Leo moved on autopilot through the kitchen, throwing together some lunch while thinking over the day's events so far. His experiences in Contact had blown him away. He had arranged to meet Gelt again in a couple hours, struggling to get his message across over the insistent beeping of his commchip. He had received almost 150GC from the excited crowd in the aftermath of his performance, along with several messages, bringing his account balance after all of his purchases back up to 734GC. While skimming through the information on his commchip, he noticed that the ingame WebLink was accessible outside the pod and his commchip had now been linked with his ingame account.

Leo knew that, despite the diversity of VR games available on the market, when people realized how much Contact had to offer the game was going to explode up in popularity. Unlike some of the experiences he'd had in the past, all of the interactions with Gelt had felt completely organic. In the past, many companies had placed preference on the more influential characters in a game while toning down the priority of minor characters to save on resources. From what he could tell, Contact had gone all in with human comparable intelligence levels across the board. Suddenly the rumored AI core on Titan that Paul had mentioned to him seemed far more realistic.

What he'd seen so far had excited his curiosity and he wanted to get out of the Sol system and travel around as soon as possible. Although he didn't have the funds for a ship yet, one of the messages he received after his hit performance had been from the owner of a merchant ship. They were interested in his music and were willing to offer a bunk in exchange for a more in depth demonstration during the trip.

From what Leo had seen of the gate station, the novelty value of Human culture would quickly be relegated to historians and cultural savants as the number of humans on the station increased. The traders that found a market for their wares would probably inflate the prices to take advantage of the credits that all the new users joined with, while any novelties that weren't already copyrighted could by easily reproduced in a nanofab given the requisite blueprints. Thinking it over, he realized that that the Sol GateHub really had very little to offer him.

From what he had observed and overheard while walking around the station, the vast majority of visitors to the station were merchants, historians, and culture tourists. Musical recordings were readily available and could be shared on the HoloWeb, but it was clear that live entertainment occupied a niche that couldn't be filled by holovids.

Having made up his mind he sent a message to the merchant, accepting his proposition. The ship wouldn't be leaving until the cargo was sold so he had another day before they set off. That left Leo with some time to kill. Putting the issue of a ship to the side, he thought about the other things he wanted to accomplish. Getting more GC was his first priority since it would be difficult to enjoy exploring new worlds if he couldn't even buy a drink when he got there.

He checked the station directory on the WebLink and found that the station had several small auditoriums available for use. Gambling on his musical ability, he reserved a small fifty seat theater for the next morning deducting another hundred GC from his account in the process. He planned to head back to one of the trade hubs to drum up another crowd and sell tickets.

At this point, he noticed that he had finished eating. He got up to take care of his dishes with a silly grin on his face. It had been his childhood dream to be a famous musician. His grandfather had played classics for him on an old yellow guitar growing up. That same guitar had been passed to him after his grandfather died and Leo had put his mind to practicing.

He had never had outstanding talent, persisting through sheer stubbornness. He played that old yellow guitar until he got lost in the music, moving from song to song till his fingers cussed him out and went on strike. His flight had jokingly dubbed him "Bard" while they were all drinking after a patrol one night. After he rose to Flight Lieutenant, it had become his callsign while they were out on patrol. Eventually he had dismissed stardom as a fantasy, although he still played constantly.

Despite his popularity and the small following his recordings had accumulated, he had never gained enough popularity to really take off. The Sol system was a hive of activity and it was easy to get lost amid the sheer number of people. The rush he had gotten from his earlier performance had planted a seed in his mind. He didn't know if it was possible to realize his childhood hopes now, but it was all virtual anyway so what did he have to lose?

After freshening up, he lay back down in the pod and eagerly waited for the lid to shut.

Back on the station, he quickly marked the location of a trade deck on his communicator and sent a message off to Gelt explaining his plans. He liked the friendly Elasmo, although he had a hunch Gelt hadn't always been the wandering entrepreneur he was now. The way Gelt carried himself suggested that sometime in the past he had been in the military. While he wasn't curious enough yet to pry into Gelt's past, he felt a sense of familiarity from him that reminded Leo of some of the men from his flight.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Arriving on the trade deck, guitar in tow, he walked over to the nanofab kiosk. He opened up the design program and selected a template for a small white card. He entered the time and location for his performance the next day into a small infochip embedded in the card along with a ticket number. As an afterthought, he engraved a guitar outlined in green on the front of the card before printing out a stack of fifty along with a sign advertising the show.

He walked over to an empty stall and started setting up when he noticed Gelt walking over. He waved as he opened up his guitar case.

"Planning on bringing another trade floor to a grinding halt?" Gelt said with amusement.

"That's the idea, one way or another. I'll be needing some GC if I'm going to be traveling. Help me sell these tickets and you'll have a front row seat tomorrow."

"It's a deal."

Gelt picked up one of the white cards and flipped it over before putting it in his pocket. Leo handed Gelt the sign before sitting down and tuning his guitar. He thought for a moment on what song to choose and decided on something upbeat and joyful. The first notes drifted out behind the white noise, inconspicuously lightening the chatter of people buying and selling. The sound slowly built up, drifting through the thoughts of the people in the trade hub. It flowed through the crowd like a cooling brook, rising and falling in a calm carefree manner. People started to notice the odd melody as it rose above the hubbub, and moved in the direction of his stall.

Gelt was sitting, tapping his foot to the beat and many in the crowd found themselves doing the same. By the time the song rose into the chorus there were heads bobbing and an assortment of feet, fins, tails, paws, and wings tapping along. What background noise remained in the hub quieted as the upbeat song faded into soft, lilting chords. Tapping limbs slowed to a halt and Leo closed his eyes and leaned back as he plucked the strings from memory.

The last refrain picked the tune up again, bringing the song to a close that seemed to restore time to its usual flow. A cheer filled the trade hub as Leo stood up. Quiet was restored as they waited to hear what Leo had to say.

Leo looked out over the crowd, noticing dozens of species present. He even spotted a couple humans hovering near the back.

"Thanks for listening. My name is Leo and this instrument is called a Guitar. I will be performing tomorrow on the entertainment deck, tickets are available on the table behind me. If you have any questions, I'll be sticking around for a few minutes."

A line formed in front of the table while two people from the audience wandered towards his side of the booth. The first to approach him was around four feet tall with large eyes and tall rounded ears protruding from the top of its head. It was covered in a short coat of grey and brown fur and was looking intently at the guitar.

"Hello, my name is Peiga. Would you mind if I took a closer look at that wonderful instrument? It is quite fascinating."

"Yeah, sure you can. Be careful though, it's heavier than it looks."

Leo removed the shoulder strap and carefully passed it to Peiga who accepted it gingerly. He wasn't too worried as he had the template for the guitar saved, but he would prefer not to have to fabricate a new one so soon. Peiga turned the guitar over with undisguised curiosity, inspecting all of the different parts. He gave the strings an experimental pluck with a set of long dextrous looking fingers.

"Truly a wonderful instrument, although it requires great dexterity to play. How long have you played it for?"

"Sixteen years." Leo said, trusting that the translator would take care of any relative time confusion. "I got my first guitar at six and I've been playing ever since."

"Truly wonderful." Peiga glanced over at the dwindling line. "If there are any tickets left, I'll be there tomorrow."

He gave a short bow and set off at a quick gait towards the line leaving Leo with what appeared to be a three meter long feathered snake with a pair of wings folded neatly behind it. The wings had a shape reminiscent of a bat's and were covered in deep orange feathers. At the tip of each wings was a scaled hand, and despite the bulkiness of the wings it managed to move without causing any problems for the people around it. The feathers covering the wings continued along its back, fading to a set of scutes underneath. It slithered forward, extending a wing to Leo in greeting.

"Greetings human. This is your first time meeting one of the Do'uran?"

"Yes, and it's a pleasant surprise. Your species look strikingly like a mythical creature from many of my world's old stories."

The Do'uran leaned back and let off an odd throaty rattle. After a second, Leo's translator recognized it as laughter.

"Truly the universe is full of coincidences. You may call me Lacus. I am the captain of the Hunter's Respite."

Now Leo understood. This was the captain of the ship he would be leaving on tomorrow.

Out loud, he replied "Ah, great. You should come by the theater tomorrow" while snagging one of the remaining tickets from the table to pass to Lacus.

Mentally he was still hung up over the fact that he was going to be flying in space with a dragon.

Hell yes.

He was distracted from that thought by Gelt, announcing that all the tickets had sold. His commchip beeped as he received 240GC from the ticket sales at a reasonable price of 5GC per ticket, minus the two for Lacus and Gelt.

Things were looking up.