Where did you go after sers Sigrid, Meifen and Shirong had left you in the square with ser 5*EZdoR?

We went to hotel Paladai. It’s some upscale place in one of the main streets of the Licensed District. They themed it after a tropical island of sorts. At the entrance, there is this enormous domed lobby, where they have recreated a beach and water with colored fishes and so on. We had to cross this bridge decorated with flowers. On the other end there were disposables waiting for us with refreshments. They were wearing these huge decorated wigs and earrings, and nothing else besides a loincloth with the Paladai logo.

We each had to pick one of them to be our non, so I took Number 4. She was the hottest-looking one. Cute face, nice small but firm ass, and some cool body ink with a blue eagle painted across her bare chest. Guowei appeared to be ashamed, hehe. He didn’t know where to look and he just picked the first one. Valeriya took Number 7, some athlete-looking guy with a well-oiled body.

Suddenly, Five Star began shouting, something about Rapture being disposed. He was over it quickly, and yelled something about how he’d fuck all the remaining disposables before the night was over, so he had the left over nine disposables following him.

We went to see our rooms, which were big and fancy. Then we gathered up in Guowei’s room to discuss. We received a message that Five Star was heading out again to go to Plouton and he asked whether we wanted to see that.

Valeriya asked Number 7 if she had any idea what to expect there, and the girl turned on the room’s holo and displayed one of Plouton’s public channels that had some dinner show with this big stage where there were some disposables suspended on meathooks. Some things that looked like grinning demons fucked and butchered them. You should have seen Guowei’s face, hehe, when he called it to be turned off.

I guess I don’t have to tell you that we replied to Five Star that none of us were interested in going. “Shame,” he answered. In an uncharacteristic moment of helpfulness, he recommended we go out and do something fun during the night, and he’d come to pick us up in the afternoon the next day. Then he signed off.

Did you go out?

Well, right after dealing with Five Star, all three of us wanted to go out. We were on vacation, so of course we were going to make the best of our time off.

So, we discussed our options, and Guowei was a bit uncomfortable with all the overt sex and nudity stuff going on. So first we went to hang out at the poolside bar in the hotel. Still had some sexy dancers doing their thing so Guowei just couldn’t avoid it altogether, hehe. We saw a few dozen of the other guests in that space, and it turned out they were far less hmm... conservative than we were.

In what way?

You want specifics? Well, for instance, there was a small pavilion where we could see six people that looked like half girl half fish having a party involving lots of alcohol and them having one of their hotel-nons lie naked on a table. He was buried under a load of seafood, and they were eating from that stuff. Later that night, one drunk lad accidentally drowned his non in one of the pools because he was sitting on her. A member of staff came over… I mean a real person, at least I think it was… well she wore clothes at least… anyway, he got a new one in minutes.

We were not doing any of such things that night, we were just drinking fancy drinks and I had number 4 massage my shoulders and stuff.

When we had enough of the place, we moved out, back into the streets of the Licenced District. We found that the hotel disposables would accompany us and were not limited to serving us the hotel, didn’t expect that. I thought it was advertising, but Valeriya complained that they’d also be watching us all the time and would probably tell Five Star where we were going, if he didn’t have other ways of knowing already.

We wanted to contact the others, but they were gone from the infosphere. Guowei was worried something had happened to them, but there wasn’t much we could do. Besides, what could happen? Even if someone had disposed them, they’d be fine.

Hey, doesn’t that make your job super boring? Now that people can’t die and everyone is safe and stuff?

You hold misconceptions regarding the Compliance’s role in the Empire.

Want to tell?

Please continue your recount of the events of that evening.

Well, I got into this argument with Guowei. You know, it must have been frustrating for him, now that half of our people had just run off and that he couldn’t control the situation with Five Star, or something. Or he was upset over the things he found on Piscium. Anyway, he seemed to have a problem with my attitude. I said I just wanted to have some harmless fun and that we were on vacation, and he was being overprotective and all that.

Then out of nowhere he began making these accusations about how I didn’t care about our regulations and our code of conduct and all that. I hadn’t even done anything at that time. So, I answered that there were no such regulations in effect here, that we were on Piscium, not on our base. What was he even going to do if I broke any regulations? I jokingly said I was off to fuck my disposable whore. What was he gonna do about it, throw me in the brig when we got back home? He didn’t seem to have an answer, and instead turned around and walked away, clearly being mad.

Valeriya briefly went after him, but it was to no avail. Guowei was heading back to his room for the night, but Valeriya wanted to go outside, just like me.

Where did you go?

We took to the streets. First, we had some more drinks at an upscale but uneventful place not far from the hotel. The four of us settled into a booth with this blue velvet seating. Valeriya asked me what I thought of this place, and I told her it was nothing special. She said she liked the decorations, they were so pretty.

We saw two women there dancing, dressed in flashy outfits that ensured we noticed them. One of them was wearing some kind of transparent dress that covered just her ass and crotch, and one of the other ones had a glowing skirt covering her legs and was wearing a glowing wig that shone in this waterfall of rainbow colors. Her top was open up to her shoulders.

We ordered some drinks through our aura, and another hottie on rollerblades delivered it soon after.

Did you discuss anything of note?

Yeah. I asked Valeriya about her plans for the future. But her answers were non-committal. I think she said stuff about wanting to explore more worlds first, see more of the Empire and its many cultures. She asked me if I had any long-term plans. I answered that I was more concerned with the short-term plans. I was thinking very hard about whether or not I even wanted to go back to the colony at this point.

She looked shocked, as if the thought of leaving had not occurred to her before, although I think she was just pretending. I mean, that thought must have been in the back of anyone’s mind and it might have been the underlying reason why Guowei was growing more and more upset.

Why would we go back to the colony and work our ass off for Elisa, when we could live here, or on any other world? I said Elisa was a fool to make us work. She could just get an army of disposables to get the job done in half the time. Or less, you know, if they are anything like Max. What was the point of us working? What was the point of anything? Why not enjoy the good things that have befallen us?

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Do you still feel that way?

Well… You know… I’ve been trained as a scientist. Inorganic chemistry. And now all my training is useless and obsolete. The Empire is a few hundred million years ahead of me scientifically and you have beings that are a few hundred million times smarter than me. What am I going to do? Spend a million years in school so I know how to manufacture some iridomite?

Even Max is way better than me in everything. A while ago, I watched him work with doctor Otto in the lab. Totally concentrated. And he moves like… you know, hmmm… Well, I can’t do it. No hands, haha. Can you see what I am trying to do?

I understand.

He is like a robot, super quick, precise, and efficient. When he was loading the sampler machine, he just stacked up all the sample dishes and dropped them into their slots like they were playing chips, it was insane. How am I going to compete with that? I am obsolete and unemployable, man.

Elisa is just pretending nothing has changed and wants to keep everything going like it used to be in our time, just with the corp shackles off. I often feel like she’s treating us like we are some dumb idiots. I don’t appreciate that. I just don’t…

Everyone with a pair of eyes can see where this is going...

Where is that?

People are not going to stay in the colony to be Elisa’s pets. Why would we? We’re first-gen colonists. Most of us are bottomscalers with no family. We were hoovered up by the Company and tucked into the Dolya because we had no choice.

And now? Now the Empire gives us a choice, the first time we had one in our miserable lives, whether we want to work on our shitty barren planet or live the high life none of us could ever dream of in a place like Piscium. I know what I will choose. I’m not gonna enjoy myself if I do pointless work. I am no Max, dammit.

Did you say this to ser Marakova?

Not in so many words. Didn’t want to ruin the evening with this kind of talk. I was just happy to be able to be with her.

Be with her?

Yes. Without people like Guowei sticking their nose into everything. Still though, she did keep her distance from me. It frustrated me. She had always been closer with her female friends than with me, or any man.

I see. What happened afterward?

Hehe. After that, it was about two hours later, when I was standing with my little disposable at a nightclub. It had this dance floor in a small underground area underneath. The walls were all glass, and they were filling it with smoke and lights so that it looked as though it was underwater. There were plenty of people there doing slow and fast dances; guys and girls and everything in between. It was hard to tell who was what because of the colored lights and everything else on, and we were already well on the way to getting wasted.

The music was really slow and low... good for a moment of calm before going back out to party hard... and I had Number 4 dancing and having fun. We danced for three songs straight, including some pretty naughty things involving Number 4 going on. I figured we could do stuff that would get us thrown out at any well, normal place. I guess I made sure Valeriya had a good time, now that the booze had taken care of her usual reservedness. We ordered some ice teas to freshen up, and I headed down to the toilets to take care of business.

After that, I guess I was looking for some relief. That night, all I wanted was just to relax, just be lazy, be free. There was nothing bad that could happen, I remember myself thinking. This whole thing was still just a joke and I felt I should be laughing at myself.

We got out and wandered a little. The main street had come alive, and everything was packed. We tried to get into a few places that looked like fun, but they were full and without Five Star around, we found ourselves unable to jump the queue at the truly topscale places like that.

Where did you end up, eventually?

We both noticed the crowds in the streets got a bit rowdy, and neither of us wanted to be stuck in this push and pull for much longer. We got through some hub-tower and took the elevator up, as there was supposed to be a sky lounge up there, and we kind of enjoyed the view we had in the Spire.

When we got out, we ended up in this narrow corridor where a neatly groomed goon greeted us politely, but quickly asked us whether we were on the guestlist or not. He wore a formal black durumagi, but as he moved his arms I noticed the firmness of it and figured it was concealing body armor. A short baton at his hip made me convinced that he was more than just a receptionist and not one to be messed with.

We answered a negative and the man seemed to look us over for a while, then looked away. I thought he was asking permission from his boss or something, until a memo from Five Star popped up, just saying “Fixed it for ya!”.

The man gave us a friendly smile and a curt bow and invited us inside. The interior was dark and stylish, there was blacklight and stuff, and there were these low round booths surrounded by beaded curtains and lots of these decorative glowing vats with bubbling, foaming liquid inside.

We were approached by another well-dressed man. He introduced himself as Tae-Hyun and was supposed to be our watcher or whatever. He escorted us to an unoccupied booth and handed us a physical menu cart. Unfortunately, it was in one of these non-standard scripts that was all over this world, and I couldn’t read vermicelli...

You could have used your aura to translate it for you.

Yeah, well I’m not good with all that fancy new stuff in my brain, sorry. Maybe I was still too drunk. I don’t know, hehe. We did have some cool aura-stuff later, I’ll get to that, I swear...

Anyway, I just handed the menu-thing to Number 4 and told her to fetch something nice for us. Nons are there to assist us, after all. So she returned to us with a tray of goodies and...

Wait, is any of this illegal?

Not at all. Was it the first time you indulged in substances like these?

Well, it used to be illegal as fuck under Company regulations to use any kind of drugs. And if it was done while in space, you’d get executed for it, no exceptions. So no one dared to try it. Not sure what Elisa’s stance on it is nowadays. She took alcohol off the blacklist and let us have the pub, at least...

Please continue.

So hmm, we tried some of these drop things first, and I had Number 4 administer them. Well, I was knocked out for the next fifteen minutes. I felt light-headed and happy and everything was great and funny… I was having these bursts of laughter all the time too, I remember. As everything was making even less sense than it did before.

When we got to the second round of stuff, Valeriya realized that there were two of these sealed packs with turtles on ‘em. It said Pashi-doll on them but we took them for some kind of drug dispensers. We both opened one of the packs and some toy turtles came rolling out. I got a bright teal one with these colored balls, and Valeriya got a purple one with flames and stuff. We asked the nons what these were, and they told us to get the Pashi-doll community thingie installed, there was a code for that on the bag.

So I tried, and those dolls came to life. Well, it was entirely virtual, but it looked cool. Mine danced on the table and spun on its back, while Valeriya’s could shoot some small fireworks. We could give ‘em instructions by thought, and there was this game that made them fight and track stats and stuff.

We took the next round of drugs while we had fun slapping each other’s turtles around. Valeriya’s was stronger, at least in straight-up combat against my particular turtle, but mine could do this spinning thing and charge across the table and knock Valeriya’s off it. When I timed it right, I could still win some games.

However, a few more shots down the road there was little control we had left and both of us were just laughing at the turtles crawling around and falling over, probably a pretty accurate reflection of the state we were in ourselves.

Anyway, I remember that at some point I started having this idea that I was in danger or that we were too late and I had to somehow get to the hotel, right away, or something terrible would happen. I don’t know why exactly.

I tried to get up, but Number 4 pulled me down. Our watcher came over and said something, and Number 4 got one of the syringes off the tray and tried to inject me with it. It was probably some antidote or other kind of stimulant to get me to my senses, but I suddenly felt scared and thought she wanted to hurt me.

The watcher said I should stay down and they’d help me right away, but when he came closer, I leaped up with a sudden burst of strength. Number 4 dropped the syringe and clung to my arm, and I think Number 7 grabbed my leg. I stood still for a moment and the watcher was probably thinking the situation was under control. But when he bent down to pick up the syringe, I kicked Number 7 in the face and made a run for it...

You ran off while under influence?

I wasn’t exactly very sensible at the time, hehe. I really believed I urgently needed to get back to the hotel. I hit Number 4 and she tumbled away, then pushed past another one of the watchers. I didn’t take into account the doorman though. He tackled me, right as I thought I had gotten out.

“I am sorry ser, but I cannot allow you to disturb the peace,” was the last thing I heard before he pressed a cold metal object to the back of my head and treated me to a free trip to limbo.