BlueCleave had always done what I needed of them, since the earliest days in the campground. Even when that task meant restructuring their entire military organization, they never let me down. In the years following my return to power, BlueCleave adjusted its primary operational parameters from military occupations to civilian expeditions.
They were still warriors, the hobb culture valued that life path too much for BlueCleave to abandon it, but now they guarded scientists and adventurers instead of fighting in wars. The change was taken in stride, with most hobbs serving in BlueCleave approving of their new way of life. It was easier and far more interesting to serve as security detail during an archeological expedition than it was to fight and die for the profit of their bosses.
Of course, their services were in use on most planets, in some form or other. Even if all the local BlueCleave soldiers did was clean up dream storms, each hobb took pride and pleasure in being a structural part of what made their civilization possible. Most hobbs had history living without real civilization and knew how fragile it really was.
Even during their rise to prominence in the BuyMort system under my rule, the hobbs of BlueCleave understood their critical role in the daily operation of society and lived up to the awesome responsibility on their shoulders.
The ones that typically signed up to provide security on my expeditions were specialists of some sort or other. Armed hobbs were sprinkled throughout my own expedition crew to fill in necessary roles in addition to their security duties. Some taught free climbing to the staff as a popular form of exercise. The Crown of Thorns gravity drive ensured that no one was in any real danger from falls, even if the climb was taking place on the surface of a planet.
Others were skilled in rapidly assessing and successfully navigating various jungles. This skill in particular was something hobbs all thought of as noble, primal, and part of who their people had always been. Storage had once been their home, and much like the gobbs, hobbs had needed to survive its wilder sections. Even during the Sleem’s occupation of the megastructure, hobbs had flourished on Storage.
Our expedition to BuyMort Unlimited leaned heavily on this particular aspect of hobb culture. The planet our coordinates had led us to was a verdant, lush jungle world. The planet had oceans, but with constant steamy cloud cover, and a vibrant young star nearby, every scrap of land was covered in jungle. Once we had arrived, we had promptly stopped the ship in orbit to allow BlueCleave’s various jungle specialists to arrive.
Trail blazers who knew how to naturally fend off biting insects while guiding our people through the overgrowth were placed on each continent, with materials to establish base camps. The only strange thing they reported was a nearly complete lack of animal life beyond the insect or simple arachnid families. Nothing that could use BuyMort.
Then, on day two of the expedition, I found what we were looking for. My own personal searches were done by flying at low altitude and high speed over the jungles, in mapped outlines my helmet kept track of. My Aimed Shot perk patch allowed me to not only adjust my course to meet such an exacting flight path, but actually see everything that swept by beneath me in a blur.
Just south of the planet’s north pole, buried in a crowded thatch of hardwood trees and hanging vines, was a library that put Axle’s on Nu-Earth to shame. I noticed it because of four ivory towers poking out of the dense foliage, but my helmet lit up with its electronic signature.
According to the scans the Crown of Thorns provided, a vast underground structure accompanied a modest surface-level castle with high walls and towers. The facility was long-abandoned, but alive with power. My anti-magic helmet’s scans indicated a geothermal source far below the lowest levels, feeding every inch of the gigantic library.
I went in by myself for a first look, and once through the top of the forest cover BuyMort Unlimited sprawled out before me. Trees had taken root in the grounds, and some of the walls were disrupted by root growth, leading to crumbled sections and more overgrowth. Entire chunks of it were invisible beneath the thick jungle.
Near the center of the compound, a great gaping entrance allowed free access to the library, shrouded by vines, roots, and overgrowth. I approached, floating through hanging vines and snapping them free while ignoring the impediment. Broken strips of crystalline lighting responded to my presence with faint glows and the odd occasional working spotlight. The light showed my path forward, and I floated along, following it while I stared at the walls around me.
Every inch of every surface in the cavernous structure was filled with symmetrical rows of thin rectangles, each with a glowing dot. I stopped to press one, and the rectangle slid out from the wall, before turning on its side and projecting an image into the air above it.
A scantily clad reptilian woman danced while tinkling music played. Next to her came the holographic projection of a prompt box.
Scans have indicated your race to be-bebe -be Nu-Earth, human. (onsite matrix glitch – error 147, transferring services to nebula-based backup services) Ghjskdl slkdkdjr
I watched in fascination at the broken box, two raised point-and-click boxes sitting at the bottom just waiting to be selected. Unfortunately, at the moment, one was labeled Garbarba and the other was named Joobab.
However, the situation resolved itself with a ding, the box morphing into intelligible text.
Welcome to BUYMORT DIRECT OUTLET ARCHIVES! Sapient-to-sapient services are currently unavailable. Nebula-backup activated. Switching to version 1.21 Beta Crunx. AI-activated!
I arched an eyebrow at this news. Wasn’t the AI always activated? And what was version 1.21 Beta Crunx? I wasn’t sure, but I was positive this place would give me my answers.
Scans indicate your race to be Nu-Earth human, language English. Upgrade your experience with our translation services for just 10% more! Interested?
“What is going on here? How don’t you know my language is English?” I growled, but went ahead and selected the Yes button that was now so clear and readable. Moments later, the dancing reptilian woman’s heretofore unsettled growls and whistles became language. “Ooh yeah, Clutchling. Fertilize my eggs so that I may devour you completely,” she crooned.
My mind stirred as an ad rustily spun up, its video and sound quality dramatically reduced from what I was used to. Blocky 16 bit mental graphics declared:
“Saurian Sensations™ — Where Evolution Meets Euphoria — From BuyMort Plus”
“Unleash your primal instincts with Saurian Sensations! Immerse yourself in the exclusive, handcrafted collection of ethically sourced saurian fetish experiences. Now featuring our groundbreaking TyrannoPassion series—satisfaction guaranteed, or your morties back!
Subscribe Today for unlimited access, personalized content algorithms, and live interactions with your favorite saurian stars.
Only 15,000 morties per month – because fantasy is priceless.”
Notice: Viewing preferences will be logged for marketing enhancement and personalization. Sign up to Saurian Sensations Plus to opt out.
I frowned and pressed another. While the first continued its video, another rectangle slid out and began its recording. In this, a creature very much like a Knowle stood on the stage of a crowded auditorium and began lecturing in a guttural language that I couldn’t understand. Accompanying his words was writing, appearing to the side of the recording. I couldn’t read the words, but assumed it was subtitles for whatever lecture the creature was giving.
An accompanying ad jostled its way forward in my mind, replacing the cursed provocative display with the same lecture hall as the record, again distorted and lower quality. The g’kal lecturer spoke directly to me, giving me all of his earnest attention as he gestured toward a molecular model spinning lazily to his right side. “Atoms,” the alien intoned with gravity, “are the foundation of all things. Only morties separate you from ultimate understanding.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
BuyMort Institute Lecture Series – Atomic Structures Simplified
“Knowledge is power, and atoms are the building blocks of the universe! Join the g’kal Institute’s esteemed Professor G’rex Otharax for a stimulating lecture on Basic Atomic Structures. Suitable for all knowledge levels, from curious mammalians to aspiring quantum overlords.”
Special Offer: Only 45,500 morties! Includes lifetime access and a g’kal-approved completion badge.
A struggle began, something I was very much unaccustomed to, as the Saurian ad rose again and was batted down by the lecture. This was something primal and ancient, old BuyMort with very old technology and marketing capabilities. The ads took turns vying for attention, their visuals overlapping in a chaotic barrage, the saurian’s throaty growl competing with the g’kal’s impassioned call for atomic enlightenment, their voice rising higher and higher.
I suddenly understood. Like with the platforms of Nu-Earth, BuyMort had different versions that had “upgraded” through the centuries for “functionality”. Here, cut off from the main network, without personnel of functioning automatons and entirely abandoned by customers, this place’s BuyMort app had been left in whatever version had been in place at the time.
It was honestly Impressive that it could interact at all with the version implanted in my mind. My occasional work at the computers in Happy Trails Campground had me tearing at my hair, each computer an older version than the last and running an older operating system. It often took hours to get a file to work on one that was created on the other.
I pressed my fingers to my temples, working to make sense of the two simultaneous ads as they jostled for attention. I was tempted to try to use an ad-blocker to stop it all. But this was so novel, and so historical, that I was determined to stay the course.
Still, something had to be done, or at least tried.
“BuyMort, one ad at a time!” I commanded. It all paused, an ancient setting menu rising into view with the lower graphics quality but well recognizable insignia of BuyMort in the upper right corner. It had so many settings, so many things that weren’t available to us in our modern, brain-installed version of the app, and it was such an obvious consumer-friendly thing for the market to have. Something that had evidently been updated out of the system in subsequent “upgrades”.
Passing such sliders as PAUSE SERVICES WHILE SLEEPING, and DISABLE NOTIFICATIONS, I shook my head in wonder. I selected an option for Ads-On-Demand, paid 150,000 morties for the adjustment, then took the advertisements one at a time, quickly realizing something crucial. Here there were no affiliates, no associates. No third-party sellers. This was BuyMort, nakedly peddling both wisdom and vice.
I pressed a handful more buttons, and where the pressing root damage allowed, more rectangles slid out to show me a taste of their knowledge, running ads into my mind in their low-quality, ancient way. Some were broken forever, their buttons dark, hardwood root structures protruding. As I started to understand what I had found, I realized how much loss that involved, even if only limited to the top few sections of the library.
BuyMort’s memory, Terna had said. The ads in my app confirmed my suspicions, the facility held a database of all media that had ever passed through the BuyMort system. It had made copies and stored them, for future profit.
I pulled up my active mapping system and overlaid it onto my HUD. Below me sprawled a mega-city of chambers, more and more lighting up as power restored itself and prepared to receive customers. The structure was built most of the way through the planet’s crust, nearly eighteen kilometers worth of library.
Axle would have had a religious experience, I thought as I idly pressed more preview buttons. Each threw an ad in my face for one thing or another. Much of it was sexual in nature, which I quickly realized was a matter of course. Sapient creatures all shared an instinctual drive to procreate, which made sexual activity in various forms common and profitable, when it came to information storage and presentation.
But it was so much more than pornography. There were full university-level lectures and research files for every science I had ever known, and a few more on top of those as a bonus. Company employment records were tucked away in with animated films, math theses, and untold exabytes of music. Everything that could be thought of and put to record was stored within BuyMort Unlimited.
BuyMort’s memory. Damaged by time and with some gaps, but primarily intact and ours for the taking.
My Knowles were going to lose their minds over my find, and I took a handful of moments to soak it in myself before the library’s location became known to my fleet. Before an hour had passed, I discovered that Knowles had a cousin species no longer represented in BuyMort known as the g’kal. They were lankier and generally smaller in stature than Knowles, but clearly shared their passion for knowledge. Most of the university clips featured g’kal or Knowle lecturers.
The Crown of Thorns noticed my relative lack of movement and sent a ship to investigate, at which point the library became the immediate focus of my expedition fleet. Brisingida cruisers floated above my position, gently pulling away vines and removing trees that impeded scans, as a team of hobbs and Knowles followed me into the library itself.
I had migrated down a few levels, just pressing buttons and browsing the various samples, flicking some ads to the side for later, and dismissing others. The structure was fascinating, in an absolute way. None of our team members were immune to the urge of watching more samples. I found no identifiable sections to the library, and the files were all seemingly randomly placed. As it progressed, I realized BuyMort had sorted them by price, at their point of installation.
The structure seemed to have built itself inward, from the surface down. It was shaped like a toy top, with massive underground passages sprawling out from a central pillar for hundreds of kilometers through the crust, in shallow tunnels where the pressure was higher and heat more of a problem. I avoided my teams and ignored comms as I explored, figuring they could wait.
An entire constellation of data files were mine to browse, and I quickly became addicted to the act of sampling them. My estimated bill after only two hours was bordering on a ten billion morties. Each file was reasonably priced, but some that I stumbled across were more interesting and potentially lucrative than others.
BuyMort Direct Outlet Archives Invoice – Session Summary
Session Duration: 2 Hours
Total Files Accessed: 237
Itemized Breakdown
Basic Access Fee: 50,000 morties/hour (2 hours)
Subtotal: 100,000 morties
File Downloads:
BuyMort (142 files): 500 morties each
Subtotal: 71,000 morties
BuyMort Premium (53 files): 50,000 morties each
Subtotal: 2,650,000 morties
BuyMort Plus (12 files): 100,000 morties each
Subtotal: 1,200,000 morties
Real-Time Translation Services: 10% surcharge applied to file translation costs
Translation Subtotal: 395,000 morties
Search Optimizations & Metadata Access: Flat rate of 200,000 morties/session
Subtotal: 200,000 morties
Impulse Selections: 650,000 morties
Miscellaneous Fees
Data Archiving for Long-Term Access: 750,000 morties
Memory Compression (Avoid Overload): 1,000,000 morties
Estimated Total:
9,116,000,000 morties
In particular I kept product blueprints. Several items that I found were flat out relics. Things that, if we could build them at any sort of scale, could drastically ease our society’s daily functions. A power source that drew seemingly unlimited energy from quantum entangled black holes within a single universe was of note. The device would capture micro-black holes within an observable universe’s bounds, then drain them of all energy and convert it into whatever form required. According to the ads, it didn’t even require maintenance once produced.
I was also transfixed by relic construction equipment. A drone that would consume an asteroid’s mineral content and use it to print another version of itself could be used to rapidly terraform entire solar systems, with only minimal risk of grey goo scenarios. Proper programming was required, and the entire thing had a kill-switch that could be used to shut the drones down if anything went wrong.
Creative weapons accompanied new starships and new types of food. Self-pollinating, hardy crops came with the DNA of insects that would cultivate them as part of their natural life cycle. At the end, both meat and carb-rich starches would be abundant for small start-up costs.
Starships that could slip between one planet and the next using pre-installed high-orbit beacons would provide a railroad network for any planets in a solar system, dramatically reducing costs on transport for items between worlds.
Education plans designed to cater to neurodivergence within a society would ensure that each person living in it would have a chance at success, in whatever field they desired. This included pre-recorded lectures, as well as highly customized lesson plans on a variety of subjects.
I continued to float in the tunnels of BuyMort Unlimited, browsing ads and watching samples until a squad of starfish troopers finally caught up to me, three hours after my arrival.
“Warlord!” the leader shouted, as they floated around a nearby corner. I glanced in their direction, but ignored them, instead turning back to my latest ad, a tea-brewing terrarium that grew its own variety of consumable plants.
Once it finished its pitch, I flicked it aside and turned to face my hobbs. The leader of the squad hovered up in front of me, wearing full starfish suit armor and casting spotlights from their shoulders.
“What is it?” I asked quietly, reaching to press another sample button.
“Sir, Lady Terna is requesting your presence topside. There’s a problem,” the hobb reported, his voice threading through the suit’s speakers.
I frowned and turned my comms back on. The Crown of Thorns was recalling all of its squads at Terna’s urgent orders, which replayed for me when I checked the main command channel.
“I repeat, we have discovered a community of No-Morts, all teams immediately retreat to the ship. Extraction will be automated once you reach the surface.”
“No-Morts,” I breathed. “Here?”
Terna heard me and responded. “Yes Tyson. No-Morts. They’re everywhere on this planet, and we’re at risk of reinfecting them. Our expedition is too large. Fall back and we can plan our next step. We have to do this carefully.”