The breakfast feast was an exceptional amount of fun, especially given all of the chaos I’d faced before then. The gobbs were a tremendously likable lot; I was growing to appreciate them more and more as I learned their ways and culture.
Afterwards, the gobbs lay back and relaxed, their stomachs comically distended in a manner that suggested it was both natural and satisfying to their particular race. Nozzle pulled out a wad of wrapped tobacco and a sophisticated-looking pipe, its surface glowing with a polished sheen in the light of the day. He gleefully fished an ember out of the remains of the cooking fire using the claws of his fingers, setting his pipe and others alight before tossing it back to its place.
He lay back, puffing contentedly and staring at the sky. “You know, Tyson, it is days like this that really put the go back into gobb,” he said, shifting his eyes over to me and giving a mischievous half-smile.
I snorted. “I bet. Hey that reminds me, I have a gift for your tribe,” I said.
“Oh?” Nozzle grunted, peering up at me. “What gift?”
I pulled the fobs Terna had given me out of my pocket and showed it to Nozzle. “This will summon a good amount of food, and I have another that will summon tools.”
Nozzle nodded. “Well, don’t use it here. Too easy to track. If we use arrival platform, nobody knows, so long as we do it while stations are not overhead.”
“How can we tell that?” I asked.
He pulled out a small plastic phone and glanced at it. “No coverage.” His toothy grin explained the rest.
I lifted off and hovered up the nearby elevator shaft, watching as a couple hundred gobbs began climbing after me.
A few minutes later, Nozzle and I stood in front of a BuyMort pod-stand in the abandoned arrival platform. I opened the cover and pressed the button, which caused an outline of green light to appear before a massive pallet of goods appeared, stacked as high as me. All of it was food too.
Boxes of canned goods, boxes of MREs, boxes of fresh vegetables and plenty of raw meat. I saw a few varieties, including lobtis and the ever-present yarsp, but then the arriving gobb transport crew rushed in and began rapidly unpacking it.
Nozzle nodded appreciatively. “Hard on morale, the last few days since we left the lake. Many gobbs want to go back, even with the danger. This should help a lot, thank you.”
I watched as gobbs ate raw vegetables while still perched on the rapidly deconstructing pile. Others grabbed as much meat as they could carry and rushed off back to the elevator shaft, makeshift bags full of white paper packages.
“You must have many morties, Tyson friend,” Nozzle commented, happily accepting a pack of meat thrown to him from the top of the pile.
I shook my head. “Nope, just a really good friend. She’s paying for all of this.”
His eyebrows raised and Nozzle shook his head. “Well, then you have rich friends,” he said.
I smiled. “Just the one, but yes, she owns her own world, kind of.”
Nozzle stared at me. “You really are one of ‘BuyMorts most influential citizens,’ huh?”
“You got that from your book,” I said with a chuckle. “C’mon, there’s more.”
I walked with Nozzle over to another pod on a beam and pressed the button on the next fob. When the package arrived in a flash of rainbow light, it was shorter than the food pallet had been, but far more interesting. More gobbs arrived from the elevator shaft and began picking through the contents, pulling out reams of fabric with interest, or tool belts with confusion.
One large area on the pallet was filled with thick coats. Lined with wool-moth fur and crafted from bladder-beetle leather, each coat was child-sized, which fit the gobbs pretty perfectly. There were pictogram instruction cards for each set of complex tools, but there weren’t many of those in the pallet. Most of it was building material, insulation, ropes, and of course, the coats.
Before they left the pallet for Nozzle to pick through, each of the gobbs was wearing one of the winter coats and looking pleased with themselves.
“This is good,” Nozzle said, watching his tribe file in and out of the shaft. “Great, I mean. Now we can stay up here longer, keep away from the people. Plenty of helpful things for when we leave too. Look at all the food left!”
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He waved away a fat gobb who was still leaned over the pallet top, munching away on a nutrient cookie. The gobb hissed, clutched his prize, and skittered away with a thick ream of tarpaulin tucked under one arm.
“Will you stay with us for a while?” Nozzle asked. “We have plenty of food to offer.”
“You’re funny,” I replied, smiling wryly. “But no. You mentioned people nearby?” I asked.
Nozzle nodded. “Down three levels from our current camp. Risky to stay so close, but they don’t come up anymore. Not since the burning.”
“Yeah, what happened there anyway?” I asked.
“Gobbs,” he said. “Not my tribe, but larger, much more aggressive tribe. They range in this part of Storage, attack humans. I keep trying to lead my tribe out of their area. They take some of our people with them anytime they find us. Some of them even want to go, many are angry at the tall-people, want to hurt them.”
“Storage is all the gobbs have ever known,” I replied carefully. “It does not surprise me that you are taken advantage of here.”
“It's not easy being green,” Nozzle said with a sharp-toothed grin.
“No,” I agreed. “But it should be. As easy as being a tall-person anyway.”
Nozzle shrugged. “But its not,” he said, more forcefully. “Never will be.”
I clapped my gobb friend on his shoulder. “I have to go, Nozzle. I only came to pay your tribe back for your kindness to me. Consider this a down payment.”
He scowled. “You owe us nothing, Windowpuncher. You helped us escape the slavers, I couldn’t ask for more.”
“You don’t have to. I’ll be back. How can I find you again?” I asked.
“Cicada Wireless,” Nozzle immediately replied. “I use it to coordinate with other friendly tribes, I can give you my number. Works for shit, though.” He spit on the arrival platform.
I narrowed my eyes. “Cicada Wireless? Is that like MortMobile?”
Nozzle began laughing hard, his eyes shining. Then he stopped, his face twisting incredulous as he realized I hadn’t been joking. “MortMobile? MortMobile! Windowpuncher, you see any XR-hover limos around here? Any of the upper crust of BuyMort society?”
I shook my head. So much had changed. “Wasn’t like that when I was around. MortMobile was the app everyone used. Don’t even know what competition might have existed; no one used anything else, aside from internal affiliate communications.” A funny thought crossed my mind, and I realized that Terna probably had her own service running way back then. Hell, she probably had a whole lot of little secret industries running that I knew nothing about.
“Well, Tyson, here we use Cicada. Small mortie hook up; need to get a phone or digital device to hook up too. Or an implant, but those are more expensive. Oh, and it only works in Storage. I use one, but the rest of the tribe doesn’t. Most gobbs don’t care.”
Nozzle touched his own forehead, then flicked a finger my way. “Here. Adspace.”
“Woah, hey, what the hell!” I exclaimed, falling backwards and into the jankiest ad I’d ever seen.
A pixelated screen flickered to life before me, filled with loud, garish colors and an obnoxiously catchy jingle. A gravelly voice boomed out:
“CICADA WIRELESS MOBILE!”
“Tired of being off the grid and out of touch? Welcome to Cicada Wireless Mobile, where dropped calls and shoddy service are just part of the charm! Need to reach someone in the vast, untamed expanses of Storage? You might get through... if you're lucky!”
The screen cut to a rugged-looking man holding a blocky, outdated cellphone. He was standing in the middle of a post-apocalyptic level, collapsed structures and broken-down machinery everywhere.
“Here at Cicada Wireless, we offer the best (and only) mobile service in Storage! Sure, our coverage is spotty, our calls drop constantly, and our data is slower than a slug in molasses, but hey, what do you expect? It's Storage!”
The screen switched to a flashy animation of a cell phone signal bar going up and down erratically. A gobb appeared next to it, looked at me, and shrugged.
“Get our BASIC PLAN for just 999 morties a month! Includes 100 minutes of talk time, 50 texts, 1 app, and a whopping 100KB of data. Perfect for those who love a challenge!”
The screen flashed to a heavily pixelated map of Storage, with small dots representing the limited coverage areas.
“Need more? Upgrade to our PREMIUM PLAN for 4,999 morties a month! Enjoy 500 minutes of talk time, 200 texts, 4 apps, and a luxurious 500KB of data. Because sometimes, you just need to send that extra-long text or load a picture... eventually.”
The rugged man reappeared, now joined by a cheerful gobb holding a similarly outdated phone. They gave each other a thumbs up as the screen zoomed in on their devices, showing a connection that flickered between one and two bars. They appeared to be sexting each other.
“And for the truly adventurous, our ULTIMATE PLAN offers unlimited talk, text, and a whole megabyte of data for 9,999 morties a month! Now you can call, text, and maybe even stream a low-res video... if you're in the right spot!”
The screen cut to the rugged man shouting into his phone. “CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?!” he asked, his voice clearly straining under the burden. From somewhere out of sight, a gobb came in holding up his own cracked phone, the reception turned to speaker mode. I could hear the call being received, its signal clearly breaking up and distorting his words.
“Cicada Wireless Mobile! Because in Storage, you get what you get. Take it or leave it!”
The ad ended with the rugged man and the gobb both laughing as their calls dropped simultaneously, turning to flip me off before fading away. My vision went completely black, then there was a pixelated flash, and I saw the logo of a giant Cicada giving me those same middle fingers. From its mouth extended a speech bubble.
“Cicada Wireless Mobile – Keeping you connected... sometimes.”
I blinked, the colors and sounds fading away as I found myself back in Nozzle’s company. He was staring at me, a mischievous grin on his face.
“Yeah, I’ll sign up for that. Heck, I can even afford it. Only works when the stations are overhead though, huh?” I asked.
Nozzle nodded. “Yep. Run from up there. Best to limit use though. You don’t want to run over your program,” he said with a chuckle. “The overage fees are harsh.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I told him, signing up for the basic level of Cicada Wireless. For a small add-on, it included a phone. Once I had Nozzle’s number programmed into it, I nodded, shook the gobbs hand, and floated away. “See you around, Nozzle!”
“Yeah-yeah,” he said with a grin. “Tall-people promises.”
I smiled, nodded, and left the tribe.