I took a seat in the capsule and Amber handed me the token before taking a step back.
Remembering her instructions, I inserted it into the slot as she had directed before reclining myself into the seat.
The capsule closed up and the lights in it dimmed, plunging the area around me into darkness.
There was a sort of whirring noise coming from around me and I guess that’s just the machine starting up.
Sure enough, the space above me lit up to project a screen directly in front of me, showing several words floating in front of my face.
‘Public records of Pirate activity around Theeve Orbital Habitat Station. Last updated today at 08:00 Standard Hours. Beginning playback.’
Ok… That’s probably what I will get implanted in my head in a while…
Then just as I thought of that, the screen started to rapidly flash and I wondered what was going on before finally realising that it was basically speeding through the contents of the record like a movie put on fast forward at an insane speed.
I waited for something else to happen but as suddenly as the screen had appeared, it then disappeared without a trace.
The inside of the capsule then lit up before it opened, making me feel really confused.
Err… Was that it? Because I don’t feel any different?
Wait… Maybe the idea is already implanted inside me and I just need to think about it?
Ok… Let’s see now… If I were to think about the recent public records of pirate activity… The recent places with pirate activity are…
…
I have no idea.
Amber peered into the capsule, “So? How was it?”
I blinked a few times at her, “I… Don’t think it worked?”
Amber frowned, “What do you mean? Where are the last locations where pirate activities have been sighted?”
“I don’t know… Like I really don’t know.”
“Huh? Wait… Are you saying the machine didn’t work on you?”
“Err… I guess so? Because I don’t feel any different… The only thing I remember is the screen flashing by really fast in front of me and that’s it. I didn’t even fall unconscious or anything.”
She gave me a look like I had just told her that I saw a god or something.
“That’s… Weird… Huh… I don’t actually know what to say to that,” She finally spoke after a while.
“Does that mean I can’t get stuff implanted directly inside my head?”
“I don’t… Know… If I had to guess… Maybe whatever made you lose your memories also screwed up your head? Wait… What am I talking about? Of course it screwed up your head if it already made you lose your memories.”
I grimaced, “Are there any other cases like mine?”
She hesitated for a moment, “... Not outside of this station that I know of at least… Oh wait! Maybe your memories aren’t actually lost but are kept locked up or something? Then when it tried to implant the knowledge inside you, it goes into the part of your head that is locked? Err.. Fuck I dunno, I’m not a brain scientist.”
I shrugged, “Oh well… I guess at least I know Archives are useless on me and I have to learn things the old fashioned way…”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Not gonna lie, I feel a little relieved with this because that also means that those people who might try to brainwash others using this won’t be able to do the same to me. Not that I’m expecting that to happen since Amber already told me measurements have been put in place to prevent exactly this from happening.
I looked around before turning to her, “I suppose we should leave now? Sorry about wasting your money…”
She waved her hand at me, “What? It’s just fifty Credits. I’ll be a horrible girlfriend if I were to start nitpicking about something like this. Especially when you showed me such a good time in bed this morning.”
Right…
Both of us left the building though I did ask if Amber wanted to purchase another token for that data because I’m pretty sure she wanted to use that to find pirates that we could hunt.
She told me it was unnecessary since we could just search it up ourselves on the GalaNet as it’s public information so there was no need to do that. What’s more, it’s not like the pirates would definitely be at those locations especially since the pirates themselves would be able to access this information and knew better than to stick around when their activities have been recorded.
That left us the rest of the day free so we decided to do some more shopping, especially since we earned quite a lot of money on the last hustle.
What I wanted especially was more food for me to cook with, since I’m still in the experimentation stage where I’m trying to figure out combinations that work well together.
It kind of feels like I’m doing alchemy to be honest… And I actually like it.
Amber then brought me down to some kind of supermarket down the road where they had a lot of different kinds of food stocked.
I stepped inside and looked around, frowning when I realised that the aisles that I could see were all stocked with the synthetic food packages.
“So… Where are the fresh produce aisle?” I asked.
Amber once again gave me the look like I had said something incomprehensible, “Fresh produce?”
“Yeah. You know, like the freshly cut meat and vegetables and stuff.”
“Do you mean like organic food?”
“Err… Sure? Like you know… Potatoes, beef, rice, some fruits and… Oh! Some seasoning as well would be nice.”
She blinked at me, “Tera… There’s no way a station like this would stock those kinds of items you know? Even if they did, it would be really, really expensive.”
I swivelled my head towards her, “What the heck? What kind of dystopian setting is this? Why wouldn’t there be fresh food here?”
She pointed up towards the sky, “The agricultural worlds are mostly located in the inner sectors of civilization since, you know, terraforming a planet takes time and it’s not like all the planets out there are suitable to be turned into farmlands. Then of course the food produced there would supply the systems closest to them first. If they were to ship them out to systems like these, unless your ship is really fast, it’ll probably spoil on the way here.”
“Err… You’re telling me that there’s no food preservation tech on those transport ships?”
She chuckled, “Yeah, there is. Mostly on those dedicated freighter ships that are slow as fuck. Why the heck would any freighter captain take the long ass journey to ship it all the way here when they could just ship it to somewhere nearby for less hassle, less travel time and less cost? The only reason they’d do that is if some rich guy is paying for it so only the rich here can get the fresh foods while peasants like us are stuck with these.”
She picked up one of the synthetic food packages off the shelf and waved it in the air.
I frowned at the package, “What even are these made of?”
She shrugged and tossed it back on the shelf, “Fuck if I know. Could read it up if you want to but I think I’m better off not knowing. It keeps me satiated well enough so I ain’t complaining. That’s until you came along of course, already ruining me to all this crap food.”
I sighed, “Oh well… That just means I’ll have to just keep experimenting on these then… Got anything good around here?”
“Eh… I’m not even that picky before this. Most of these are just the same thing but with a little bit of difference in flavour. So I guess you can just pick whatever you think is good?”
I took a look at the shelf in front of me and inspected the words printed on them.
Let’s see… We have synthbeef… Synthlamb… Synthvenison… Synthtomato… Synthcorn… Synthwood… Synthchicken… Wait what?
I picked up the second last one and gave it a once over, confirming that it indeed says ‘Synthwood’ on the packaging.
“Why the fuck would anyone want to eat this?” I asked.
Amber peeked over my shoulder and shrugged, “I dunno. Some people seem to like it. I tried it once and it was too chewy for my liking.”
“And the taste?!”
“Err… A little spicy I think? I don’t really know how to describe it. I only ate it once and that was a long time ago so I could be wrong.”
Seriously what the fuck? I wanna know who exactly in the company in charge of deciding the flavours would think that maybe they should make ‘Synthwood’ as a flavour?!
Ah fuck it, let’s just get one to try it out.
In fact, let’s just get at least one of each here and a few more of those that I already know are good.
Then I realised that synthwood isn’t even the weirdest thing that is on display.
Why the fuck is there ‘Synthsand’?!!
Seriously!