When I first awakened to a jolt of electricity in my chest, I tried to gasp for air and was confronted with the vacuum of space.

I summoned the armor of my starfish suit with a mere though, expecting full coverage, but to my surprise only my head was encased. It took me a few seconds of groggy awareness to realize that the rest of my armor was already there, already deployed.

With the helmet in place, my suit began feeding me breathable air from its own storage capacity. It would pluck the odd occasional nitrogen and oxygen atoms from open space, before condensing them into molecules to replenish my supply. But that supply was low, my armor warned, feeding small but insistent alarms into my minimal HUD.

I pulled up my BuyMort menu and tried to order an oxygen grenade. It was just an instinct, after all the times I’d used them in the past, to counter low or no-oxygen environments. BuyMort responded, rustily, flickering before me in faded and glitched lettering.

"Running low on air?" a voice asked, crackling full of static. A hexagonal logo of gold and silver appeared in my view, the lettering within suggesting it was from an affiliate named Edmango Mil. Behind it, a serene space station appeared, its chambers lush with oxygen gardens.

The voice continued, soothing yet sharp, "Don’t let open vacuum hold your breath hostage! Get OxyDrink today!"

The image shifted, a silver squeeze bag appearing to float just within my grasp. I shook my head, and it was instantly replaced by the image of a grenade. This one was hanging static beside the warped figure of a fellow traveler, stranded in space, his face exposed to space. Next to him floated an OxyBoost Grenade, or so the label said.

The ads corked sideways, and the voice was replaced with vivid golden text.

With Edmango Mil’s new OxyBoost Grenade, you're never out of options. Affordably priced, easily accessible, and instant activation for those critical moments.

The stranded astronaut activated the grenade, released it to spin a few feet in front of himself, and a bubble of breathable air enveloped him instantly.

Breathe easy, even in the void. Available now, 5 stars, 45,000 morties

Yes, my mind cried. Yes! Accept. Buy! Get it.

Transaction Failed: Insufficient Morties Available

Beneath the chilling announcement, a smaller text line flickered: Your current balance is below the required amount for this purchase. Immediate action required.

To the side of the text, a flashing icon of a depleted coin purse underscored the urgency.

Given your current lack of credit level or affiliate ownership, the following are a list of suggested actions you may take to complete the transaction:

Earn More Morties

Emergency Credit - ERROR RENEWAL ACTIVATION STILL PROCESSING

Sell Personal Items - ERROR, MORTBLOCKS AND ITEM CLAIMS NOT FOUND

A synthesized voice cut through the tension, calm yet commanding, "Attention: Your balance is too low for this essential purchase. Please consider immediate measures to secure your financial security.”

A screen appeared before me, my user account, and its content registered with a dull shock.

image [https://i.imgur.com/HNreYkw.jpg]

Find and sell unclaimed items for morties! One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Recycle, Regift, Remanufacture!

I scowled in confusion. This was all wrong. My personal account had trillions of morties in it, and personal accounts were secured by BuyMort itself. There was no way to steal my morties, so I floated in space and wondered how my account got emptied.

My mind racing, I opened my BuyMort app menu to access MortMobile. But it, along with a number of other apps, was simply not there. Frantic, I ran a search for it through the store, and found it, though its descriptor was much different from what I remembered.

MortMobile, premium comms for premium people. Experience the joy of spy-free, tap-free on the spot communication with MortMobile. Powerfully enhanced video, audio, scent, and more, all run through the MortMobile network. Sign on and receive all the latest news, entertainment, and informational updates of the multiverse as well!

Just 500,000 morties if you sign up now. This offer ends in 5 minutes.

No morties. No phone service. It had to be a mistake.

“Connect me to Molls please,” I croaked. “Collect, she’ll pay for it.”

Nothing responded to my pleas, and I waited, my dizzy and confused thoughts weaving together in my head.

It took me nearly thirty seconds to realize my predicament. I was floating in empty space, in the completely abandoned Sleem universe, with no morties for gate travel.

Memories rushed back into my head, and I clenched a fist. Omen. My betrayal. The sand star frigate and the transdimensional pulse ion cannon shot.

He had killed me!

And afterwards he must have found some way to empty my account too, in order to strand me if I ever woke up.

“Shit, fairy fire right now!” I yelled, wasting precious oxygen.

My nanite helmet spun up, having long since recharged itself on ambient radiation from the only landmark anywhere nearby, Sleem’s star. It formed over my face and provided me with a comforting magic-themed HUD. Then it sent a pulse across the solar system and picked up the wreckage I had smashed through only a moment before.

The chunk of Church relic ship was hurtling away from me in the opposite direction and gaining speed, falling inward toward the star because of its collision with me. I tried to zoom in my eyes to see it, but my advanced senses were non-functional. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my advanced cognitive functions were down as well, or I would have remembered about the free portals to Storage. But decades of floating around in space with no brain aside from the stem had consequences beyond the migraine I was experiencing at the time.

And I simply couldn’t remember Storage, so I pushed my suit and flew toward the wreckage. As soon as I was in range of the giant chunk of shattered metal I sold it to BuyMort.

Then I floated, waiting and thinking about what had happened while the pod traveled from wherever the BuyMort gate orbited the primary star. After a few minutes, the wreckage in front of me warped away in a flash of rainbow light and I checked my sales page.

Purchase: Spacecraft hull segment. Condition, poor. Rarity, unique. 403,687 morties dispensed.

Four hundred thousand morties was a decent starting place, but in order to preserve my meager pool of morties, I followed the pod back to the gate instead of ordering a personal portal from it.

We flew at a high rate of speed, my suit’s charge dropping fast as I followed the pod. It looked different. The usual black coloration was marred by red and white stripes, and it had a slightly elongated front end, with small fins at the rear.

I scowled in confusion at the custom pod, but it led me to the gate I needed. As soon as it passed through the ring a minute flash of rainbow light indicated its departure, but the ring itself was also different. Dark, where it had once been lit up around the edges.

A message popped up on my BuyMort HUD when I tried to buy a portal home, to the Sol system.

This gate is decommissioned. BuyMort use only. Would you like to recommission this gate for sapient travel?

When I selected yes, it drained my account of morties, and another message popped up.

Gate eleven percent recommissioned. Would you like to continue recommissioning this gate for a single-use sapient travel?

My fogged and still-aching brain twitched at the message. With all my morties gone, I would have to use what was left of my suit’s charge trying to find more things to break and sell. At that rate, I would end up in Storage before I ever got home.

I blinked, shaking my head in a futile attempt to clear the fog. Storage! Portals were free to get there. I mentally kicked myself for wasting the morties on the gate and started pulling up a free portal when the gate suddenly lit up on its own.

Blue light cycled through its many cracks and crevices, shining as it filled the entire ring.

Gate recommissioned for spacecraft and sapient travel, BuyMort informed me, as massive swaths of light began peeking out from beneath the gate’s many metallic folds.

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My suit helped me drift away from the giant metal ring as a massive bolt of sparkling light announced the arrival of a large spacecraft.

It was red and white striped with a black base layer of paint, like the BuyMort pod had been. The ship was considerably larger than a BuyMort pod, however, and bristling with overt weaponry. It held a basic cigar shape but had many bulges and spires rising from its bow and central core. The aft housed a series of engine ports, which lit up with low, blue fusion fires as the ship slowly turned to face me.

I waved.

A beam of light shot out from one of the ship’s conical spires and gripped my body. When I pulled against it, my suit’s charge simply drained. With a grunt of effort, I pushed the suit into a gravity haul, and was sorely disappointed when it failed to engage. Another spire shot a familiar black blob of pulsed ions at me, and my suit went dead once more.

I sighed and gave up, allowing the ship’s gravity beam to drag me through space to one of the bubbled canopies along its underbelly. Metal shielding covering a shuttle bay slid open silently and I was deposited ungently inside the ship’s glowing blue force field.

As soon as I passed through, the gravity beam cut out and I dropped like a stone to the deck. My body hit with a loud, echoing clang, and I groaned in pain. My headache, already annoying, stepped up to mood-altering.

The stomp of booted, armored feet heading my way caused me to raise my head, and to my surprise I saw a squad of hobbs. The armor they wore was familiar, but not exactly as I had remembered it. The same red, white, and black paint design was present, and each hobb wore an oversized helmet that completely covered their faces.

I could only really tell they were hobbs because of the long limbs and thin, wiry bodies.

They pointed weapons at me, so I sat up onto my butt and raised my hands.

“Hey,” I said casually, in perfect hobb. “I’m Tyson. Nice to meet you. What affiliate are you all with?”

A few of the squad looked at each other, but none of them replied. They simply formed up a semi-circle around me, weapons drawn and pointed my way.

From behind the hobbs, a tall woman stalked through the group, wearing high-heeled boots. She approached me and leaned forward, hands on her hips. I didn’t recognize her, but she had long blonde hair and nearly ice-blue eyes.

“Who are you?” she demanded in American English.

“Uhh,” I started, blinking a few times at the bright lights behind her. “My name is Tyson Dawes, nice to meet you.”

Her eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flared as she stood up straight again. “Take him,” she ordered. The hobbs converged on me, with yellow-edged weapons held at the ready. When I squinted to see past my helmet and headache, I could see that they carried linear rifles, to a hobb. Clearly prepared for me.

“Seems like you already know who I am,” I said, as two hobbs lifted me off the floor by my elbows. I didn’t resist. Something about them felt familiar, I had to wonder if they were a part of my affiliate. An associate that I simply wasn’t aware of perhaps.

I walked as my two hobb guards led me through the hangar, toward an oversized exit door. As we walked, I saw a single shuttle in the center of the bay, with wings for atmospheric flight folded up along its sides. Across the back wall were suits of power armor, and more weapon lockers. In one of them I saw my hobbs classic warpick, painted black, red, and white in the same motif as the ship, and the BuyMort pod I had seen earlier.

“Who are you guys?” I asked. “You’re not BlueCleave, are you?”

My only response was an angry glare from my captors, so I stopped asking questions. They seemed a little on-edge, and with my brains as fuzzy as they were I didn’t feel like getting aggressive.

Nothing I had seen so far was beyond my ability to destroy, especially still locked in my armor as I was, but something illusive in my mind made me hesitate and shy away from violence.

The tall woman watched as I was hauled through her ship’s corridors and into a holding cell. Bright beams of energy comprised my cell bars, but the floor felt soft. Almost like a gel. I knelt and pressed at it and was surprised at how gelatinous it really was. It even wobbled.

“If you attempt to activate your breaker gauntlets,” the tall blonde woman said. “You will be hurt.”

I nodded with a frown. “Why am I a prisoner?” I asked. Hobb guards with linear rifles took up positions around my holding cell, surrounding me. One of them held a familiar-looking cannon, its barrel wide and blackened by ion scorching. A transdimensional pulse ion cannon, somehow miniaturized.

“If you attempt escape,” she answered. “You will be killed. Is that in any way unclear?”

I shook my head and sat down cross legged on the squishy floor. “Crystal clear,” I said with a small, polite nod. The woman turned on a heel and left the room, which I felt sure was the ship’s brig.

Their cage was certainly better constructed to hold me than most others I had encountered, but I felt confident that I could tear through the squishy floor with my breaker gauntlets if I needed to. The lack of charge was a problem, but that would only last until I broke something.

If need-be, I could break my own bones to charge the suit. But for the moment, I was content to watch and learn. The longer I was conscious, the more memories started to flood back into my brain matter.

Admiral Omen had betrayed me. Supposedly killed me, though that wasn’t as easy as most tended to think it was. I’d survived. He had shot me with a pulsed ion cannon, though, so my suit had been drained. Unable to rebuild me.

I realized with a sigh that I had no way of knowing how long I had been ‘dead.’

Glancing around, I took in more about the hobbs. They were stiff backed and serious, all either pointing weapons at me or cradling them in an easy, ready position. None of them chatted or leaned against the bulkheads, instead they all stared at me as though waiting for an attack.

After a few minutes of staring at each other, I decided to pull up MortMobile and make a call home. I needed to check on Molls. An immediate error message informed me that the service was actively blocked on board the entire ship. I sighed and looked around.

“Hey. Can you guys tell me about Nu-Earth at all?” I asked the hobb guards. “How long have I been gone?”

None of them responded.

I trailed a finger against the energy bars and drew my hand back, scalded. The guards all tensed and those with cradled weapons raised them. My eyes narrowed and I reached for the bars again, my armored glove still glowing with heat. It wasn’t much, but it charged the suit from its own armor layers and the heat energy interacting.

The hobb guard with the transdimensional pulse ion cannon lifted it and fired through the energy bars directly into my chest. I flopped over backwards and sighed. The bars barely gave me any charge and scalded my hand through the armor anyway.

With another, heavier sigh, I lifted both arms and slammed them down into the soft flooring. It jiggled and wobbled like a water mattress, and I chuckled as my guards raised their weapons again.

“Better talk to me, or I’m probably gonna make you kill me,” I said, glancing on either side of the bars. “Starting to get pretty sick of the silent treatment.”

Finally, a female hobb stepped forward from a console near the back of the room and raised her hands at me. She removed her helmet and long, black hair in tight braids cascaded down around her shoulders.

“Stop, or they will kill you,” she hissed at me.

I stared at her through the holes in my helmet. “Can you at least give me enough charge to retract my armor? I’m starting to have to pee.”

The hobb woman shook her head, then backed off and replaced her helmet quickly as the brigs primary door slid open again. A familiar tall blonde woman stalked in.

“Give him a small PRD,” she barked. “I want to see his face.”

One of the guards hurried over to a cubby in the nearby bulkhead and retrieved a storage crate. He hauled it over in both arms and set it down in front of the energy cage, before popping it open with a hiss.

Inside were five full sized Prince Rupert’s Drops, and three miniature ones. The small ones were barely the size of a tadpole.

“Listen carefully prisoner,” she growled at me. “I am going to provide you with enough charge to retract your armor, and then you will be hit with another pulse ion shot. If you resist or attempt escape in any way, you will be killed immediately. Is that clear?”

I nodded, my armor grating against itself. “Yeah I get you. It’s in my best interest to behave, so behave I shall, tall mean lady. What’s your name, anyway?”

“You may refer to me as Admiral!” she barked back.

The hobb guard carefully approached and tossed the tiny PRD through the bars. I reached over slowly, watching as the many guards hefted their weapons and prepared to follow their captain’s orders, then pinched the tail on the little glass droplet. It shattered, tiny fragments sizzling against the energy bars of my cell as the rest of it scattered across the floor.

A tiny, disk-shaped robot immediately deployed from a slot in the wall nearby and began vacuuming up the glass shards around my cell.

I shook my head and retracted my armor. One of the nearby hobbs gasped beneath his helmet.

The admiral stormed over to berate him. “Get out of my brig, soldier! You’re on sanitation duty for the next twelve shifts! if you don’t like it, you can hop a portal to Storage and get off my ship for good!” she screamed.

“You guys seem tense, why all this fuss over little old me?” I asked, sitting up and crossing my legs.

“Shut up, prisoner!” she barked back.

I stood slowly and stretched out my back.

“My name,” I started, “is Tyson Dawes, the Warlord of BuyMort, and I’m getting more than a little tired of your shit, lady.”

“You are not Tyson Dawes,” she hissed. “And if you were, you would be wise to keep it to yourself around my crew.”

More than one of the nearby hobbs looked shaky. They were glancing between each other while the Captain’s back was turned, and overly stiff when she faced them.

“Captain,” the hobb woman who had spoken to me before started hesitantly. “May I-”

“You may not, corporal! Hold your station and keep your silence until ordered otherwise!” the Admiral shouted. “I will not have insubordination on my ship!”

“Ohh, you just might,” I growled. “I’m getting more than a little tired of this routine. You’d better send these troopers away if you don’t want them to find out anything more about me . . . Phyllis.”

The tall blonde woman jerked her head back to face me and snarled. “I said shut your mouth!” she shouted.

“And you don’t order me around, Phyllis!” I yelled back. “Or have you forgotten that I run this entire affiliate?!”

Phyllis glared at me. I gauged her age to be roughly mid-twenties. She was blonde, gorgeous, and angry as hell.

“Guards!” she yelled. “Get out!”

The hobbs began filing out, and I decided to try my luck.

“Any hobbs loyal to BlueCleave, stand your ground,” I growled.

The hobb woman at the console hesitated on her way to the door, and Phyllis pointed an arm at her. A mechanical cannon formed around her forearm, and she fired on the woman, turning her to an ash streak against the wall in an instant.

My eyes shot wide at the sudden violence, and I slowly turned back to face the ancient, young-looking woman in front of me. “What the hell is wrong with you?!” I hissed.

The rest of the guards clustered in the doorway, fighting each other to get out as quickly as they could.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Phyllis replied. “Whoever you are, you’re not Tyson Dawes, and you just got one of my best officers killed because she believed you might be.”

“Well, jokes on you murderer. I actually am Tyson Dawes. The Windowpuncher? Warlord of Arizona, you remember all that? Or how about Nahgah Prime? We fought together on that planet, what the hell happened to you?” I argued.

“A century has passed since Tyson Dawes went missing, and your little stunt in the Sleem system does nothing to change his absence,” she replied, shaking her head at me. “That hobb died because she disobeyed a direct order for you. Do not make me kill any more of my crew.”

I rocked back on the squishy floor at that, exhaling hard, like I’d just been hit in the gut.

“Then let me out of this cage and talk to me like a person, Phyll. We used to be friends, for Pasta’s sake,” I insisted. “What happened to Molls?”

She turned and picked up the transdimensional pulse ion cannon, then aimed it at me and fired. I soaked the shot and grunted in discomfort. Those blasts caused my crystalline colonies to become agitated, and their movement literally made my skin crawl.

Then she turned and stormed toward the door.

“Why are you so afraid of me?” I shouted after her.

“Because you are a force for chaos!” Phyllis turned back and shouted at me. “You dragged me into this hell, and everything I’ve become is because you wouldn’t just let me die a confused old woman!”

“So you do recognize me,” I breathed. “Please, Phyll, just tell me what happened to Molls. Tell me she’s okay, still alive somewhere and happy. Tell me a hundred years hasn’t really passed while I floated out there.”

The tall blonde woman stared at me from the doorway, then turned and stalked away.