“Instant communication regardless of distance! This is the Internet 5.0! This is QEF!”
-Ricardo Bertolini, 2143, Announcement of the Quantum Entanglement Forum
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I had vastly underestimated the size of the Terra Nova Enclave space station. I knew that there weren’t any limitations when building in space, the only rule was that it should hold together, but that was all. Despite that, the space station was a labyrinth of cosmopolitan proportions. I knew there weren’t many people living inside, only around twenty-thousand, way less than a Proxima b outpost, but I was surprised how much space these thousands of people had for themselves.
Terra Nova Enclave was the main… well, enclave for people of Proxima Centauri and space, not only Proxima b. To get here we took the planetary space elevator and then we were shipped from the low-orbit space station toward the enclave at subluminic speeds. The journey wasn’t that long, only a few hours, but I guess space distorted the scale of everything.
We were nowhere near to 1% light speed, but even then, a few hours could be tens of thousands of kilometers. Considering that the Terra Nova Enclave had to stay outside of the gravitational mess that was the trinity of stars and has a stable orbit, we may be at the borders of the stellar system. And considering the sheer amount of celestial bodies of a trinary stellar system… gravitational catapulting may provide enough speed for 1% light speed without further assistance…
“Hello, ground control to Lorem?” Mérida swayed her hand in front of me trying to catch my attention.
“In any case, it would be space control.” I retorted sarcastically, as I stated my presence.
“Bah! Technicisms!” The long-haired woman, whom I was finally able to assert that she was no longer taller than me, groaned. “What were you even thinking? You spaced out?”
I didn’t acknowledge her wordplay. “Just thinking about the intricacies of gravitational wells on a trinary stellar system.”
Mérida deadpanned. “Could you stop being autistic for once in your life?”
“I am not autistic,” I stated as a matter of fact.
“I dunno… that’s what a neurodivergent would say.” She said squinting her eyes.
“There’s no victory with you?”
“No!” Mérida answered with a sweet and joyful smile, an expression worthy of a museum painting.
I sighed in defeat. “Where’s the restaurant, either way?”
“Restaurant?” She tilted her head in confusion, her auburn hair following suit. “Oh, right! The restaurant. Nope. You are not going to go there with these clothes.”
“What’s wrong with them?” I pulled the shirt off my white tracksuit.
“Oh my goodness! How can you be so man-coded?” Mérida rolled her eyes in exasperation. “We are going to go to a first-class restaurant, and you want to go in a tracksuit?”
“Yes?” I shrugged, unable to see the problem.
“Aaargh!” The woman pulled her hair in a fit of rage.
Honestly, I could understand where she was coming from, but seeing her suffering like that made it glorious to fake total and utter incompetence.
“You still need new clothes.” Makoto butted into the conversation, being the only voice of reason in the group. “I doubt any you have will fit you with…” she gestured around the local zone of my body, “all of that.”
“Well, I intended to do that later,” I responded.
“And we want you to do it now.” Mérida pouted. “I’m not letting you walk around dressed like that. You are an Influential now, right? Then dress for it.”
“What are you, my mother?”
“For a lack of parental figure, I would say yes.” She replied with her arms crossed.
Damn, if she was resorting to orphan jokes then that meant she was really pissed off. Not that I was bothered by them. None of us knew our parents, but they at least knew their names, even if they hadn’t ever tried to contact them.
“Lead the way then.” I extended my palm forward.
Makoto and Mérida walked before me with the distracted gazes of someone searching for something in their interface. And considering they weren’t talking, also chatting with each other. Why couldn’t they just talk? They were right next to each other. Yes, I was aware that they were plotting against me, but I couldn’t care. I always allowed them to do that if that made them happy.
If it wasn't because I had the map opened in the corner of my eyes, I would have lost myself with all the ups and downs we had to take to arrive at our destination.
“This place looks… curious…” I said as I looked at the façade of the shop. It had an elongated screen that displayed the text ‘Gloria’s Extravaganza’.
“We’ve visited this place before whilst you were sleeping,” Makoto explained to me. “We are going to buy a tunic elsewhere, but first we felt like you should have other types of clothes.”
Translation: We are going to humiliate you in the most insurmountable way you can imagine.
The store looked like any other clothing store, if you ignored the clothes on display, that is.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
I saw a figure leap from the counter, my reaction speed amazing me. My body tensed, my instincts being sharper and wilder than before, but I managed to get a hold of myself.
“Hello, I am Gloria. Are you going to shop today, girls?”
Gloria was a… curious woman. She had a fair cleavage and sultry body, alongside lustrous white hair, but what caught my eyes were her extremities. She had four arms. They moved with her breathing and pulse, so I knew they weren’t cybernetic upgrades, but purely biological in nature. Though her fingers were slightly modified as the superior pair of arms had metal fingernails that resembled needles.
“Yes!” Mérida greeted her. “I brought our sugar daddy with us.” She pointed at me.
“Greetings, I am the sugar daddy.” I saluted with a deadbeat tone and offered my hand to the shopkeeper.
“Oh, I don’t see many of those!” She took my hand enthusiastically with one of her lower arms. Definitely biological. “Though I must say, what are you doing with some students?”
The judgmental tone in her voice was obvious. Humans were adults, students were minors. Getting called sugar daddy by a subhuman… student, by a student, must have sounded pretty suspicious.
“I’ve just come out of my evolution. These are my classmates.” I explained.
“Oh, I see!” She clapped her upper arms and reinforced the handshake with her other lower hand. “Sorry for implying things.”
“No problem,” I said with a smile.
“Anyways,” she undid the handshake, “what do you all want to buy?”
“One thing first.” I interrupted before Makoto and Mérida could talk. “You are a tailor, right?” I said whilst looking at her modified arms.
“Indeed.” Gloria nodded happily. “Tailor, seamstress, fashionista! Everything related to clothes! I even do cosplay sometimes. Do you require of my services?”
“I would like to make use of them, yes. Here.” I took my old tunic out of my tracksuit. “These are the clothes I used before my evolution. I’ve grown quite a lot since then, so they don’t fit me any longer.”
“Have you been keeping that tunic all that time inside your clothes?” Mérida whispered with repulsion, and I just rolled my eyes.
“Where would I keep them then?” I whispered back.
“In your hands?” She stated matter-of-factly.
“Hmm…” Gloria snatched the tunic out of my arms, ignoring the bickering, and unrolled it. She positioned it right in front of me. “It would be an easy fix, but considering the amount of new cloth needed, you would be better off buying a new set.”
“It was my graduation and speech tunic, I’m rather fond of it, so I wouldn’t want to throw it away.”
“Ah, gotcha.” She immediately understood my implicit message. “Can do then. It will be 2000 computes.”
Mérida and Makoto instantly cringed at the price tag. They weren’t Influentials, and I don’t know if they even had access to their Tycoon yet, so 2000 computes was two months of savings for them. And the tunic itself hadn’t been cheap. 10.000 computes. Almost a whole year of common student savings. I would have been worried if I had wasted more than 10.000 computes on myself.
Wait… I was their sugar daddy! Fuck! 12.000 computes per year, allowances start at 15, so until here it’s 10 years, for a total of 120.000 computes. 10k per miscellaneous, 10k for the tunic, but also and influx of around 100k on the research budget…
I looked again at my wallet.
102.420 computes
Did I give them one HUNDRED thousand computes over a decade? Maybe I was making them too happy.
“Sent them,” I replied to Gloria after sending her a transaction petition.
“Got it.” And with that, 2k computes went from my account.
Money was so meaningless, intangible, and abundant that I couldn’t care less about it. Sure, they wanted to go to the opera, fly in fast vehicles, and eat expensive foods, but not once I had done that for myself alone. If it weren’t for the girls… maybe I would have done nothing in my life…
Huh… I guess I was making myself happy too.
“Do you need to take my sizes?” I asked Gloria after the transaction screen closed.
“Sure, extend your arms.”
I T-posed, being already acquainted with the process. The seamstress eyes’ flashed for a second and then I knew the process it over.
“Thankfully it’s a tunic, otherwise… it would be quite difficult to work around that obstacle.”
I didn’t comment on it. That’s three people already making comments about it, damn it.
“Okay, enough business. It’s time for you to try some clothes!” Mérida shouted and pushed me from behind. Even if she was close to two meters in height, her strength left a lot to be desired. I doubted she couldn’t have pushed me around if I hadn’t let her.
What followed was a maddening session of Mérida and Makoto playing dress-up with me. As the display in the front explained, this shop was quite extravagant. There wasn’t any normal clothing, but more… eccentricities. I could recognize old-world clothing, like butler sets or cowboy attires, and even if they felt like costumes, they were the real deal, made out of actual comfortable materials and made to be serviceable.
“What if you undo the first buttons?” Mérida suggested when I donned a shirt and jeans outfit.
“Hides too much,” Makoto said after I revealed the Arabic-inspired dress they had brought me. I held myself from saying that it was a dress thought for women. The seamstress also held herself, though she was grinning in enjoyment.
“Oh, quite dapper!” Gloria herself butted in as I wore the Victorian gentleman outfit.
This continued for a while. I doubted we were going to buy anything in this store. Yes, the clothes were well done, but they weren’t clothes I would wear. I limited myself to tunics, tracksuits, and coats, and whilst the gentleman's outfit got close, it was too on the nose.
“Please keep it!” Makoto jumped at me with the last outfit. “I will buy it myself if need be!”
“Uhm…” I was left speechless by her forwardness. She didn’t tend to react that way.
My current clothes were a set of clothes eerily similar to the yukata the Japanese people used to dress centuries ago. I didn’t know much about their culture, but I was aware this was a male variant. I knew Makoto inherited her name from those people, so maybe seeing an outfit of that heritage excited her. The best way to describe the clothing was a mixture between a tunic and a bathrobe, with a cloth belt that kept it together. The yukata itself was pure black without patterns, and the belt was windy green.
“I guess if you like it that much…” I didn’t even ask for the price. I wouldn’t use the money, and if they were happy with the purchase, so I was. Anyway, I soon would have more money than I would be capable of spending.
“That would be 15.999 computes!” Gloria replied instantly as if reading my mind.
Makoto instantly paled. “I retract my words, you don’t need to do it, Lorem.” Her embarrassment was genuine.
“I’ll take it,” I responded with a smile. The set even came with its wooden flip-flops. I guessed they had a name, but I was too lazy to search for it.
“You really don’t have to…” She added with teary eyes.
I patted her on the head. It would have been impossible to do so in such a way before, but I was now taller than her. The gesture was enough for her to stop, there was no need for words.
“Is this formal enough for your restaurant?” I snarked at Mérida with my arms crossed inside the sleeves of the yukata. It was as if the clothes were made solely for that posture. “I’m starving.”
“I g-guess,” Mérida replied stunned. Something told me she had less than 10k computes in her wallet.
I eyed Gloria, and she sent me a transaction petition and went behind the counter as I paid for it. A few seconds later she returned with a paper bag with my tracksuit inside.
“Thanks for your patronage!” She bowed at us, two arms stretched forward, the other two lifted her apron and skirt. “I’d like to see you in the future, you make for quite the solid mannequin.”
I ignored the four-armed seamstress's morbid remark and allowed the girls to guide me to that restaurant.