in certain ways.

BuyMort. Wow.

I realized there was no point in ignoring this shopportunity, and accepted ownership of the MortBlock, tucking it into my grenade bag.

I secured all of my gear as best I could before I jumped down onto the dead Sleem. Its body was firm when it wasn’t trying to swallow me, and I bounced against it before landing on the concrete floor with a rattle.

The shotgun was still functional, but the slime all over it was still burning away at its parts, so I couldn’t tell for how long.

Now that I wasn’t getting hurt, my suit wasn’t spraying everything down with acid neutralizer, and my new grenade bag was starting to rot away too. I should have checked for something with acid resistance.

The hangar was silent, except for the gentle humming of the anti-gravity pods keeping the ship hovering in the air. Then I heard a low rumble in the ground again and shook my head.

I started loading shotgun shells. Thankfully, those seemed to resist the caustic slime better than most of my other gear, and they were all still intact. I loaded a handful of the explosive shells and turned to look for my first victim.

I still had two laser shells in the magazine, so the first Sleem cube to show itself got sliced in half. The rest of them seemed to stop and take in what had happened to their cohort, as its top half slid noisily to the floor.

Without giving them time to react, I turned and sliced a swath through the gathering horde in the hangar. The next shell I racked into the chamber was a MIRV shell.

There was no shortage of targets, as Sleem poured into the chamber from every direction. I could hear them flopping from the walkway behind me, so I turned and fired a shell.

The rifling in my shotgun barrel had been melted and blasted away, but it still acted as a functional smooth bore, and the shell hurtled through the air before separating directly in front of the growing crowd of Sleem.

Four of them absorbed the explosive fragments, and I could see the lights inside of them clearly as the bombs blew. Their slime erupted violently, spattering across the massive hangar, and injuring several Sleem alongside those exploding.

I didn’t bother giving them time to recover, I just went through the rest of the shells in my magazine. Explosions buffeted the Sleem, tearing through their lines and keeping them back and afraid. Dozens of them died in my barrage, but as soon as I started reloading, they all surged forward as one.

The Mossburg hit the floor and I grabbed one of my crystalline grenades. The clockwork pin ticked as I wound it, and the color of the glass changed faintly when it was armed. I tossed it underhand at the nearest cube, while it charged forward to envelop me.

As I watched the resulting destruction and chaos from the grenade, I reminded myself to leave a five star review on the product.

This thing was a life-saver and more people needed to know about it.

The first cube died almost instantly. As the grenade entered its body, it crushed and the liquid aggressively coursed through the Sleem. It started one of their death screams, the teapot whistle, but stopped almost as soon as it started. The core of the cube turned black first, then it spread through the hapless Sleem’s body as it jerked, twitched, and began to swell.

Other Sleem nearby attempted to move, but they were so crowded that none of them made it in time, and dozens of them were splashed by gummy black liquid as the cube violently erupted.

The process played out again, in a dozen places, as oozes and cubes all died too fast to move away from their friends. The oozes began popping first, splashing more and more of the Sleem nearby with deadly liquid.

I turned to see them splitting at the sides of the current cluster-fuck in their ranks. More and more of the Sleem not in the immediate splash zone began moving rapidly away from their brethren while those at the nearest front of it surged forward.

A clear separation began, and then the Sleem stopped dying, as none of them were near enough to get splashed.

They retreated beyond my range to throw the grenades, and I grabbed my shotgun. No reason not to use the opportunity to reload. I was loading more laser slugs to deal with the rest of them when my plan came to a crashing halt.

A strange formation began to form in front of me, as the vast majority of the Sleem began to retreat. A single orb, and about a dozen cubes all formed up in a loose semi-circle beyond the ship.

The orb dropped something to the floor with a clatter. It was metallic and shiny, but I never got to see what it was, as a dimensional pod ripped into place and began warping it away. The surrounding cubes and the orb all shot little flecks of slime at the pod, and they struck it from a dozen different angles at the same time.

As the dimensional cube sizzled and danced, it warped in the biggest BuyMort bug I had seen yet. A towering monster of a mantis-like creature appeared from the pod’s rainbow beam and started immediately slashing at the cubes surrounding it.

The thing was a beast, like the end game boss of a video game.

It was endowed with two massive front limbs that ended in folding scythes, but something about the scythes caught my attention.

They foamed.

A line of dripping foam oozed from the creature’s arms, and anytime it retracted the scythe blades back into its sides after a strike, a fresh coating of the foam was applied to them.

Where it struck the first cube, it punched through the Sleem into the concrete beneath, and then turned to deal with its next target.

The orb squalled as it was cut through, and then began vibrating and dying. The foam turned their bodies to liquid, and they poured vital fluid from each gigantic wound.

The mantis creature itself was taller than anything else in the room, including the Sleem’s ship. It sat on what looked like a thousand smaller legs extending from a tail that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a lobster and lashed out with its two scythe arms.

I immediately began to think of it as ‘the Lobtis.”

The chitin across its body was visibly hardened and excessively shiny. It flashed and glinted even in the low light environment of the buried hangar, with only the glow of the sabotaged alien spaceship to provide illumination. Thick overlapping plates protected its limbs and body from any Sleem acid.

Probably protected it from myself as well.

The hangar about me began emptying of Sleem. The little bastards were trying to squeeze out via every nook and cranny, trying to leave me alone with the mantis monster.

I resisted the impulse to wave, using the time to snatch my shotgun off the ground before running toward the staircase out.

The Lobtis shot its attention to me, reacting the instant I exited the underside of the spacecraft, lashing out faster than I could sense and lopping both of my legs off just below the knee. I was lifted violently into the air and thrown back under the ship, a juicy arc of red blood arcing and trailing after.

Thrashing from the attack, I struggled and splashed out of the Sleem puddle I had landed in.

Painkiller entered my system, and the Lobtis suddenly got significantly shinier and more festive.

It switched focus to the fleeing Sleem, and as I watched it, it vomited a gush of foam down onto the hapless cube.

I almost felt bad as the cube began to teapot-whistle-scream while the top of it gushed to the floor with a splash. The whistle bubbled as the rest of the cube melted, and only stopped around the point its body had melted halfway into a puddle.

The starfish cartoon was in my peripheral vision again, and when I looked over, it scolded me for the damage I had caused. It pointed to my legs, where the Lobtis’ foam was still actively dissolving the remainder of my lower limbs.

My legs hadn’t been completely chopped off, as the metal from the suit itself had held up. That was good, since I needed to avoid using the charge as much as possible.

But the feet and lower portion of my legs had been cut through cleanly, and the Lobtis’ digestive acid, mixed with the residual Sleem juice everywhere, was rapidly eating away at what was left of both ends.

A tendril was actively combatting the nasty stuff on each leg, but it foamed and dripped for a long moment before it finally stopped turning my body into liquid. To be fair, my flesh, blood, and bones became liquid from its digestive fluids far slower than the Sleem did, but I assumed that’s just because I wasn’t its intended target.

I had just been dangerous enough to the Sleem for them to suicide bomb me with its summon. As my suit got to work on my replacement legs, I grabbed my shotgun and fired the first of two laser slugs I had managed to load in it.

My aim was good, and I swept the beam across the Lobtis’ lower body. The chitin glowed and sparked, blackening as my beam assaulted the armor.

But the monster didn’t fall. It just stopped chasing the Sleem, turned to look back at me, and then charged.

In an instant of panic, I racked the gun and fired the next laser slug at it, feeling the heat in my now glowing barrel through the slide.

This time I focused on hitting it in the face, and my beam wavered and shook across its chest, neck, and head.

All of the areas scorched wherever the beam danced, and the mantis roared, covering its face with both claws.

The sound trumpeted in the underground hangar, and while my helmet muted it to protect me, I could see the concrete floor vibrate with its force and power.

My shotgun empty, I hurriedly grabbed at a MIRV shell. My hands fumbled with the receiver port as the monster charged toward me, and the instant it seated, I rammed the slide back into place and fired at the charging monster.

It opened its arms to slice me, and the MIRV shell separated just inside them, peppering the beast with miniature explosives that detonated and cut off both the roar and the charge.

My starfish suit completed the repairs to my lower limbs with a cheerful sign off, and I jumped to my feet.

The mantis monster roared again and swiped at me, missing completely of its own accord. I was nowhere near fast enough to dodge this thing. Its limbs moved so fast that the air buffeted me when it missed.

It slashed one of the engine pods on the nearby ship, and the resulting explosion knocked it back, and sent me skittering and splashing across the floor into the staircase.

With one of its four pods crippled and partially destroyed, the rear end of the ship groaned and sunk to the ground in that corner. It still hovered, just not on that side.

The thin metal limb of staircase I struck buckled and snapped off, and I slammed into both it, and the wall behind it. Thankfully, my helmet protected me from the worst of the blow, and I ended up sliding in the Sleem muck before I hit the wall, so the impact wasn’t enough to break anything.

It just knocked the wind out of me.

My cartoon starfish appeared at my side again and frowned at my feet. When I croaked a gasp of air into my lungs, it mimicked the sound before pointing at my gut and miming a trigger pull.

A mild electrical shock struck me in the gut, and I could suddenly breathe again.

Finding a random cure for having the wind knocked out of me saved my life, because I saw the mantis lobster coming and managed to move in time to avoid the worst of its next attack.

The thing slashed at the wall where my head had been a moment earlier and I sprinted on burning legs through the slime.

It had been partially blinded by my MIRV shotgun shell. I could see that one of its large, multifaceted eyes had popped, and was bleeding bright yellow ichor into the Sleem juice all around us.

Most of the original cabal of Sleem who had summoned this thing appeared to have escaped it, but I took grim satisfaction in the fact that the orb had gotten killed. I hated those Sleem in particular.

Keeping myself in the monster’s blind spot was more difficult than I had hoped, as it was able to move its head in almost a complete circle. Its depth perception was messed up by the loss of half its visual organs, and I managed to move in unpredictable enough patterns that it continued to miss me with its scything claws as I scrambled back to the crippled ship for cover.

Once beneath the listing ship, I ducked in the lowest corner and reloaded my poor Mossberg Shockwave, realizing as I cleared caustic slime from its loading port that this was possibly the weapon’s last outing.

Ignoring the burn in my feet wasn’t easy, but I had practice and painkillers. If I got out of this dungeon, I was definitely planning on visiting Phyllis’ stash before bed.

Hate to imagine the dream purchase from this fiasco.

The Lobtis claw that tried to scrape me out from my hiding spot came closer than I was comfortable with, but also moved far too fast for me to do anything but jump out of my skin from its passage. A sharp tearing sound in the air was all I heard, and sparks from the concrete mixed with flying Sleem residue to tell me what had happened.

I racked the shotgun, shook the remaining slime from it, and prayed to whatever pasta entity might be listening that it would still fire as I started running for the far side of the ship’s underbelly.

My new friend reacted at once, scuttling alongside the vessel on its hundreds of limbs to keep pace with me. I stared at those legs for a second before I raised my weapon and fired a MIRV shell at them.

The bastard had taken me out at the legs, I felt like returning the favor.

The round separated before impact and a dozen pinpoints of light vanished into the lower limbs of the Lobtis before erupting in a cascade of muted explosions.

It roared and slumped forward as several of its lower limbs stopped working and more yellow ichor flooded from its underside onto the gummy floor. Foam spattered the walls and pillars around it, hissing where it struck, as the Lobtis suddenly clamped down onto the floor.

Its entire lower body dropped, and its legs were suddenly covered by its tail’s obvious thick armored plating. I gave it another MIRV shell just to be sure, but the explosions just scorched the chitin plating. The Lobtis responded immediately.

Both scythes slammed down on me from above, punching through my body and nailing me to the concrete floor beneath. One scythe tip was lodged in my belly, just above my hips.

The other was rammed through my chest, directly beside the starfish suit.

I lost the shotgun again as I slammed to the floor, the weapon splattered into the Sleem juice nearby. The Lobtis loomed over the top of me, a festive elder god ordaining my death.

Beside me, my cartoon starfish appeared dancing its little dance.

“You’ll need to break something user, I won’t have enough charge to fix this mess!”

It vanished when the Lobtis vomited foam on top of me in a rush. The volume of digestive fluids it retched forth was impressive. It felt like I got hit from above with an entire swimming pool of the stuff.

Fortunately my suit protected me from its acid too.

Except where my body wasn’t covered by it, or anyplace it had been violently torn open, that was.

My chest and stomach began to bubble, and the suit in those areas melted away from the claws frighteningly quickly, leaving behind only the top layer.

My own red blood, the Lobtis’ grey digestive foam, and the faded blue-green of my suit’s material quickly formed a slurry on my body, and I grit my teeth against the pain.

My starfish suit may not have had the charge to fix me up after all the work it had done that night, but it managed to keep me pumped full of those lovely painkillers. The Lobtis finished vomiting with a gurgle and cocked its head to peer at me. Just in time to see my plasma falchion light up at my side, but not in time to realize what it meant.

I swept the burning blade up and through the claw tip in my chest. It burned through cleanly, and the Lobtis screamed in pain as it retracted both claws and moved to retreat. Its body dragged by me on the ground as it went, and I swiped again, cutting a swath through its tail chitin and several lower legs.

Yellow ichor burned and colored the smoke from my falchion as I hauled myself up off the concrete. I had three feet of Lobtis claw sticking through my chest as I staggered toward the monster, but it was horribly wounded now too, and couldn’t move fast enough to escape me.

My falchion roared in the air again and I took more lower limbs. It screamed and slashed at me with its intact claw but hit the falchion's blade instead of me and took off part of its own limb in the attack.

The burnt scythe tip splashed to the gore beside me, and I looked up at the monster, grimacing. It pushed at the slick concrete, now a swampy mix of ichor, melted Sleem, and human blood over uncaring concrete.

I grit my teeth and stalked forward to kill the monster in front of me. Three more slashes with the falchion brought it low enough for me to inflict a mortal wound by slashing through part of its thorax and covering myself in a flood of yellow goo before I collapsed next to the giant, dead bug.

Part of its deadly natural weaponry was still embedded in my chest, as my starfish suit busily did what it could to fix my lower abdomen.

There had been enough charge left in it to neutralize the digestive juices of the Lobtis, but not enough to replace the organs it had shredded with its claw.

My falchion guttered and went out, and I had enough wherewithal to replace it in its docking port before I coughed violently and splattered blood all over the inside of my helmet. A small arm swept across the screen and cleaned it off.

That painkiller was good stuff. I barely even felt the wrenching agony of the scythe blade in my chest as it severed a rib entirely and further deflated my lung.

My starfish suit was dead. No more charge. It wasn’t even dancing at me with hallucinated Dutch cartoons.

I still had the presence of mind to break something, but it took me a minute to figure out what.

My first attempt was the concrete. I punched once at the slime covered ground, but my blow was weak and ineffectual.

It crossed my mind that the concrete should really be crumbling with this much acidic slime all over it, but I filed it away to figure out after I figured out how to not die. I had always been decent at setting and adhering to priorities.

The next victim was the shotgun, to my shame. I felt like a cowboy trying to put down his horse, but it turned out the metal and composite may have been damaged by the slime, but it was nowhere near weak enough for me to affect with my fist.

Thankfully, a Mossburg Shockwave is not sapient. Or they would have gotten BuyMort, apparently.

I shook my head, trying to clear the encroaching darkness and bizarre thoughts of sentient weapons running a society. My hand shot out to steady me as I started to fall, and I crushed part of the Lobtis’ chitin with my palm. It crumbled like dry leaves, crackling in the still air and falling to the floor in dust and small fragments.

My suit immediately sprang to life, and the cartoon appeared in my hazy vision. A small shock hit my heart and I jolted back awake.

“That’s better user! Look at all this damage. And barely any charge. Let’s get you on your feet, so you can break some things!”

I groaned and tried to raise my head as fresh blood pumped into my veins from the starfish suit. A tendril rose in front of me, gripped the broken end of the Lobtis claw in my chest, and heaved it out in a sudden gush of blood.

I screamed, my bone snapping apart and a healthy section of my lung slicing away like a ham. More painkiller flooded my body, and my screams subsided, the world spinning a gleeful ballet before me.

Lasers welded my chest, and another jolt shocked me back to awareness.

I gripped at the chitin beside me and heaved myself to my feet as the suit shoved a fresh lung in place of my damaged one and vomited the damaged one out onto the inside of my anti-Sleem suit in a thick slurry.

Whatever, this thing was trashed anyway.

As was I, I noticed at that moment. I needed a bath, and my stomach was still hanging open. All the organs stayed in place, but I had a gaping tear in my skin and muscle tissue.

The fatty bag that holds all my organs inside had been repaired before the suit ran out of charge. I appreciated its ability to prioritize, but any shifting or movement in my midsection made me almost fall again, so I focused on my task.

I needed more charge.

The suit was already winding down, having ensured I wouldn’t drown in synthetic blood and closed the worst of the arterial damage. It was disconcerting to be able to see inside my own chest cavity, but the entry wound was wide, with severed bone apparent. The arm on that side also didn’t work, and I was starting to lose feeling in my legs.

The Lobtis was hard, all over, except where my laser shotgun blast had hit it. The armor had withered and blackened in those areas, and I immediately saw where my hand had fallen through.

I reached back and punched the armored chitin plate near the burn mark and my cartoon appeared once more.

“Great job user! Keep going!”

I sought the next area as more mechanical tendrils rose from the suit to work on me. Bone bridges were grafted and lasered in place, flesh-foam filled in the gaps, and then another round of lasering to get me looking the way I did before.

As I found and punched the blacked spots in the Lobtis’ armor, I wondered how much of me was left with original birth parts, and how much was this flesh paste and synthetic organs they kept filling me with.

Of course, I immediately realized that my genitals had come through unscathed so far and felt better.

Then I felt stupid for feeling better and realized how stoned on the suit’s painkiller I was.

To be fair, I’d had rather a lot of it that night, so when the Sleem sneaked back up on me while I was in my stupor, I didn’t beat myself up over it. I just shrieked in abject terror as an orb rolled toward me out of the darkness, then grabbed feebly at my shotgun. The weapon slid further away, and I looked up to see the orb hurtling toward me, when suddenly a dog barked.

The orb splashed violently, disappearing in a fine mist of acid. I flopped into the slime and looked over my shoulder as my starfish suit combatted the acid trying to dissolve my brand-new legs.

Doofus was there, right there at the top of the stairs behind me. So were Molls, Rayna and Tollya, and every single one of the BlueCleave hobbs.

One of the new people staying in the camp was there too, nervously clutching a shotgun and wearing a belt filled with taser slugs.

Doofus caught my attention immediately, because the dog was decked out in an anti-Sleem suit just like the one that hung in rags on me. His was equipped with a small but ferocious directed-sonic weapon on the front of the snout.

I watched in awe, seeing him bark another Sleem into a splatter of its component parts. The big malamute started racing down the stairs toward me, and Molls slid up onto the metal platform he had just left.

She was beautiful. Her armor was pure white, trimmed with gold filigree. It covered most of her body, leaving only her face open. It was clearly shielded though, a blue forcefield distorting her image. I saw a similar blue shield move ahead of her lower body, burning Sleem remnants and allowing her a safe path to slither.

In her hands rested a long bow with what looked like a huge counterweight. As she drew the string back, I saw it for what it was as concentrated light formed in the tube.

Molls loosed at an encroaching cube, and it sizzled and squealed as it was burned. The cube turned to run, and she hit it with another laser blast, aggressively ending its life.

Rayna and the hobbs set up a rear defense. I could see them moving back to the central room and realized this was an extraction. My body stung from the acid, and I had a moment of clarity about getting out of here.

It had been my choice to stay and sabotage the Sleem, instead of sneaking or running out when I had the chance, and the thought of anyone else getting hurt for that decision tore at me, even though the cloud of painkiller.

Doofus was at my side, barking at any Sleem who got too close and splattering them into oblivion. He was good at longer range too, but he liked to growl and warn them before he killed them, like the ethically sound boy he was.

They vibrated with what I assumed was fear when he growled, but they kept coming anyway. I had to get my people out of here before they summoned another Lobtis, or something worse.

I ran for the stairs with Doofus at my side. I turned and snarled as I ran.

“BuyMort, I’d like to sell all of this, except the ship.”

Molls covered us with blasts of weaponized light from her bow, and we fled the darkness of the underground base. Rayna and Tollya covered our retreat and fell back, using the plasma rifles from earlier. I made a mental note to replenish the ammunition for them, no matter the expense.

Those rifles were effective beyond belief. They punched giant, burning holes in the Sleem, and kept going, burning through as many Sleem as were between the rifle and the wall.

Rayna was smart and positioned her people to use them to great effect, holding off full charges from both medical, and the residential block. I shuddered as we passed that hallway, boiling with Sleem as it was, and kept going, following Doofus as he led me out.

We all filed out of the underground passage into Mr. Sada’s basement, and Doofus turned back to growl at the portal until Rayna and a still burnt Ordo heaved the hatch back into place.

I dropped my slime covered shotgun, collapsed on the ground, and hugged Doofus to my chest.  Our suits crinkled against each other as he leaned into the affection.

“Good boy, Doof. Good, handsome, smart boy.”

Epilogue

It wasn’t until Doofus stopped nuzzling my helmet and put his paw on my leg that I stopped doting on him and turned to look around. Everyone but Mr. Sada and Phyllis were there, staring at me from a loose semi-circle.

“Oh. Thank you. Everyone, thank you so much. You came for me when it was hopeless to come for me, and I will remember that.”

I spoke from my position on the floor, with a giant malamute in a suit across my lap. As I looked at all of them, I suddenly yawned. Exhaustion came over me in a wave and my eyelids suddenly felt heavy.

Rayna nodded at me with her chin. “You hurt?”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I started laughing. I laughed and shook my head instead of answering Rayna’s question.

My clothing hung in tatters, but thankfully enough anti-Sleem suit remained to give me a semblance of pants. I raised my hands and pulled the shredded top half of the suit off, dropping it with a wet plop to the concrete. Then I took my helmet off and set it carefully on a shelf nearby where it wouldn’t get Sleem juice on it.

Rayna stared at me.

“Use BuyMort. Clean Sleem juice off, all at once,” she grunted. “Just tell BuyMort.”

I stopped and blinked at her before doing what she said. “BuyMort, I’d like to sell all the Sleem . . . juice in this room.”

We stood and waited, as I yawned into the back of my hand. They stood in a semi-circle around the puddle Doofus and I had left until a pod floated down the stairs and warped it all away.

Every drop of it was cleaned from our suits, the floor, and anything we had touched. It even got all of the residual acid out of my shotgun.

Molls scowled at Rayna, and then at me, but her scales didn’t change color. She had been at a steady yellow while we were down below, but as soon as we made it out of the basement she paled to her regular scale color. She slid forward and looked at me.

“Tyson, are you alright?”

I shook my head slowly.

“I’m just tired. Exhausted, really.”

I looked her up and down, taking in the extravagant armor and weaponry again with a sigh. More things to understand. More things to make me tired. More BuyMort.

She blinked and flicked her tongue out, before flushing pink briefly.

“I’m glad you’re safe. We were worried.”

She turned to leave, moving toward the stairs.

“Molls wait, please. I’m sorry.”

I stepped up to her as she pulled her helmet off and cradled it. The helmet collapsed its hood covers internally. I grabbed her free hand and clasped it in both of mine.

“Thank you.” I looked her in the eyes. “I mean that, thank you so much. You risked your life to help me, and I won’t ever forget that. I promise I will talk to you about what happened down there soon. As my spiritual advisor and as my friend.”

Her scales flushed a deep pink, but quickly swirled into a healthy purple as a soft smile grew on her face.

“I understand. You should rest.”

She gently reclaimed her hand from me and adjusted the helmet under her arm. I was surprised when she turned back and squeezed my hand one more time before slithering up the stairs.

“Come and see me tomorrow, please. I’m told the Sleem can be traumatic to encounter up close.”

Rayna snorted, and Molls’ head whipped around as her scales flushed red. She took a quick breath and forced a polite, cold smile at the hobb woman, while the color drained from her scales. Then she vanished up the stairs and into the night.

I stared up after her. This underground bunker was a start. But so much more was needed before I could truly consider us safe.

I’d have to have a big, long talk with Mr. Sada. Things were about to get a lot more complicated.

AUTHORS’ NOTE

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Coming soon in the BuyMort Universe

BuyMort Book 2

I sighed and slumped my shoulders, before pulling off the scraps of my anti-Sleem suit and tossing them on the floor as I walked to the downstairs bathroom to take a shower in the same bathtub I had found Mr. Sada’s dead wife’s upper half stored in. Thankfully, there was no stain. BuyMort had been thorough when it took her. It warped away every cell.

Rayna and Tollya followed me. Tollya took up a position outside where she could hear and guard, but not be part of the conversation. Rayna followed me directly into the bathroom, even when I pulled the bottom half of my shredded anti-Sleem suit off and dropped it in the wastebasket. My loaner jeans from Phyllis’ dead husband had been melted away, and I stepped into the shower in nothing but my starfish. It covered the important parts, and I just didn’t care if Rayna saw my ass or not.

Apparently, neither did she, because she leaned on the small counter in the bathroom as the water began to steam against my shoulders and neck. “What happen?”

I groaned and leaned my forehead against the wall. “I don’t fucking know, Rayna. I got trapped with a buncha Sleem. Can it wait?”

She shook her head. “No. Must know how many. What kind of threat.”

My eyes widened and I remembered her job. The job I had given her.

“Right. Yeah, sorry. There’s a lot of them, down there. A very large quantity.” I rolled my face on the wall to look at her. “You know that infestation on the news?”

Rayna scowled and shook her head. Tollya leaned in from the doorway. “I do.” She shook her head and curled a lip. “Sada. Always watching TV.” Then she looked to Rayna, and her demeanor changed back to serious. “Big infestation nearby. Category three at least.”

I pushed off the wall and let the water blast my scalp. “Yeah. That’s us. We have that hiding beneath our feet. Category three sounds serious enough to describe what I saw.”

Rayna’s scowl deepened. “Categories scale to breeding capability. How many orbs you see?”

“Dozens,” I answered immediately.

Rayna drew her breath in with a hiss. “You kill any?”

I ran my hands through my hair, scratching at my scalp in the hot water. “Loads. Even got a big orange one when I sabotaged their ship. Gave me the MortBlock for their turf.”

Tollya hooted a laugh and raised a fist to her mouth. “You bag orange orb?” The hobb stood tall in the doorway and thumped her chest with a fist, before raising her chin at me. “Respect. Sleem-slayer.”

Another chuckle pushed its way out of me and I leaned back against the wall in the shower.

“Yeah, I’ll take that. I killed a lot of them. Didn’t get that wall of slime thing though. That one bothers me.” I scowled as a thought crossed my mind. “But there’s a lot of them left down there too. We’re going back in tomorrow, with much better equipment, and we’re clearing them out for good.”

Rayna nodded. “Clearing them out highest priority?” She turned to Tollya and shrugged as the other woman grumbled something to her. “Too dangerous. Shame, good morties if possible.”

That cut through the distraction of the shower, and I turned to blink at Rayna. “What’s good morties?”

“Tollya said if there’s that many we should try to contain them. Make Sleem farm.” She shrugged.

I stood in the shower for a few seconds, letting the hot water run across my face while I thought about what she had just said. “Yeah alright, I’ll bite. What the hell is a Sleem farm?”

Rayna shook her head and crossed her arms. “Dangerous.” She glared at Tollya, who shrugged and gave her a small smile in return. “If you can contain Sleem, and feed them, they breed. Can’t help it. Can kill and sell them then. Regular income, always buyers for Sleem carcasses.”

“But dangerous because they’re Sleem, and they’ll do what Sleem do, I get it.” I shook my head and cut off the water. As I dripped for a few minutes, I thought about the possibility. That entire underground base was down there, full of Sleem we could use if we had the right resources.

“Rayna.” I spoke as I stepped out of the tub and wrapped a towel around my waist.

“Yes?” She didn’t move from her position at the counter.

“I got a good map of almost the entire complex. What would you need to do this right? With no danger.” I blinked up at her as I toweled off.

Rayna took a deep breath. “Boss, that . . .” Then her slate, pebbled eyebrows rose and she looked at Tollya outside. “More hobbs, first. Equipment. Expensive equipment. To clear them is expensive. To contain them is more expensive. To get farm up and running is massive expense. Morties. Need plenty of morties. Millions.”

I nodded and scrubbed at my hair with the towel. “Can the spider ranch pay for it, in your experience?”

Tollya laughed, and Rayna puffed out her cheeks at the other woman. “Yes. Eventually, if market holds. Silk and the animals to weave it are stable demands, even on unstable worlds like this. But it’s a risk.”

The towel went back around my waist, and I walked past Tollya. The exhaustion was starting to really make itself known, and I stifled a yawn as I reached for my anti-Sleem boots and helmet. BuyMort had done a great job cleaning my boots, every bit of slime was gone from them. It had been really caked on too. Wonder how much of that lake in the hangar my new MortBlock covered. If Sleem remains were really worth farming, I would be stupid to ignore another natural resource right under my nose.

I stopped on the first step, holding a pair of light green boots and shotgun in one hand and a high tech, mirror surface helmet in the other, with a towel as my only clothing.

“Will you help me do it?” I asked Rayna, point blank. She handed me the partially dissolved grenade bag.

The hobb woman scowled. She looked at me, then glanced back at Tollya. “If we do it right. Hobbs not expendable.”

“hobbs not expendable, damn right! I trust you Rayna.” I tucked the helmet under my arm and started swiping through my affiliate page. After transferring most of the rest of my personal morties to the security department, I swiped it closed and looked back at Rayna. “I just dropped half a million morties in your discretionary fund. That good to protect us through tonight? Maybe get started on tomorrow?”

Rayna swiped her own affiliate page up and blinked at the amount a few times before nodding. “Of course.”

I began trudging up the steps, and saw Doofus come to the top to check. He wagged his naked tail at me, now free of his anti-Sleem suit, and I grinned back up at him. “Hey Doof, good boy. You waited for me.”

Rayna called up after me. “I’d need to bring in more hobbs, more of the BlueCleave tribe.”

I turned at the top of the steps and looked back down at her. “Go for it. We can sustain more, right?”

“That’s the thing.” She crossed her arms. “Coming out of storage for this means giving up space. Can’t make them go back after the job is done. If they come out of storage, they live and work here.”

I nodded, getting the idea. Storage sounded like a fun place.

“I trust your judgement, and we’ll make it work. Bring as many as you think we need and can sustain. We try for containment, but clear ‘em if we have to. I need to sleep, we’ll go back in there tomorrow.” She grunted and turned to speak with Tollya, and their voices faded behind me as I walked for the guest bedroom.

Doofus jingled faintly as he climbed the stairs beside me, and I turned to glance at his collar. He wore a strange device on it that I recognized as the sonic weapon from his suit. Smart dog, going around armed. He got way more than anybody ever gave him credit for.

As we reached the top of the stairs and the open, inviting door to the guest bedroom, Mr. Sada’s voice rang out from the end of the hall. “Tyson! You’re back, good! Can we talk a moment?” He had his employer voice on again.

“Yes, Mr. Sada.” I called down to him. Doofus looked at me and then turned to plod in the guest room. I heard him jump up onto the bed as I trudged down the hall to Mr. Sada’s room. I set down my stuff on the end table in the hall, and swung his doors open fully. Hord was there, sitting in a chair looking out the window. He nodded at me as I entered, then glared at my wardrobe. “Yes, Mr. Sada?” I repeated.

He looked up from his TV finally and took in my towel. “Shit so-.” He stopped, swallowed hard, and started again. “Shit, Tyson. What happened to your clothes?”

“Your secret basement tenants burned it all off when they tried to eat me,” I said, crossing my arms.

He blinked at me a few times. “Right. Hey, you’re welcome though. I paid to fund the whole expedition down there to rescue you.”

“Whole thing? Really? Generous. You paid for Molls’ clearly custom gear, and even for Doof’s suit and weapon?” My disbelief was clear in my voice.

He blinked a few more times, scowling. “Well, no. I got a bunch more ammunition for those hobbs you hang around with so much now.”

“It’s been one day, Mr. Sada. Speaking of which, I really need to get some sleep. You mind if I crash in your guest bed again?” I sounded as exhausted as I felt.

He shook his head. “No, man. Just . . . what happened?”

I sighed, looking up at the ceiling. “Everybody and that question.” When I looked back at him, he was hanging on my words like he usually watched that TV.

“Look, I got separated, trapped, chased, and eventually really badly injured by the slime monsters you let take up shop in the basement. There’s a shit-storm of them, though significantly fewer now.”

He winced. “You killed some of them?”

“Mr. Sada,” I started. “I killed a lot of them. I even killed their leader, cause its MortBlock transferred to me.”

Then my eyebrows raised as I remembered the ship. “Which reminds me, your rent contract was never anything real. Good news though, they do have a ship, and it was in working order. Bad news, I sabotaged it because they’ve been using it to wreak havoc on the nearby area.” I uncrossed my arms as I finished. “We’re going to go handle the rest of them tomorrow, once we get the funding from the spider farm.”

He nodded and his lips went tight. I expected him to complain again, but he just looked uncomfortable for a moment before speaking. “Tyson, why don’t you grab something to wear from my closet? It’s weird talking to you in a towel.”

I blinked and yawned, before shaking my head. “I’m grateful, Mr. Sada. Really, I appreciate that. But I just want to go to sleep. I’ll tell you all about my misadventure down below tomorrow, and happily raid your wardrobe at the same time.”

My former boss blew his cheeks out and shook his head with a shrug. He suddenly couldn’t wait to get rid of me. It made me suspicious, but, at that moment I just couldn’t care.

All I wanted was to sleep.

With a small wave, I turned to leave, and he happily went back to his TV.

Coming Soon!

About the Authors

Damien Hanson

Damien is a writer, a gamer and an educator. He lives in Gimpo-Si, South Korea with his wife and son. He likes to meet up with friends and roll dice whenever the opportunity presents itself and has authored several stories.

Check him out at:

https://www.amazon.com/Damien-Hanson/e/B083FFDRZW/

Joseph Phelps

In competitive or cooperative video games over thousands of logged hours, Joseph has always sought out unconventional gameplay and created his own fun.

He's the kind of gamer that ensures the ESRB cannot provide appropriate ratings for online games. It's this type of unusual and amusing gameplay that he brings to the LitRPG and GameLit genres, with wildly aggressive competitive and unconventional single player dynamics at the core of his storytelling. Join him  and find out for yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Phelps/e/B07WZCJ39T/