[The employees from the place where you have a fake accommodation with your real name responded finally.]

[Took their sweet time with it...]

[They most likely waited for every receptionist to show up to their next shift to ask them.]

[Don’t try to reason with my impatience please,] I said. [What’s the message?]

[You won’t like it.]

[Aaaah, please don’t tell me what I think you’re going to tell me,] I whined with a pained expression.

[Someone was looking for you a while back.]

[Son of a...]

Even though I was a true pessimist, in this case, I really hoped I wouldn’t get news like this. Especially since after a quick follow-up question, they confirmed that only one guy was looking for me. Where was the other guy? Did they split up to follow the two trails? Did they even know that I left the planet? What if throwing out that bait gave them the idea that I already left Hatuu?

I didn’t feel like buffing up my headache into a full-blown migraine, so, instead of chewing on the past and thinking about mistakes or regrets I decided to focus on my next steps. For example our early departure from the station.

After the successful first S.C.A.M. meeting, the following receptions were a mixed bag on the station. It worked out with some people but other ones refused me in the end. Their reaction was completely understandable; I wouldn’t believe me either if I were in their shoes. I hoped that after the first round the whole process would become a lot easier with a handful of satisfied references. There were five more days until I was obliged to start handing back credits. Our original plan was to try a new round of meet-ups after we made a few of our first customers happy but the message changed our minds.

Getting a cheap shuttle I could travel with became our main priority. Genna was already deep into research to choose the best possible place for our next stop. Buying a shuttle meant that I had to spend most of my credits on it. Which in return meant that I would have to work really hard to get new clients at our next stop or the whole plan would collapse on us.

------

The cheapest shuttle I could buy on the station was the Geleton S which came at the generous price of 500,000 credits without any extra features. It was a glorified metal coffin. The cabin had barely any space to move around, and the storage area wasn’t bigger than a sedan’s trunk. Looking like a standing dull-gray capsule, the machine reminded me of a certain, famous bounty hunter’s ship in a smaller edition. I went through the purchase only after I finished up everything on the station and packed up my few belongings. The unfortunate part about buying a ship was it required my personal information. It didn’t bother me that much since I would leave with the ship right away. After that, it would be near impossible to follow me since flying or entering and leaving docking bays didn’t require my credentials. Ready to leave I bought my first space vehicle. It wasn’t something that I wanted to celebrate, but it had a novel feeling to it. The first negative thing I noticed after entering was the lack of windows. Traveling with this tiny coffin wasn’t the best activity to spend time with.

The shitty shuttle didn’t have Bend-Phase engines, no surprise there. We had to use one of the station’s Bend-Phase Space Gates. I heard about this phase stuff so much already but I never bothered to ask Genna. Since we had a lengthy and very uncomfortable travel ahead of us, I decided it was a good topic to draw my attention away from the slight claustrophobia I was experiencing.

[That’s a hard question to answer. If I explained the basic concept the conventional way you wouldn’t understand anything from it since you lack basic education from this era. For the lack of better solution, I’m going to explain it in a special way. Don’t take it as an insult but there’s an oversimplified explanation used with sub-sentient races.]

[Sub-sentient what?! Am I at the level of a monkey?]

[I don’t know what a monkey is and I didn’t look down on your intelligence. I only gave you a valid reason why I’m giving you an oversimplified version. If you take offense with this I could download a set of educational material and you can prepare yourself properly.]

[If you put it like this… I think I’ll be fine with the level -1 explanation.]

[Sure, but after I’m done you’ll tell me about this ‘monkey’ you mentioned,] she said. [Traveling around in space is bothersome. The distances are enormous and faster than light travel is a can of uncomfortable problems. The Bend-Phase technology, on the other hand, provides a very convenient way for traveling long distances. As a matter of fact, the Bridge machines work on the same concept, too.]

[The teleport gates?]

[Yes, and the Bridge-Tunnels too that you used to get across the station quickly. The invention came from the innate ability of the Mythoc race. Imagine our reality as a thin circle. Now inside it and around it imagine a lot more bigger and smaller circles. Each layer is made out of a set amount of points and each point is connected to the respective ones on the other layers.]

[Lots of circles and they are connected to each other? It’s like a really dense spider web,] I nodded as I tried to imagine what she was explaining.

[I have to mention that I explain it like this because it’s the easiest way to understand the concept but in practice, it works completely differently. I know it sounds illogical to you but trust me on this.]

[Whatever… Sub-sentient me do well. No complain give.]

[Stop that!] snapped back my tutor. [Layers and connected dots. When you use Bend-Phase you shift an object from our layer or plane to a lower or higher one. If the object goes to a lower plane then the distance between points is less since the circle is smaller. The more planes one goes down the less he/she has to travel between point A and B. For example, the Bridge Gates operate only at short distances and the machine makes the entrance and the destination literally one step away. The Bridge Tunnels on the station work longer distances so you have to walk a little. Space travel with Bend-Phasing follows the same logic but with much longer distances,] she continued.

[Are these other planes different worlds or dimensions? Can someone go and live there?]

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

[You’ve seen the Mythoc people before. They bend-phase out their appearance. The same happens when you go to another plane. Everything turns out of place and distorted. When you shift to another plane you don’t go anywhere essentially, since they take up the same space but slightly differently. Without proper shielding, the other planes are quite hostile, but if you have the proper equipment and plenty of energy to spare, you can stay there indefinitely. Before you think it’s the perfect hiding place I have to disappoint you. You aren’t in another place while you are in Bend-Phase. You are still there but… not entirely.]

[So no pocket dimension kingdoms?] I asked with a wry expression. [What do you mean by hostile by the way? Let me guess! Tentacle void creatures!]

[No hostile lifeforms, don’t worry. The space is just a shifted, chaotic mess. Air, temperature, gravity, radiation and many other things are fluctuating way above or below the limits.]

[Like in the darkness?]

[No! The two are in a whole different league. The Bend-Phase environment and the Darkness compare to each other by chaotic nature like a little pebble and a planet.]

---------

I left the logistics part of the plan completely in Genna’s virtual hands. She handled the search for potential victims, the communication and the financial side too. Thinking like that it felt like I was being carried along in this, to be honest. In the end, I decided who to approach and I was the one that had to convince people to give me credits without any proof that I could do what I advertised. When the first month came to a finish I made sure that Genna was very punctual with the transfer of credits. 1414-4312 was very pleased with our conduct and she immediately requested another meeting to discuss further steps in our business relations. Unfortunately, I had to refuse a personal meeting since I already left the station at that point and had no intentions to go back. Instead, we had a lengthy conversation and in the end, my account was heavier with 200,000 credits. She was that pleased with our first agreement. Even though the credits were welcomed but the real value for me came with my first happy ‘customer’ I could use as a reference to convince new ones.

The months that came after this were most likely my happiest since the accident. I worked hard with a clear goal, I traveled from station to station and met all kinds of people. I knew I was pretending to be someone else, but I didn’t care one bit.

After the first month, the whole thing started to snowball. Convincing new people became increasingly easier and most of the old ones came back for new rounds every month. It quickly reached the point where people approached me on their own. I was a single person with an A.I. and I could only be at one place at a time. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t keep meeting every victim… or client. When we added the holo-conference meeting to our repertoire the whole plan went crazy. Way too many people became interested. I still had personal meetings wherever I went, but the number of people we had to deal with through messages, calls, and conferences was ridiculous. Genna mentioned several times that she wouldn’t be able to handle so much work alone without her upgrade. She was a real trooper and I had to realize that without her I would have failed miserably at this. Handling the credits wasn’t hard for her but doing thorough background checks on every person that approached us was a time-consuming chore. It was difficult to select out only those who deserved our offer but she was insistent on this matter. She had a point. I knew that my end goal was simply finishing off with a huge scam but helping out so many good people along the way gave me a virtuous feeling in my chest. I felt good about what I was doing and Genna seemed so too. Teachers, doctors, environmentalist, researchers, charitable people and many more. She put a lot of effort into the selections. I think she desperately tried to balance out the upcoming ending.

At first, I was still anxious about the people who might have been after me so when I had enough credits I bought a level 3 BioEnhancement to ease my worries a bit. Unfortunately, the efficiency was only 67%. After the third month I hardly ever thought about the issue anymore. I was traveling around without leaving behind any traces of my real identity. I felt safe.

With so much cash in my account it was a struggle to keep myself from going on a spending spree. However, I couldn’t do that since we had a strict plan. Genna made it clear to me that she was going along with the plan and she was helping me, but she wouldn’t allow me to keep this up for too long. The longer I kept phase one going the more credits I would have to scam out of someone in the end. Also, the increasing credit movement meant the increasing possibility of attracting unwanted attention. The completion of the project would be phase three which was buying my own ship. A ship I could use as a new home and travel around the universe. Although I wasn’t supposed to spend too much from the ‘borrowed’ credits I still managed to convince Overlord Genna that it was a good idea to buy a Neural Knowledge Base for Basic Ship Engineering Knowledge. It was a reasonable skill for a future ship owner. The shuttle didn’t count!

We were in the middle of the fourth month when we came to an agreement to close down shop and refuse any new ‘customers’. The number of people and credits were getting out of control exponentially. During these months Genna worked on a small list as a side project. It contained information about potential targets for phase two and the time has come to make a decision. It wasn’t an easy one; the stakes were incredibly high for us. If we messed up something we would fail miserably. This was the ending act of our long project and we had to make sure that everything worked out perfectly. The risks and the pressure were grating on me but I didn’t feel bad about it. I wasn’t afraid of doing this or regretting ever starting it. It wasn’t a nice thing to be excited about screwing someone over, but honestly… I didn’t give a damn about it anymore.

Genna was doing her thousandth round of analysis on the phase two list and I had my own preparations to manage too. I needed to get some human blood.