Ten hours and fourteen minutes later, I was sitting at the fanciest bar on Psyche asteroid, surrounded by some of the most egotistical, posh, uber entitled Introverts and Extroverts in the sector. What? Introverts and Extroverts? Yes, that's right.
Tourism was so important economically that Psyche managed to stay neutral in the war between Introverts and Extroverts. Taking a side would have been bad for business, so much so that it was more financially sound to pay a mercenary police presence to keep the peace or handle skirmishes than risk losing customers. Money heals all things, I guess. And destroys them.
A lot of asteroids were tourist traps, and therefore many of them claimed to be neutral. Not all of them. You wouldn't see an Extrovert on Super Boy Outsandia, for example, despite the catchy name. But at least we had a pocket of neutral territories to further complicate the war.
Asteroids made for a perfect, isolated way to immerse yourself in whatever the local "thing" was. We had Las Vegastroid, Space Rock Hall of Fame, Meateorite Rib Festival, and Jurassteroid Park to name a few.
And Psyche? What was their thing? Well ...
Psyche looks like a potato and has a surface area of about 64,000 square miles, putting it around the size of the State of Wisconsin back in ancient Earth's United States of America. The people of Psyche, unfortunately, embraced the potato shape. Psyche has two large craters that look like eyes. Bar None was near the center of the settlement in the largest eye, the city of Ojo, also known as "The Eye of the Potato," where a population of 3.71 million "Potato Heads" lived and worked.
image [https://livingwriter-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/BfsxGhx2Rh-Psyche.png]
If you weren't familiar with the old Earth Mr. Potato Head, all you had to do was get close enough to Psyche and you'd be inundated with it.
When you landed, the first question at Customs wasn't, "What is the purpose of your visit?" It was, "Do you like potatoes?"
If you answered incorrectly, you couldn't step foot on Psyche, and you'd risk being put on a permanent ban from the asteroid and its surrounding minor space stations. I also heard that if any of the chain restaurants on Psyche got their hands on that list, you wouldn't be served at any of those restaurants throughout the solar system. Did they have the best french fries in the solar system? Probably.
So when I was asked, my answer was, "Gimme gimme gimme, those delicious potatoes!" I played it up a bit, since I was dressed all fancy for the mission, and I figured the rich guy would be a bit over-the-top, having all that material wealth. @bitchfrog said I was just playing myself, so she refused to critique my acting skills.
Bar None was nice. All the rare materials were here. Real leather on the barstools and chairs, paper coasters for your drinks, large decorative fig and lime trees filling some of the open spaces between tables. Like most rooms in space, the interior leaned toward bright, but with UVB lamps to give off a steady bit of Vitamin D from time to time based on who was sitting at the table.
The centerpiece of Bar None was a large Dragon Blood Tree. It was the fixture of the space, right in the center, with the bar's spruce wooden counter circling around it. The Dragon Blood Tree's trunk and branches all spread from the bottom upward and outward, like an umbrella, forming a sort of platform at the top. That platform was full of the tree's greenery. I would have come to Psyche just for this.
The bar served small plates of food and borrowed from the Dragon Blood Tree's red sap and berries in its plate decoration, tasty bites, and beverage concoctions. The little umbrellas on all the drinks also were crafted to look like little Dragon Blood Trees.
It was an odd contrast to all the potato paraphernalia everywhere else around the city of Ojo. Psyche had prospered, however, as a result of the potato fetish. Ojo itself was pretty magnificent, a maze of skyways and superstructures, giving off a rosy shade of light. Ojo, being in the crater, was laid out like an octopus, with docking ports at the end of every tentacle. Getting to the center was "part of the adventure," and holy tater tots were there plenty of opportunities to buy all things potato that you could eat, drink, wear, ride, hang on a wall, play with, or just simply use as a paperweight.
The most popular game at every bar, street corner, or dark alley ...?
Hot Potato, of course!
But this was not your typical kid's game. Most of the time, people played for money. However, there was the occasional backstreet, hidden room game, where aiways put their lives on the line.
Drop the potato or be the one holding it when the music stops, and you earn yourself a bullet to the brain. Sure, you'd be reanimated if you could afford it, but one of the rules was "clean slate." That meant that all stored memories had to stop once the game began. You'd be reanimated, but you wouldn't remember anything that happened during the game of Hot Potato. Talk about skullduggery paradise. This was a great way to make transactions that you didn't want tracked or remembered. Hence, its appeal.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Most played for money though. If you listened to any of the locals long enough, everyone knew someone who was financially ruined playing Hot Potato. Country music still lived on over the centuries, and here on Ojo, the woes and misfortunes of Hot Potato lent themselves to plenty of catchy tunes.
We also got unsolicited advice on where to play and where not to play Hot Potato, as some establishments had been accused of cheating and stopping the music to intentionally to rig the match. As a result, there were now dozens of public radio stations on Psyche that only played Hot Potato match music, so that anyone could play a "fair" match of Hot Potato. Locals would also tell you, however, that the real money wasn't made at any of the "radio games."
"Radio games 're fer tourists," one man with potato shaped shoes and a thick red mustache blabbered at us. He looked like he needed a bath, and he smelled of fried food. "Fer tourists. You go to Potato Skin Pint you wanna real game."
"Ah, my good friend," I replied. "Thank you, thank you." I had no intention of going to Potato Skin Pint. Not today anyway. But keeping up the appearance of wealth, I proxed him some qcoins and thanked him for the advice.
As fancy as Bar None was, there was still a Hot Potato ring down a hallway, and you could hear the distinct hollering from the matches no matter how much they tried to keep the rest of the bar serene. I figured this was intentional, so they could remind their wealthy patrons that they could lose money and have a great time doing it just steps away.
----------------------------------------
I sat at a luxurious corner table, with plush white leather padding, and a birch tabletop coated in a rose infused polyurethane. @astrowave had accompanied me, and I reluctantly allowed @bitchfrog to come with, sort of my way of showing off the merchandise.
The bar was about half full, mostly of people who looked like me, although I was the only one with a human at my table. My black and purple suit would have stood out in most places, but not so much here.
Three women in beautiful spacedresses sat closest to us. Their spacedresses flowed out from the hip down, but clasped at the ankles, where they were connected to decorative skinsuits underneath. This was practical. In the case of a sudden loss of gravity, no one wanted clothing floating about in undesirable ways. But it also became another way of displaying high fashion.
One of them had short black hair and kept bobbing her leg up and down. Her dress was dark red, and her skinsuit was a black mesh with balloon shapes. You could see the skinsuit along her neckline, where the dress itself opened at sharp angles to showcase the beautiful skinsuit. The mesh suit covered her neckline and ran down over her hips, all the way to her ankles, where she dangled from her foot a comfortable red flat that matched her dress.
image [https://livingwriter-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/K1k9P3CYYW-black balloon girl at the bar.png]
This was the common fashion, I learned from @bitchfrog, in popular circles. The dress was interesting, but it was the skinsuits that made the statement. One could only see the neckline, the ankles, and in some cases they would include long sleeves down to the wrist to further show off the decorative suit. A blonde woman at the table had a similar dress, but hers was more modest, purple not unlike my own, with a cream skinsuit that had potato shapes. Go figure. The third woman had a black dress with rainbow skinsuit. That was the coolest by far, but for whatever reason it was the bobbing red dress that caught my attention.
Moving objects usually do that to me.
I also noticed two men in the corner, both wearing suits similar to mine but with a long collar on one side and no collar on the other. Suits are pretty much suits anywhere. However, like the women, you could see skinsuits on them as well, peaking out at the wrist, ankle, and under the collar. The bar was loaded with people like this, chatting away, smiling. Couples having dinner, friends having an expensive laugh.
A woman in green at one of the tables waved to her party and headed back to the Hot Potato room, making a fake OMG face with her hands framing her face, as she excitedly went off to game.
The woman with the black balloons and bobbing leg suddenly noticed me, and I made eye contact briefly, as casually as I could, while also then turning my attention back toward the bar and the Dragon Blood Tree. Curious, I thought, but then again, I am a wealthy stranger here, and I'm supposed to attract some attention. It also could have been that I had a human with me. We got plenty of glances. That's partly what Bar None was all about, a "who's who" festival for elite society.
A pale bald man, in his 30s like most aiways, finally approached us. He had an electronic eyeglass over his left eye, obviously scanning us, but otherwise he was nothing but polite, as you would expect at a fancy place like this.
"And what can I get you gentlemen to drink?" he asked, conveniently ignoring the obvious human female at our table.
I looked at @astrowave. "Dragon Sap Spritzer for the gentleman," he said. "I'll take a potato water." He followed the waiter's lead by ignoring @bitchfrog, who grunted at him. "She's been fed," he said, ignoring her and dismissing the waiter.
"She's been fed," she muttered angrily at him.
"All part of the show, @bitchfrog," I interjected. I noticed that the black balloon woman had stopped bobbing her leg and was now making conversation with the rest of her table.
"I know," @bitchfrog whispered, playing the part and looking down at the rosy birch tabletop.
"That doesn't mean it's easy," I continued, "and that doesn't mean it doesn't make you feel like shit." She did then glance at me, and I nodded back. I promise I'll do my best, I thought to myself. Don't let the human die.
A few minutes later, baldy returned with our drinks. The two men in blue suits had gone off to the Hot Potato room as well. Normal bar stuff, I assumed. Nothing suspicious as far as I could tell.
Right on queue, I sipped my Dragon Sap Spritzer and flipped the paper coaster over. It read 3101A, which would be the room we needed to visit.
We had messaged ahead to lay the groundwork. We weren't here for food and drinks, and baldy knew that. We wanted to meet with @diamonddocker, who ran a small but profitable set of merchant ships from his penthouse above Bar None, and now we knew it was okay to proceed.
I pocketed my coaster and nodded to @astrowave. He stood first, and then the three of us made our way to the back corridor to the elevator.
I nodded at baldy on our way, and I glanced back at black balloon girl. Her head was facing the other direction, but the woman across from her noticed my look and with her eyes, must have signaled to black ballon girl, whose right leg started bobbing again.
I was disappointed to leave the gorgeous Dragon Blood Tree behind in exchange for white metal hallways and rose-colored lights. But there was work to do. Work I hated to do, but work is work.