Craig broke out the wreath and quickly reported back. The conversation was fairly short — but not so short that it stopped Craig from noticing he was walking alone for a moment.

  He turned around to see Jonathan still in the doorway of the raider hub, with a big dumb smile on his face.

  Craig supposed he was just relieved that his planet was okay after all, and decided to let him be for a minute. Or two. Or five.

  Craig was beginning to wonder if his new recruit was attracted to that… thing.

  Jonathan finally pulled himself away from the more advanced version of pinching someone's head between your fingers.

  "Oh hey Craig, sorry, I… is it time to head back?"

  Craig nodded, and they proceeded back to the ship.

  They got back and had a quick discussion where Rex broke down the next steps.

  "Alright — now that we know our bounties are a bust, we need to react carefully. We still need to try to sell everything we can for as much as we can, which means we all might need to collectively 'get our hustle on.'"

  Jonathan assumed Rex's current outfit was that of a door-to-door salesman, given the large steamer trunk and clipboard. The addition of a Girl Scouts uniform was a bit anachronistic, but still drove the point home.

  "First, we've got to get rid of this body. The good news is that after I reported the incident, a faction has already stepped up to reclaim it for a nominal transportation and housing fee — so that's good."

  "Hold on. They're not at all mad about what happened? I know we didn't technically break any laws, but isn't there some sort of threat of reprisal?"

  "Good question! Not at all. I told them the truth about the encounter — he perished as the end result of a conflict with local law enforcement. Why would we be accountable for that?"

  Jonathan scratched his head. "…and they just believed that?"

  "Of course! I'm not a liar after all."

  "…and they believed that too?"

  Rex took a moment to look hurt, as if accused of some unconscionable crime.

  "It's a well-known fact that Replicant Executives are incapable of lying. I dare you to find a part of my statement that was a lie."

  "The part where you omitted who actually killed the guy? Pretty sure that still counts as lying."

  "Only by your narrow definition."

  Jonathan quickly replayed every conversation he'd ever had with Rex in his head. Looking back, he remembered a lot of questions posed as hypotheticals, and several other cases of misleading wordplay — but…

  "Wait. Does that mean this ship really has hazard lights and space Triple-A actually exists?"

  "No, that was just a joke, which hardly counts."

  "…I see."

  Convincing someone that they're a liar didn't seem like the most productive use of time at the moment, so Jonathan decided to drop it. He resolved to pay much closer attention to how Rex phrased statements moving forward.

  "Okay, back to business. I've marked the body drop on your maps — should be straightforward. Once you're done with that, feel free to peruse the various stores out there and try to find the best bang for our buck. Any purchases or sales of goods must be approved by me. Sales of personal… 'services' are allowed, if you're so inclined — but only with protection… of a contract."

  Rex did a slimy wink.

  Jonathan couldn't help but imagine Craig in truck stop skivvies.

  And then himself, which he felt was considerably more off-putting.

  Jonathan hated thinking about his personal physique. He was 5'9ish —

  "5'8.63!"

  "Pal, no more measurements until I explicitly ask for them, please."

  He was 5'9ish, and skinny. Jonathan had an internet body, and a complex to go along with it. He wasn't addicted to his phone — he was almost always near his laptop instead, since it was just far easier to get more out of the internet. He took meals at his desk, ate convenient foods, and he knew it.

  Buddy interrupted Jonathan's self-loathing.

  "Hey — if you want to look good in fancy underwear, just do some extra exercise and eat a little more. Remember, you've got friends who can help you bulk up fast."

  "…That's a very good point. Thank you, Buddy."

  Jonathan was always about self-improvement, but mostly focused on brain over body.

  That was going to change now.

  But of course, before he could rebuild his own body, he had to get rid of another.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Craig and Jonathan headed to cold storage to do just that. Craig wheeled the body out.

  The hand carts were extremely similar to ones Jonathan had seen at IKEA — only instead of casters, each had a thick membrane at the bottom with very low friction. This level of friction was fixed, which meant that had Jonathan given into his intrusive thoughts, he could've ridden Kurkuril like a snowboard with very low risk of wipeout.

  It was the next best thing to a hover cart — which is what Jonathan had hoped for.

  In fact, he found it possibly superior, since the movement was so smooth without the chance of flipping over or getting stranded in the middle of a pond should you get chased onto one. It would just sink off shore right away, presumably able to continue sliding on the bottom.

  Not that it was likely to come up. But still worth thinking about.

  Jonathan couldn't help spinning the cart a few times as they crossed the hangar bay. The body's wrist may or may not have gotten snagged on a railing, but no real damage done.

  The next destination was just called "Turtle Dreams Storage" — on a slightly different path than the raider hub. This time, it was downward, at least in relation to the orientation of gravity. All the way to the bottom floor.

  There was a glass window in the lift which allowed Jonathan to get a glimpse of each floor as they passed. They looked mostly the same — except many of the lights were out at the bottom floor, which he took as a bad sign.

  As they left the lift, they also noticed small heaps of trash and some odd staining on the walls.

  It was as jarring as taking a subway from Tokyo to Philadelphia.

  They continued for about a hundred feet. The most notable thing on their path was what looked like a vast homeless camp.

  Name: The Pile of Misfit Boys (Not a strip club)

  Description: Where the unemployed go to die

  Current Mayor: [FULL NAME: 35c]

  Jonathan was a bit taken aback, so he checked the map. Sure enough, that's what it was called.

  He wondered not for the first time just how much compute power was going into name translation when they could have just called this "Shanty Town 1" or something. It seemed an entire wing of the lowest terminal was in Pile territory.

  Funnily enough, there were still stores listed in this area.

  Jonathan was glad they didn't have to go there. Or at least he certainly hoped they didn't.

  If the hand cart had windows to lock, this would have been the time to use them.

  As they walked past, he could hear yelling and what sounded like meat being hit with a mallet.

  He made the mistake of turning his head.

  Past the makeshift barricades and down a ways, two guys even bigger than Craig were beating the ever-loving crap out of each other in a fighting ring.

  "Oh, we have GOT to go there." Buddy exclaimed.

  "No, we absolutely do not."

  "Oh come on! You need to make some cash, right?"

  "Uhh, I would literally die."

  "…Oh! I get it. Yeah, no — if you fought you'd definitely get extremely, EXTREMELY killed. But where there are fights, there is gambling."

  Jonathan felt that the second "extremely" was unnecessary.

  "Don't sweat it — do some actual training for like a week and you'll be tough enough to whoop practically all of 'em. Everybody in there is a bum, they don't know what you've got. Unlike them, you are a grower!"

  Jonathan had to take a mental moment.

  "Okay, what were you TRYING to say, becau—"

  "I'm trying to say these guys are all stagnated, and if they've got Passengers they're probably not ones made for combat — or they wouldn't be unemployed. You not only have one made for and begging to fight, but a whole other one made to be sneaky and read reactions. Both of us can increase your physical strength in different ways too, but that takes time. For now it would be beyond easy to make some serious cash just watching the fights and making… educated guesses."

  Renderings of both combatants appeared in Jonathan's vision — stats, weaknesses, and the most likely outcome based on the snippet he'd caught while walking past.

  A few moments later, cheers and boos erupted from behind them, signaling the end of the fight.

  Jonathan stopped pushing the cart. "One second — I want to see something."

  He walked back the fifteen feet or so to find that the predicted outcome had in fact come true.

  "See? Easy money!"

  Craig interrupted in a rare attempt at conversation of his own.

  "Do you like fighting?"

  "I, uhh — I appreciate the sport. It's a lot more complex than most people think."

  MMA had been a genuine fixation for Jonathan for quite some time. He'd watched many technique videos, and pay-per-view matches were one of the very few things that could get him to go to a bar.

  He'd always regret it after getting there — but that was beside the point.

  "I like fighting. We can come back after the drop-off if you would like."

  "Oh. Uhh, thanks."

  Jonathan still had a hard time reading Craig even with his various cheats — but he seemed like a good guy.

  The rest of the trip wasn't very eventful. The storage place was the next wing over. While the area seemed a little run down, the pathways were kept clear and there were definite signs of commerce.

  The storage company was probably the size of two storefronts put together. There was no pretense of walls — just a single clerk at the front with a wall of variously sized storage crates and lifts behind him in large mechanical racks.

  The proprietor of Turtle Dreams Storage wasn't a turtle at all. He was an aptly named Salaman — a four-foot-tall salamander-looking person.

  The voice translation sounded masculine, the tone and crow's feet signified older — maybe 60 or 70 in human terms. His name was Clarence.

  Jonathan decided not to pursue the turtle thing, since chances were Clarence didn't get whatever joke the translator was playing either.

  "Oh, welcome! What can I do for you?"

  Craig was about to speak, but Jonathan was worried he'd hit some sort of word limit today, so he took over.

  "Hi there — we've got a bit of an unusual one. Delivering for the Humble Beginnings."

  "Unusual? It's not contagious or anything, is it? Looks like just a body to me. Can you pull up the tarp?"

  Jonathan acquiesced. "Not contagious that I'm aware of."

  Clarence took a moment to look at the body and made a bit of a gurgle — which Jonathan perceived as the Salaman equivalent of a whistle.

  He then made a rectangle with his fingers and squinted through it.

  "Let's see… Still fairly fresh… a bit leaky, but nothing out of the ordinary. Please pull the cart up to this line… Great. So, first time?"

  "Do you mean on station, storing a body, or—"

  Just as small talk was about to begin, eight spider-like arms descended from the ceiling where the hand cart met the line.

  The first pair had what might have been very thick fishing line stretched between them, which slid between the body and the cart — lifting the body upward.

  The second and third sets split apart to match the width of the body. These had white plastic-like material spread between them like the aperture of a bubble wand, closely following the first set all the way underneath the body until reaching the handle — ensuring a layer of the stuff between the body and the cart.

  The fourth set slid underneath the leg end of the white barrier.

  As the body sagged into the substance, the middle arms moved up the contours of the corpse toward center mass, covering it entirely. The material acted similarly to cellophane, adhering together wherever the white borders met.

  When the four central arms met in the middle, they spun together ensuring an even coat — the other two sets holding the body in place until the material twisted together and snapped, releasing the central arms and leaving a neat outie belly button on top.

  The result was a tightly bound cocoon, which was promptly pulled away by the last two sets of arms into a panel in the back of the room.

  The process was so mesmerizing and fast that Jonathan didn't manage to finish his sentence.

  "Heh! Guess that answers that question!"