Seated once more at the helm of The Crown of Thorns, with Terna at my side, we left Nu-Earth for the Jupiter gate, a full complement of hobbs and relic ships aboard and ready to deploy. We included the Boing fighters with their array of energy weapons, just in case.

I felt a thrill of excitement as the gate accepted our payment. Rainbow light flashed out to us and we were travelling the multiversal flow. Sensation trickled into our minds as the trip went on, stretching beyond sixty seconds, and then another sixty. Calcified strands of frozen universes thinned as we shot higher and higher, travelling up the multiversal flow and back through BuyMort’s history.

A dark spot on the brilliant, shifting background grew larger, focused in the center of our perceptions until it engulfed us and the BuyMort gate spat us out into normal space. The Crown of Thorns immediately scanned our surroundings and pulled up the nearby planet on screen for us to see.

It was a terrestrial planet, roughly equivalent in overall mass to my own home-world. White clouds swirled over blue oceans and green continents.

“Why is the gate here?” I asked Terna, seated at my side.

She shrugged and shook her head. “The BuyMort prefers larger worlds, gas and ice giants in particular. It is cheaper, the rings consume less fuel adjusting orbits over time, or to avoid collisions. Each ring has a complex scanning suite, designed to inform the BuyMort of not just its customers, but any dangers it may encounter as well.”

“Long-range scans?” I asked the hobbs serving. It was a different crew than the last expedition. Nearly two decades had passed between them, a new generation of BlueCleave had come out to serve.

A young hobb woman turned in her seat, her braids swinging like a curtain as she faced me. “No other planetary bodies in-system, sir!” she reported. “Large debris fields though, could indicate planets that were destroyed.”

“Well at least that explains the gate. No other planets to attach it to,” I muttered. Terna nodded, staring up at the main viewscreen.

“Sir!” another hobb shouted. “Collision alert!” The hobb swiped up their console’s screen onto the main viewer and I took in the mess of the planet’s upper atmosphere. It was littered in technical debris, the remains of space stations and ships that had been torn apart floating in various orbits, creating a cloud of sharp metal to deal with.

The gravity drive kicked in to automatically protect our ship, shoving bits and pieces out of our way as we slid into high orbit. The BuyMort gate was high enough to avoid any of the floating junk, but scans showed all five LeGrange points were full of demolished technology as well. Streaks of red plasma sparked from the planet as the junk we pushed down burned up in the atmosphere, creating a small, localized meteor storm.

“We’re fine, son,” I said to the excited hobb officer. He was young and beyond eager to be on board. “The ship won’t let something like that hit us, no matter how dense the field. She’s fended off much worse.”

It was good to remind the hobbs that served under me how old and powerful our capital ship really was. They already shared reverence for the ship that helped free their ancestors from the Beholders.

The hobb nodded and turned back to his station.

“Give me a full scan, and send out long-range probes,” I ordered. Within seconds, several thorns fired and began their journey out of the solar system.

“There’s power!” another hobb called out. “We have readings of electronic equipment on the surface, in what appears to be a city.”

“Life? Beside the vegetation?” I asked.

My hobbs were silent as they worked their consoles. Then one said, “Unclear sir! Plenty of life on the planet, but none of our visual scans are picking up anything conclusive aside from wide-spread plant matter.”

Another hobb swiped her screen to the main viewer. It showed an aerial view of the city twinkling with lights and small flashes of neon color that couldn’t otherwise be seen from high orbit.

I squinted and pointed at a dark line cutting through the city. “What is that? It looks like damage.”

“The planet appears to have hosted an orbital elevator sir,” a hobb called out. “There’s wreckage in high orbit indicative of a platform, and that appears to be the cable on the surface. It fell to the planet, and crushed part of the city.”

I frowned. “Means there’s likely no sapient life down there, if nobody bothered to sell it. Space elevator cable is specialized gear. Even damaged and sold to BuyMort directly, it’s worth a fortune.”

“I see movement,” Terna muttered. “Could be No-Morts.”

I looked closer, activating my enhanced senses, and she was right. The streets of the city, where intact, had small shapes moving to and fro along them. I frowned.

“Take us in,” I ordered. “I want to deploy to that city. Ready a squad.”

One of my hobb officers lifted off the bridge and started floating toward one of our other platforms in the ship, to gather hobbs for the away-mission. The Crown of Thorns descended, slowly enough to avoid reentry plasma. We kept our view of the city, rising on all the screens.

A glittering pyramid in the middle of the city was our intended infiltration point. The Crown of Thorns carefully lowered us to within a hundred feet of the pyramid’s tip and opened the bay doors to show us all the city below. Mechanized vehicles roamed the streets in lines, hovering to a stop briefly at storefronts or apartment buildings before moving on again.

There were no people, and light growths of ferns and vines had sprung up in the empty spaces left to them by the army of robotic vehicles. Vibrant signs projected colorful light at the passing taxis, showing their wares to the empty seats inside.

A squad of one hundred hobbs stepped off the edge of their staging platform and began floating lightly down to the pyramid’s surface. The Crown of Thorns controlled their descents with the gravity drive, and the hobbs landed in a ring around the top level of the pyramid. Heavily armed and armored, each hobb spread out and began securing entrances.

The top cone of the pyramid was clear crystal, lit from within, and illuminated a resort setting across the top floors. Dry mud baths, empty restaurants and bars, and plenty of luxury accommodations with the skeletal remains of bed frames filled our landing zone with a sense of dread.

The bars had ancient bottles of colored liquid, and handrails of solid gold ran throughout the entire facility. So many morties worth of goods had been left behind that many of the hobbs started to whisper about ghosts. Their superstitions ran deep, but they stayed disciplined and cleared the top floor before Terna and I arrived.

She set down and pinwheeled her arms, before giving me a look. “I do not like your gravity drive,” she said, before walking into the top level of the resort. Her armor whispered as she moved.

I smiled and followed. Serving butler robots approached our hobbs and offered them empty trays, while small cleaning robots followed behind them and shined the floors. Grime had only accumulated in the corners, where the disk-shaped robots couldn’t reach. In one corner, a cluster of tiny ferns had sprouted, contrasting the white marble flooring with a splash of natural color.

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“What is this?” I asked Terna. “Why is all this left behind?”

She shrugged and poked one of the serving robots. It slid backwards in the air, before hovering back up to her with its empty tray. “Nobody sold them,” she grunted, before moving into another room. “I don’t think there are No-Morts. They would use a place like this to make tools, or possibly live in if they could remove the robots.”

I nodded and we continued exploring.

The building’s elevator still worked, as did much of the technology present. It had clearly been built to last, with high quality polymers and alloys that didn’t wear down over time. Most of the lighting appeared to be constructed of crystal, with vibrant inner light glowing to illuminate each room. In some areas we found broken robots or dead advertisement projectors, but for the most part it all worked. I directed our search lower, and we entered a high-end shopping mall.

Empty hanging racks indicated where clothing had once been sold, but plenty of storefronts still had goods in them. I approached a shop, pausing to let its automatic crystal doors slide open, and picked up a small device from a counter near the entrance.

It looked like a phone with no screen, and the shop sold similar devices, all of its shelves still filled. I found a button on the device and it lit up a projection against the floor, showing me a recording of smiling humanoid aliens, with tall, pointed ears, all gathered in the shop I stood in, looking at a device exactly like the one I held. They chattered in a language I couldn’t understand, and then all laughed at the same time.

Above me, a track in the ceiling activated, swinging out a small, clawed bulb to hover over the shelf I was in front of. It lowered a new device into place and then raced back into the wall, vanishing through a tiny door that closed behind it. A hologram sparked into life behind the shop’s counter, and an elf said a few words I couldn’t understand.

I raised an eyebrow, but walked over to the countertop. The hologram gestured to the device in my hand, then to the counter at her side. A display lit up, showing the device surrounded by complex scrawl I couldn’t understand.

At the bottom, a mortie amount gently flashed. My own HUD activated and the shop’s request came through. It only cost a few hundred thousand morties, so I paid it just to see what would happen next. The projection smiled, bowed at the waist, and said a few more words in their language, before fading from view.

I shook my head and turned back to our escort. “Spread out. Report anything of note, but primarily focus on mapping this facility,” I ordered. My hobbs obeyed.

None of them worried overmuch about leaving Terna and I undefended. We were both legendary warriors in their culture, and I was well known for being impossible to kill. My return after a century in space only solidified their view of me as immortal.

I pocketed the device and followed Terna as she walked out to explore. The shopping mall, which it clearly was, extended down for nearly three dozen floors, most of it open in the center. Each level had stores and restaurants, as well as public, paid restrooms and elevators at convenient distances from each other. Most of them still worked too.

As we walked, the levels shifted away from shopping and toward residential. Small grocery stores with nothing but stains on their shelves were packed in with apartments that called to us to rent them at exorbitant rates. We walked and hovered down a few levels, before I found a residential suite with an unlocked door. It hissed as it opened at my touch, suggesting a hermetic seal.

Inside a pair of mummified corpses clutched each other in the center of a dark stain. Dust motes swirled as we entered. Both bodies had small tears in their leathery chests, and crumbled as we entered.

The device in my pocket activated, so I produced it. It projected a scene across the room, showing us the two victims as they ran inside the room and huddled together. As we watched, a group of angry humanoids burst in and fired weapons at the pair on the floor. They screamed, died, and the crowd dispersed.

When the device didn’t offer anything else, I frowned.

“What was that?” Terna asked.

“I think this thing shows you recordings that it can pick up,” I said, pointing to the ceiling above us. There was a strip in the ceiling with lightly glowing LEDs. “I think that’s a camera strip. Before in the shop, it showed people buying a device just like this.”

I turned the device over and thumbed the button on its bottom. The scene played out again, painted across the make-shift tomb with dancing lights. I stepped out into the main promenade and pressed the button again.

Digital ghosts appeared, packing the walkways and filtering in and out of stores and residences. Then the scene flickered and the people were running, fighting, and dying by the hundred. Heavily armored humanoids stalked the mall, shooting the unarmored and walking over their corpses. All of them had the large, pointed ears that made me think of high elves, but their weaponry appeared conventional.

They fired small, bladed darts, I discovered as I learned how to manipulate the device to slow down the footage.

I followed a stray shot with my eyes as it punched into a nearby wall in a flash of sparks. With a finger, I scraped at the wall and uncovered the small indentation in the wall it had left. From nearby, a tiny robot scrambled out of a concealed door at the base of the wall. It quickly climbed the wall to where I had scratched away its paint and reapplied the repair. Its task finished, it retreated back into its hidden compartment.

“They massacred themselves,” Terna muttered, her eyes narrowed. “But why?”

I shook my head. “We’ll keep looking, but I don’t know that it matters to us. This society is long dead,” I replied. “Like the hobbs said, just ghosts here.”

Terna nodded and we continued exploring the mall. It was packed with empty residences, lively stores, and plenty of items for us to take or sell. About half-way through our first day, I summoned Knowles from the Institute of Record to come and document everything, before we started selling it.

Our expeditions were expensive, and the last one hadn’t offered us anything thanks to the virulent mold that had claimed the entire universe. This place, however, was a treasure trove. Their fabrics had all turned to dust over the millennia, but most of their tech was still intact. The robotic taxis hovering around to and fro on the roads outside were worth plenty of morties each, as was the road they all worked on.

Knowles, hobbs, and humans filled the dead city, selling or claiming items in my name as I traversed the mall with Terna and gathered more recordings. Terna and I met with each team, handing out directives, and focusing our manpower in the right directions. Some items were of note to the affiliate, while others were worth nothing but the morties they would fetch on the open market.

We kept any weapons or security-related tech that we found, allowing BlueCleave engineers to go over it and ensure nothing there would threaten their supremacy in our own universe. Knowle nutrition specialists from the Institute of Record catalogued and tested any alcohol, and started the long process of reverse engineering any medications they could find. All of it would go toward my own flourishing civilization.

The security strips ran everywhere in the mall, and my little device was perfectly happy to access them and show me various scenes of murder and despair. But it wasn’t until we reached the bottom floor that we discovered the real reason things had fallen apart.

Disease.

On the ground floor of the mega-structure, a hospital stood empty to the naked eye, but it was full of digital ghosts when my device activated. It showed me crowds of sick elves, all clustered together in the hard seating. Other elves, wearing masks and gowns, walked among them and administered medicines that calmed coughs or quieted pain, but didn’t save any lives. I watched several scenes showing a steady degradation, until the inevitable charge of the armored elves ended the hospital too.

Terna frowned as she watched. “They do the disease’s work for it,” she said as the scene finished. All the bodies and scorch marks on the walls and floor were long gone, and a small maintenance robot hummed quietly across the floor in front of us, polishing a pathway through the empty waiting room.

“The plague must have destabilized their civilization,” I replied quietly, following the robot back deeper into the hospital. Medical equipment, thousands of years old but built to last, was plentiful. No drugs or medications had lasted, but there were plenty of high-end scalpels, robotic medical beds, and other assorted goods. None of it would go to waste, now that we had found this treasure trove.

But first, I wanted to complete our investigation of the planet. I had Knowles combing through the various buildings to catalogue everything, but close behind them were hobb technicians selling or collecting any item worth a mortie.

In the back of the hospital, I found a locked room, still hermetically sealed like the apartment we had found the elven mummies in. Once I broke open the door and entered, I immediately raised a hand to cover my face. Dust from crumbling mummies filled the air, swirling in tiny eddies as the door disturbed a long-forgotten tomb. The room had been crowded.

Video footage started to play over the scene, showing us the massacre that had taken place before digging further into the records. In projected light, we were shown two doctors meeting over the still body of a patient. Their words were foreign to us, as with all of the various recordings we had watched on that planet, but one of them activated BuyMort, and our nanites translated for us.

I hit the button on my device, freezing the projection to inspect the BuyMort window.

“Welcome to BuyMort Unlimited!” the advertisement read. “Your one stop shop for all informational services. I see you’re attempting to access disease management, would you like some assistance?”

“What is BuyMort Unlimited?” I mused, staring at the projection.

Terna’s face paled, and her eyes widened at my words. “BuyMort’s living memory,” she breathed. “I did not believe it was real, but my people once spoke of this place. It holds much information, if you can afford the cost.”

“And this is a physical place?” I asked.

Terna nodded, still staring at the floating advertisement in front of us.

“Well,” I said. “Sounds like we have our next expedition.”