It sucked. The poor excuse for a marketplace on the outskirts of the space-floating rock that was Ghorhall always sucked. But today it had gripped on tight, sucking hard, with a vengeance. And Haamos Klim was up to his third eye with it.
He hadn’t made a single sale for ticks on end. Transports would keep unloading passengers that flowed into the market by the hundreds and walked swiftly past him. They would stop to ogle all manner of sub-grade crap that other vendors were peddling before shuffling off again into the transports and on their way.
Why weren’t they even looking at his crap?! His crap was the best! This was it. He was done.
At least that’s what he kept telling himself as he loudly and proudly declared his wares the best and cheapest to be found in the entire sector – let alone the shoddy market he was competing for clout and visibility in. It was hard, but honest work, and he prided himself in being a hardworking, honest sort. At least by certain definitions of the word. Unfortunately, so did the many others around him doing the exact same thing, and vying for the same audience.
Dozens of voices in as many dialects rose and fell in tones both shrill and deep, attempting to catch the eyes, minds, and bits of any and all passersby. The fact that a good number of languages spoken were composed of awkward growls, spits, and the wiggling of misshapen appendices sprouting from surprising bodily areas was probably doing more damage to both eyes and minds. Yet, the cacophony persisted.
“Libazi power cells, unlimited charges at a great price, very limited stock and running out fast!” Haamos cried with passion, sweating profusely from his bald, ice-blue pate.
He was one of the few to actually speak fluent verstandard, so he had that going for him. Otherwise, his voice was just background buzz among the dull roar of peaks and valleys that made for the daily marketplace kerfuffle.
His neighbour, a grievously overfed Impling showcasing a set of shiny exoskeletons on lavish display racks added to the ruckus.
“Update your wardrobe with brand-new, Neokian mechwear! Boost your strength and crank up your style!”
Haamos thought she would do well to crank up her own style, what with those ever-seeping pores birthing festering fluids that puddled and bubbled along every fold in her slug-like skin. With a grimace, he thought that his chosen spot might be the reason for his poor sales.
“Cangreen!” another merchant bellowed, thankfully drawing Haamos’ attention away from the unhealthy sheen of the Impling. “Bulk-order Cangreen here, the absolute best rates for the thirst-quenching treat of a lifetime!” the vendor said, swirling around a couple eight-packs of the stuff on the longest, palest, thinnest arms anyone had ever seen on a living being.
A smile flickered across Haamos’ face, on whom the irony in the ‘treat of a lifetime’ moniker was not lost. It hadn’t been a full mooning since an entire luxury barge crew had caught a bad case of pussgut from the very beverage lot on sale – the really bad, fatal case. The vendor, of whose particular name and race Haamos’ knowledge faded to a guess, simply updated the call to action accordingly and kept on selling. It’s not like anyone was going to challenge or fine him for it, not in these parts.
And besides, newcomers needn’t know the comings and goings of Ghorhall. Even if they wanted to learn anything about the place, the market was just outside the verseport off-ramps, sometimes pushing up onto them, well away from the small cluster of faulty holoboards where you could check up on local news and information. Seldom did anyone step further than the market, and even more seldom did the merchants allow anyone to pass through without purchasing something first. Few ever did. For a city whose inhabitants mostly just wanted to get the burning Void out of, ‘hallans were quite loyal to the place, and its myriad shady dealings.
Calling Ghorhall a city in the first place was the locals’ way of feigning they mattered in the greater scheme of things. In reality, the conglomeration of rickety buildings and rusted walkways occupied the dugout inside of an asteroid that had long since been probed, mined, and blasted within an inch of fragmentation for anything valuable. The only stroke of luck by which the ‘hallans could call this home was someone had long ago tugged the asteroid into an orbit that went right by a fairly busy jump-way lane. Then, an atmo-net was installed across the gaping hole in its side, turning it into a viable pit stop for many deep space transports. Soon, the populace grew, either willingly or unwillingly – mostly the latter, thanks to myriad mishaps and “accidents” befalling two out of every five tourists, according to a rigorously kept statistic from the early days of the settlement.
There wasn’t much to be had on, in, or around Ghorhall. While there were rooms to rent, inebriation-friendly dives to frequent, and the so-called Houses of Allure offering a wide variety of companionship choices, they seldom had any customers. Nobody really wanted to hang around long enough to indulge in either, as none of the places offered anything they hadn’t seen before, for better prices, and at less risk of catching some Void-spawned disease.
Locals numbered a few thousand unfortunate sons, daughters, and undefined offspring of unknown parentage, most of whom had landed there and never had enough bits to start off again, Haamos included. Aside from the odd ‘donation’ that stumbled out of luck and into the festering cesspool that was greater Ghorhall, the locals’ numbers were also bolstered by the constant spawn oozing out of the Houses in wildly diverse shapes and colours – none of which the verse intended to work together – and the mutated life rising out of the over-full sewage works of the asteroid. It was these miscreants that made the city appear more crowded than it actually was: dozens of queer blobs, illogical bodies, and mottled carapaces, constantly rolling, traipsing, slithering, and chittering along the crooked streets and alleys, either scrounging, stealing, begging, or killing for survival. Depending on each of their dispositions and abilities.
It was getting late in the rotation and the most recent slew of potential customers had perambulated on by, stretched their appendages, mingled for a few, then hopped back onboard their transports and sped off to better horizons.
“Any horizon will do for that,” Haamos thought with a grimace.
It was always the same, he realised: they came, they saw, they left. Some even took the time to double over laughing about it. And every new wave saw Haamos as miserable as always, and ever so slightly more tired than when he last stood there. He’d long ago considered stowing aboard one of the visiting barges, but all that dared make Ghorghall a layover were backed by considerable Enforcer cadres. The kind that would put a hole clean through anyone trying to hop a clandestine run. And then two more holes, to make sure.
The market was mostly based on trading for exotic goods and selling them to even more exotic patronage. But that only worked if the patrons found the goods exotic enough to purchase. Lately, it seemed like Haamos had only managed to only trade down among the ‘hallans and make poor but savvy traders rich, damaging his own meager fortunes in the meantime. Hunger pecked at his innards, coupled with the distinct taste of something else… Was that bile rising up at the back of his throat? To his surprise, Haamos was legitimately angry, and for the first time in a long while he felt like unloading that hate into something. Better yet, he hoped he might get the chance of lashing out at someone. He shook the violence away from his thoughts and tried to cool off. He was too tired to do anything of the sort, so he simply hopped off his cargo box and started walking towards greater Ghorhall. He bid the container follow from his wristcon and checked that it was slowly and ponderously making its way after him. Its solitary EveryWay wheel always made it look like it was teetering on a razor’s edge of balance. Hands deep in his pockets and collar turned up against the rather unnerving draft created by the asteroid’s atmo filtering cycle, Haamos went about his business. Or lack thereof.
He had come to appreciate these moments the most: the solitude, time spent in the company of whatever bad thoughts he was nurturing any given rotation, nobody pestering him for anything, the prospect of hallbrew sliding down his throat just before a quick dinner… Life wasn’t good, and it certainly wasn’t improving, but there were bumps he saw as high points to this mostly flat existence. Or so he tried to reason.
Not two alleys over, a glimmer out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. The shiny thing that pounced from out of the shadows tripped him up, grinned its several rows of teeth and widened its golden, slanted eyes, then leaped off and made a grab for the container. Sadly for it, the instant its flesh touched metal, defensive mechanisms sprang into action. The thief was swiftly turned into a spinning glob of glittering scales as the kinetic shock sent it tumbling end over end down the nearby sewage trough.
“There are indeed some perks to this life,” Haamos thought to himself at the sight of the collapsed mass of tissue now slowly sinking into the mix of regret-laden refuse that bubbled in the decanter pool.
He picked himself up, dusted off his overcoat, and checked to see the box was still in follow mode. He appreciated the tech offering him the opportunity to vent his anger without even lifting a finger, thus putting his already frail body at risk. Others would have had to wrestle the little fucker down themselves and that would only have given a third party the perfect opportunity to snatch the cache. Which was probably what was being planned for in the first place, judging by the pairs of hate-filled, slanted eyes now following him down the road from the deep shadows around every bend.
Walking parallel to the central traffic canal and eyeing every other excuse for a vehicle passing by, Haamos sighed. It was a deep, meaningful sigh, the kind that would instantly beget a ‘what’s wrong?’ from anyone that cared enough to listen. He caught himself just before wishing there was someone like that close at hand. Unfortunately for him, even almost-wishes have the annoying custom of sometimes coming true.
A pair of piping-hot hands clasped his face from behind, covering his left and right eye. The top one rolled to its spraining limit when a sickly-sweet “Guess who!” clinked in his ears, scratching at his very skull.
He flared his nostrils and let out a deflated “Fuck…” before following it up with an even more dejected, “Hi, Dee…”
“Haamos dear, how did you know it was me?!” the voice somehow compounded the damage done to his body, cutting through to the immortal soul beneath.
“I can see your dipshit crew,” he deadpanned, training his free eye on a small group of blue-green humanoids frantically waving from across the traffic canal.
The hands released their grip on his eyes and swung around his neck. A kiss that could melt negasteel was firmly planted on his right cheek. Dee then swirled into his field of vision with a pouty look on her bright emerald face.
“Someday I’ll grow tired of your pet names for me and my friends, big brother. And you won’t like it when that happens!” she stuck her blue tongue out at him.
Deegrenna Klim was a whole head shorter than Haamos, a good handful of TIRDs younger, and infinitely more vivacious. Haamos was thankful she at least seemed to be inheriting the famous family hairline. In a few more TIRDs, once her blood started cooling and age caught up with her, she might simmer down and become at least mildly palatable. He hoped that would help him tolerate her since she was all he had left from a life before the midden that was Ghorhall. That’s the best he could reason in order to keep himself from blasting at her repeated antics.
“Well, I don’t like it when this happens, Dee. Think we can tone it down a notch? It’s been a rough rotation…”
“Oh, silly,” she said, fluttering all of her eyelashes at him, “you’ve never not had a bad one for as long as I can remember!”
Haamos flared his nostrils. All that time they’d been there, he’d only struggled to keep both of them fed, sheltered, and clothed, and hopefully scrape up enough to have them both off the rock and back…
“Back where?” He thought.
There was no back to return to. Not anymore.
He wondered if she’d ever be able to understand how it had been for him all these TIRDS, but since she was still young and could still handle her blood swings, she was having the time of her life. And then those useless sods had made an appearance, latched on to Dee like Voidflies to flogshit, and further boosted her already beaming spirits. And worse, they were the only other Gozzins they’d even seen since being marooned there in the first place. It was all he could do not to scream. He shrugged off a dark, bloody thought and lumbered forward, waiting his turn at the edge of the traffic canal.
In more civilized environs they’d be able to glide-cross on overpasses, it was even said some places in the verse offered phasing across traffic lanes at the flip of a switch. Unfortunately, they lived as far away from such decadence as one could possibly fathom, so they waited with the rest of the plebeians. There wasn’t much of a crowd forming, nor was there a lot of commotion along the route to speak of. Oftentimes, when someone accumulated enough bit to purchase locomotive means, said being would just up and vanish before they could spend a single coin, virtual or otherwise. Whether they disappeared aboard an incoming barge or at the bottom of a decanter pool was always up for bets in every other bar, and a big part of local bit-pushing in and of itself.
A small, one-person Jerette sped its way towards and past Haamos with a high-pitched whirr. He watched it, longingly. He never could afford any sort of vehicle that wasn’t so prone to accident and malfunction it didn’t warrant walking, instead. The Jerette shone with a mocking, bare-alloy sheen, and for an instant Haamos caught his already troubled features distorting along its wild angles and curves.
His sister slid in beside him with a pirouette, leaned over to look both ways and then started tugging at his coat, egging him on, “Come on, why waste time when you can hustle?”
“There’s traffic, Dee. It’s dangerous,” Haamos monotoned.
“Oh, you call this, traffic? Come on, live a little!” she shrieked and pulled him down the incline in spite of his protests, “A legless bulgebug could make it across without getting hit!”
“That’s ’cause bulgebugs don’t need legs to build up a decent rate of speed,” Haamos thought, but opted against vocalizing.
His mind was wandering to better, more Dee-bereft places, when a garbage tug the size of a grammoth bull came scraping and bouncing along the bottom of the canal on its magnetic rail-train and snapped him to. They both hurried up the other end.
“Haha! Dodged another bullet, didn’t we, Haame?” she grinned at him.
Haamos looked at the carefree look on his sister’s face and almost felt something akin to sympathy for her lighthearted ways. A glimpse of him shone in her wide eyes and full smile. Then another sound brought him back to his grim senses – the distinct din of a cargo box being crushed to bits by a garbage tug. Haamos closed his eyes as Dee let out a breathy “whoopsie!” and turned around to face the carnage.
Right behind them, and for a good long distance down the canal in the tug’s wake, lay his carefully selected wares collection. Libazi power cell juice mingled freely with bits of neuro-enhancing circuitry, Brekklin good-fuck-charms squiggled in pools of derma-treat lotion, and other cracked and spilled bits and bobs littered the causeway, a fitting mirror of Haamos’ spirit in that moment. The EveryWay wheel, with its nigh-on indestructible alloy and integrated circuitry had made it out intact and was now rolling up and down the slight inclines of the canal, further mincing the remnants into a fine paste. It was probably true before, but now the wheel was infinitely worth more than the entirety of Haamos’ stash, combined.
“Haame…?” Dee’s voice lacked her joyful twang and her hand was cooling when it brushed past his.
Her brother giggled, watching the helpless toil of the wheel rolling up and down the sides in perpetual motion.
“How fitting!” He thought.
A lone, helpless cog toiling through a river of worthless shit, trying to break free of its means, but lacking the strength to push itself that extra bit over the edge and into freedom, dropping back down to muck through the shit again, and again, and again, doomed to ever-amble…
His giggle turned into full on laughter and then a maddened guffaw that had several passersby staring. He almost went apoplectic when he saw the rest of the street urchins who’d given him the eye earlier lunge into the bottom of the traffic canal in search of any retrievable scraps. One of them grabbed hold of the wheel and sped off with it along the canal and out of sight.
The meager traffic eventually stopped, the pedestrians crossed, and still Haamos had trouble containing himself. He felt hot, as hot as he had been in ages, and it gave him a strange sense of relief and calmness.
“Haamos? Are you alright?” Dee tried again.
“Dee…” Haamos giggled, “I. Am. Great!” he threw out his arms and stared at his sister, “I haven’t felt as good in a very long time, and I have you to thank for that!”
“Me?” Dee squinted.
“Yes, little sister! You see, this,” he gestured at the mulch of stuff in the canal, “this was all that kept me – us – from diving back down to utter, rock-fucking-bottom again. And now, just like that,” he clapped his hands, “It’s gone!”
Dee’s friends had since approached them and were exchanging worried glances among themselves. Haamos calmed back down again, wiped several tears from his eyes, and pointed at the group of Gozzins with a terrible grin.
“Hey, guess what, guys? You lose!”
Nobody really knew what that meant, so they just shifted nervously and stared.
“All that time hanging about my sister, hoping we’d make it big and you could also hitch a ride to a better life on her coattails are now over because – guess what? We’re probably all equally poor now!”
A deafening roar of laughter burst forth from Haamos who started rolling on the floor in a fit of supreme amusement. At this point, even the crowd started to disperse. Gratuitous hilarity was only worth a prolonged show if it was coupled with overt violence and death. This childish display was clearly not worth the wait.
“Haame? You’re kind of scaring me,” Dee whispered and tried to give her brother a hand.
“Don’t you dare touch me, you absolute menace!” he snapped, making Dee wince and pull back.
He picked himself up, the sweat on his head visibly evaporating, bit by bit.
“Haame, come on, you’re getting too hot, this isn’t good…”
“What in the Void do you know about anything that’s ever been good for me, Dee? And how could you possibly care, all things considered?”
“Haamos! How can you say that? We’re-we’re family! We’re each other’s only family-”
“Fuck family! Oh, save me your audible gasps, you self-serving pricks!” he waved a finger in the face of Dee’s friends whose fake outrage caught in their throats, “The only good thing about you in this whole equation is I don’t even know your names, so it’ll be easy to piss your memory away once I finish off the rest of my bits at the bar. Which is exactly where I’m headed. So, move!” he hissed.
He was panting now, his rage building so high he thought it a wonder he hadn’t lashed out yet. The group kept well out of his way, still dumbfounded at how a Gozzin could speak that way about family.
Dee followed him closely.
“Haame, I… I’m really sorry, I am!” She pleaded, tears welling in her eyes, “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I-“
“But you never mean anything for anything to happen, do you, Dee?” Haamos stopped and closed his eyes.
“Nothing bad ever stems from your intent, it’s just the fallout of your screwed up existence that keeps hammering me back down just as I’m starting to make some headway. Now, if you could please listen to me – for once – and remove yourself from my immediate vicinity, I’d appreciate you not being the first thing I see when I look up again, or so help me…”
“Haame, please, I-“
“I mean it, Dee. My blood could boil grank eggs, you’d better go…”
“Ok. I’ll go,” she crossed her arms on her chest, “But I won’t be far, Haame. And promise me you won’t go far, either. Don’t go anywhere you won’t be able to come back from. I really don’t think I could take it. Not again…” she quickly tried to squeeze his hand but he snapped free of her grasp.
Both of them were running as hot as Haamos ever remembered being. When he opened his eyes, Dee was gone, receded somewhere among the hive of locals and alleys. Haamos took a few deep breaths, then pictured a nice, big cup of hallbrew bubbling in front of him and slowly started putting one foot in front of the other.