Molly didn’t surprise me when she suggested throwing a party that night, to celebrate the affiliates first ship purchase. I agreed to go, then excused myself to go call Terna. After removing myself to the ship’s bridge, I pulled out my phone and swiped away all the garbage-ware ads on it before punching in Terna’s call info.

“We got the ship we need,” I told her as soon as she answered.

“Good news. I see you’ve decided to hang a socialite off your arm. Also a good idea, we could use the continued publicity, even in gossip rags,” she replied.

“Yeah, not my initiative, but it seemed like a good idea,” I said.

“She’s not bad looking,” Terna offered.

I chuckled and nodded. “It’s not a true burden, I agree. Just . . . it’s just soon.”

“After Molls, I understand,” Terna agreed. “I appreciate that you are doing this, spending your time on Nu-Earth pushing forward our plans.”

I smiled and nodded. “Always felt better about my emotions if I could get lost in my work. Once we rescue Cube, we use that media cycle’s boost to announce the campaign,” I said.

“I remember the plans, that’s why I mentioned them,” Terna said. “Keep going, you’re doing great.”

“It’ll be a month before we can take off, logistically. There’s repairs, refits, and some heavy cleaning that needs to happen. Not to mention hiring a crew. I’ll probably have to do at least one more event here, but I was hoping to take some time and visit Storage again too.”

“Publicly or privately?” Terna asked sharply.

“Privately. I need to do some traveling and see more of it for myself, as well as visit Nozzle and his tribe again,” I said.

“I can fund that, we have a crop surplus this month so food will be easier. But you’re going to need to sit in study if you want to understand the political issues at play in Storage” she told me.

“No, I need to know what is really happening down there, not just the scrabble over it that the elites like to play at. This kind of issue cuts through political bullshit, Terna. We come at it from the same earnest, honest place of wanting to help that we’re doing here, and it will boost our profile dramatically,” I said, pushing back.

Terna was quiet for a long moment, then I heard her sigh and nod. “I trust your instincts,” she said. “But please don’t ignore the political issues either, it's required reading for a campaign.”

“I understand, and don’t worry. I will do my reading. But this is more important,” I insisted. I heard Molly creep up the hall behind me.

“I understand Tyson,” Terna said. “And I trust your instincts, I do.”

“You’re just used to being in charge,” I said, changing my tone to a comforting one. “And you are, believe me. This plan of ours is going to need time to foment anyway. We have plenty of time to handle everything,” I told her.

I heard her nod on the other end of the line. “True. Very true, I just want to be free of the BuyMort now.”

“Yeah me too Terna. But there’s a process to all of this,” I reminded her.

“And right now, that process is buying a ship to retrieve Cube,” she sighed. “Early days of a revolution are the worst.”

“My own experiences lead me to agree,” I chuckled. “Call you again soon, when I’m ready to head out to Storage again.”

“Alright,” Terna said, then hung up on me. It was her way, she didn’t like being on the phone.

I turned to see Molly’s smiling face. “That sounded official,” she pried. “But why are you going to Storage?”

“I go there on humanitarian missions now. Help feed people and the like,” I told her.

Her eyes widened and she put on an impressed pout. “You’re nothing at all like your legends,” she said.

I smiled back and nodded. “I have my moments. But the world I’ve returned to is nothing like the world I left.”

“Oh right, all the war,” Molly groaned. “That must have been so hard.”

“Actually that part was always easy,” I said. “Most of the hard stuff was figuring out where the next attack was coming from. Getting my people ready for each new shock to our systems.”

Molly nodded, expression blank until I finished speaking. Then she pointed down the hallway behind her. “We’re going to find a hotel bar to rent out for tonight, do you want to come with us?”

I swept her into my arms and kissed the beautiful woman, then shook my head. “You guys are good at that without me, I need to do some reading.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, no worries. I’ll see you at the party though, right?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t miss it,” I told her, bending down for a kiss.

A real smile flitted across her lips before she put a less-honest one in its place. “Okay, see you then,” she said and turned to walk down the hallway. Molly looked over her shoulder at me twice as she left.

Once I had the hotel room to myself for a few hours, I happily drew the shades and sat down on the nice soft bed. Terna had forwarded the Storage dossier she had collected for her own political uses.

I blocked out thoughts of my new girlfriend and sat down to absorb it.

Molly was wearing a tight, revealing dress featuring slits that ran up both of her sides. It showed plenty of skin. I walked into the bar, wearing my same suit, and she ran in her heels over to me, drink in hand. I leaned down and smiled in spite of myself when she grinned through the entire kiss.

The evening felt like pointless frivolity to me, but I did a good job of putting on a happy face, and I drank plenty of booze. Not enough to get sloppy, and I kept scaling my senses to adjust for some of the effects, but I partied with the socialites and their friends.

A few paparazzi showed up, prompting a flurry of ads for photo-blur and video static fields, but I just let them. Wasn't like I had the morties to waste anyways, and the pictures would make for great publicity. They took pictures until the hotel removed them, and published our get-together in their celebrity gossip publications. That made the night worth my effort, but once I got tipsy enough, the girls weren’t bad company. I just had to loosen up a bit and care a lot less than I normally would. Especially when Molly checked her phone and then started complaining about the recent performance of one of her affiliate investments.

It was one of the lunar strip miners. I bit my tongue and ignored it.

Shoshanna slid over to me in the booth we were sharing once Molly left to go to the bathroom.

“I’m really grateful,” she said, slurring her words a little. “I’m so grateful you’ve joined us, Tyson. So grateful.”

I smiled and nodded. “I’m in until we get Cube back at the least. Beyond that, I figure your affiliate will be able to handle expeditions most any time. I’d be leaving you guys better equipped.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“No, you don’t understand. It’s always been a dream, nothing more. Something we get drunk and talk about, because talking about it makes us feel better,” Shoshanna explained. “Now I can go do it! Molly won’t come, I know better than to think she’d be willing to go on an expedition into deep space. But I can’t wait!”

Molly returned then, giving Shoshanna a quick glare before turning her stiff smile on me. “Can’t wait for what?” she asked over the music in the bar.

“Our expedition!” Shoshanna cried, raising a glass and reaching it toward Molly.

The other woman cheered and picked up my glass, clinking it against her friends. When she took a swig, she nearly spit it out, before grunting and swallowing it with some effort. “Tequila! Ew! Doll, you’re hot, but you have bad taste in liquor,” she told me.

“And women,” added Shoshanna with an impish grin. Molly gaped in mock offense, then sat down on my lap while sticking her tongue out at Shoshanna.

In the morning, I was the only one capable of getting any work done on the Pykrete, so I flew over while Molly lightly snored. I left her a note and some yarsp bacon in the hotel minifridge before I left.

When I arrived at the ship’s hangar, I set off alarms by landing in the hangar area itself. Once spaceport security had responded, which took a lot longer than I cared for, the issue was quickly cleared up. I was on the list to be able to access the ship; they just told me to access the spaceport from the proper channels in the future.

On their way out I heard one of the men grumble, “starfish suits.”

The thing that bothered me most about it was how unimportant I had become. In my time, my simple presence granted me access to wherever I wanted to be. Now I had to work within the confines of a system that really didn’t know or care much about me.

I pushed it aside and got to work on the ship. With my enhanced strength, I was able to get all of the ship’s old mattresses and dirty sleep-netting cleared out and into the hangar, before I sold it all directly to BuyMort, on the affiliate’s account. I harbored a tiny hope that my financial responsibility would wear off on Shoshanna and Molly.

After the old, stained mattresses and tattered, well-used sleep-nettering were gone, the ship’s crew quarters started to smell significantly better, so I kept working. Scraping glue off the bulkheads in the cabins was easy enough, as was tearing out all the old shower curtains. Some of them were moldy. All of them were stained.

Molly arrived about five hours later, fresh and bright after a good sleep and another hangover cure. The woman ordered all of her hired transports to be stocked with one, which made me think about the transport industry surrounding the wealthy. That kind of special request was considered normal, Molly told me when I asked. Nothing unusual.

She grinned and flirted with me, telling me she liked the shirtless, sweaty workman thing I was doing. To keep her happy, and indulge my own need for a vacation, I took her back to the hotel early and indulged her for the rest of the evening.

The next day played out much the same. I pushed Shoshanna to get the work started on the shield and then went to hire workmen of my own. Molly came along, to access the affiliate’s accounts for me, but she didn’t bother looking at the amount when I decided on a contract.

“I trust you,” she explained with a sly smile.

A team of professional cleaners spent the next three days crawling all over the crew sections of the Pykrete, sanitizing it for use while I went to a coastal resort with Molly. I spent the time reading, watching her sunbathe in a bikini, and eating five-star cuisine. The bed was like sleeping on a marshmallow.

While we worked on getting the ship ready for use, I kept in touch with Terna. She occasionally sent me reading material, mostly on Storage. The structure’s issues had gotten worse since my time.

There were rolling blackouts across parts of the superstructure, due to many damaged baffles. This had come about when someone in the control satellite opened all the doors within Storage. There was a good degree of mystery around that event, because BlueCleave and Axle’s leadership faction kept a tight lid on how the doors got stuck open.

Once they were all hauled open, untold trillions died in the chaos that followed. Through necessity, or a simple desire for meat, many of the cities were built near highly populated BuyMort bug tunnels. There were attacks, food sources were depleted, and gobb raids spiked.

All of that was secondary to the sheer destruction caused when most of the superstructure’s cities and towns were suddenly dumped into the bottom of the baffle in their spire. Any baffle that had a city dropped into it suddenly stopped working, and the control satellite was damaged beyond repair. It smashed through three spires on its way down into the gas giant’s depths during the event.

One of the resulting effects was that life in Storage became drastically more dangerous in the aftermath. There were hundreds of trillions of refugees, wandering the super structure and trying to survive anyway they could. Most civilized areas of Storage collapsed, either literally, or eventually through the side effects of the doors all being stuck open.

BuyMort bugs rampaged. Gobbs rampaged. People themselves rampaged. Storage, the last vestige of hope for those living under BuyMort without morties, became a deathtrap for decades. An every-sapient-for-themselves hunting ground.

At the same time, resources tightened around the multiverse as war raged on in all universes. Storage’s situation went largely ignored, and the automated BuyMort functions were all the people in Storage had to rely on.

One watery meal of meaty gruel a day, if you could find a pod-pole. And that became a big ‘if’ after the doors opened.

If people damaged any part of the structure that was still considered BuyMort property, BuyMort responded by sending a potentially lethal bug. But if the bugs damaged the station, BuyMort considered it a natural disaster and ignored it. Being lightning rods for people, a frightening amount of pod-poles were damaged or destroyed in bug attacks.

The catastrophes skewed in the bugs favor, but the gobbs had a different experience entirely. The gobbs, being more acquainted with the way Storage worked, flourished under the new dynamic. They lost a few large settlements, and plenty of casualties along the way, but in general their population fared better than ever with the doors open.

Once life in the Sol system normalized, people began paying attention to Storage again. Some of them ended up going to it, after all. When a deal collapsed or an associate fizzled out, every so often the person behind the morties would suffer for it. If they couldn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps fast enough, Storage was often their destination.

So news stories began to emerge about the conditions, and several public debates arose surrounding how to handle those conditions.

Axle’s Knowle leadership faction argued that Storage was handled by BuyMort, and that to intervene would be too much strain on the already fragile economic system that was starting to grow under his leadership.

Once the wars receded to embers, Axle did what he was good at and made the affiliate morties. Paw over claw as the Knowles said. But at that same time, several of the war-ravaged universes shriveled and died, eventually even losing gate access. His economics largely ignored those the war had affected. He chose to leave them to die and focused the main industries of BuyMort on and around Nu-Earth. The planet became the beating heart of the BuyMort system in my absence, even crowding out Neolithic Earth for financial prominence.

BuyMort culture formed up in tiers, as it had before. Those in Storage were at the very bottom. But several levels of middle class had sprung up, with a handful of quintillionaires at the top.

The wealthy elite had no vested interest in helping those in Storage, so it didn’t happen. That was the basic level of understanding I gained from reading the many dossiers that Terna sent me. When I looked a bit deeper, there was a lot of support for Storage improvement initiatives among the population of Nu-Earth. The lower on the wealth ladder an affiliate member got, the more likely they had progressive ideas about how to help the poor souls in Storage.

One of the main problems with any of the initiates was the sheer scale required to actually make a difference. There were proposals to do clever things like use the plastic and metal waste polluting Tertiary to build small, easily transported, and cheap grow houses. The pollution clean up affiliates made a big show of hiring brilliant young engineers and theorists to craft several items that would help life in Storage.

But none of the affiliates were willing to pay to ship the items once processed. Not at any scale that would matter. Tertiary was littered with concentrated dumping grounds, full of old greenhouse panels, plumbing pipes, and chemical cauterizer packs.

Another issue was financial aid to family members. That was something that held enormous popularity among the voting population, but directly contradicted the Knowle leadership faction’s priorities. People wanted a fund put together, like several other ‘public good’ funds Silken Sands ran.

They were not exactly charities but acted as such in the eyes of the people on Nu-Earth. Some areas got discounted grocery prices, some got lowered rents. All through Silken Sands direct financial intervention. But taking even a cursory look at the numbers publicly available led me to a clear pattern.

Groceries were lowered in areas that had intensive manual labor as its primary source of production. Large farming towns, and deep mines that spawned cities around them were fed more, to keep them strong. I even found a free beer initiative in one of the mining towns.

Every weekend, anyone directly employed by the local mining affiliate was able to get a free beer from any local bar. Silken Sands paid to keep them docile.

Lowered rent was typically found in areas with higher than average corporate associate numbers. Tech companies, management affiliates, and financial districts got lowered rent in order to entice talent to come in and work for low wages, or unpaid internships.

Every single affiliate initiative that spent morties in an apparently charitable manner could be tied back to affiliate benefit. Axle was taking care of his people, sure, but he was taking care of his morties first. The fact was that there was no benefit to the affiliate in helping those lost to Storage.

My campaign began to form in my mind. The more I learned about the issues, the more I saw the bigger picture of political action on Nu-Earth.