Ask and You Shall Receive
Posted on March 21st, 2021 by Hannah Ziredac

Gardenia, Leojé IV
NewGarden Trading Co.
Office: Géra Daviau, CEO
March 18, 2400

The lunch hour ticked into the business district with its usual pomp and shuffle. Everyone rose from their workstations or desks, set down their PADDs, and rushed off to the latest restaurant, café, or shuttlecart they had not yet tried. Oh, this shuttlecart craze; oh, how a civilization can cycle through the same fistful of customs ever few decades, unveiling each iteration as new and novel. To think, it’s almost as if humanity had never thought of eschewing the drab predictability of replicated food, or preparing specialty menu items in a mobile kitchen, or proliferating the hype through social media and word-of-mouth until you could get away with fleecing people of way more latinum per dish than you spent on this week’s inventory. 

Call it a product of his querulous autumn years, but this shuttlecart craze got a big no thank you from Géra Daviau. There was nothing wrong with a simple meal, replicated at the molecular level by a piece of machinery suckling at a virtually infinite power source. He began to suspect that most people wouldn’t know a replicated pan-seared duck breast from that of an artisan chef in a blind taste-test. 

Géra could not help but admire these chefs and other such food peddlers, though. To sell food for money in this day and age was tantamount to, as the old Earth saying went, selling sawdust to a lumber mill. A bar of gold-pressed latinum in your pocket meant you were more cunning than the person who gave it to you, for they did so willingly, and often in exchange for something far below its value. The Federation may have stripped the financial value from money, but though Géra did not harbor a particular love for the Ferengi, they preserved money’s true spirit: To have money made you victorious; to have wealth made you a conquerer.

Carving out a place for his trading company on this border-world was only half the work. Maintaining the revenue stream was the eternal second half, and Géra Daviau prided himself in this very practice. He was tenacious, obdurate, meticulous, and he was all of these things and more without leaning on the crutch of organized crime or any such unsavory entity: the dreamchild of capitalism. Above all else, he was efficient.

‘Lunch order number two,’ Géra said to his replicator. ‘With an iced tea, no sweetener, one wedge of lemon.’ 

His second choice of three efficient lunches was a simple tamago kake gohan—not yet assembled, for he did take a modicum of joy in its preparation. He also did not turn his nose up at some variety; today he opted to garnish the rice with three strips of nori, a sprig of microgreens, a light drizzle of hoisin, and two perfect pink slices of gari. The bowl was empty in three minutes; the tea glass was drained in another two. 

Eight minutes total, with preparation. Géra did not even have to look away from his screen.

Yet it was not just business that kept Géra Daviau at his desk through lunch. As he was the only one who didn’t leave the building, staying behind meant an hour free of all noise and possibile interruption.

So, you could imagine an agitation most exquisite when a voice, unannounced and unscheduled, called in from his doorway: ‘Mr. Daviau?’

Géra looked up. Poking through his door was the auburn head of a young human woman, maybe mid-, maybe late-twenties, and she had that smile on her face: the smile of a salesperson, the smile of a professional beggar. 

‘I’m not hiring, and I’m not buying,’ Géra said, returning his gaze to his computer. 

‘Well you’re in luck, Mr. Daviau, because I’m not trying to get you to do either.’

Oh shit, he thought. ‘I’m not donating either.’

The young woman stepped fully into his office, revealing a smart outfit of gray slacks and a matching vest over a white-and-blue-striped shirt: about as professional a beggar as one could get. With her confident posture and stride she could pass for anything from a formidable headhunter to an ironclad CEO of the company that was about to buy you out. For a second Géra’s hopes were up that this would be a worthy interruption.

But the woman snapped a finger-gun at him with one hand and shook a PADD with the other. ‘There it is, Mr. Daviau. Donation’s what I’m after.’ And she sat in one of the chairs opposite his desk, as if an alternate-timeline version of him had popped in to invite her to do so. ‘My name’s Jeska Kinlock, and I’m here on behalf of the Nicholaj & Velis Svansson Foundation, and—’

‘Ms. Kinlock, are you deaf? I said I’m not donating. I have my usual charities, and they each have an even share of all I can afford per fiscal year. Thank you, now, if you please, g—’

‘Have you heard of the Nicholaj & Velis Svansson Foundation?’

‘I haven’t, and I don’t intend to.’

‘They have devoted relief efforts to those displaced by the volcanic cataclysms on Borthi II. Nearly two hundred million people were disrup—’

‘Borthi… I’m sorry, did you say Borthi II?’

‘Yes, Borthi II. It’s in the Actium sector, near th—’

‘Yes, I… I know where Borthi II is.’

‘Oh, you do?’

Jeska Kinlock sat there, legs crossed, expectant PADD resting on the top thigh, an unwavering exuberance on her face: the very picture of a young person full of life, someone whose whole life was ahead of them, filled with love and laughter and all the simple joys afforded by the intimate association with other souls. She indeed was the diligent salesperson Géra took her for, but a different type: one who sold justice and compassion and aid for those less fortunate. 

This was him once; decades past there was a Géra Daviau who entered every room with hope and adventure. He sang, he wrote, he traveled, he loved—and he wanted nothing more than to see harmony in the universe.

‘What…what happened to Borthi II, did you say? A volcanic…?’

‘Oh,’ Ms. Kinlock said, clicking her tongue. ‘A most horrific tragedy. Are you familiar with the twin calderas of the Mäžec region?’

‘Not by name, no.’

‘The twin calderas, Fažolluv and Arkreïth, were the two largest supervolcanoes on the planet, and they both erupted at once—one triggering the other. The ash plumes blocked out the sun, ash and acid rain destroyed all agriculture. If this had happened a only century ago, before they were warp-capable, it would have been a surefire extinction-level event. Itself being a border-world, most of Bortha’s immediate evacuation aid came from non-Federation allies, who took the refugees to rashly-picked planets and moons with minimal provisions. Most of them were abandoned to fend for themselves. Now, what the Nicholaj & Veli—’

‘How much do you want?’ Géra’s voice was low and grave.

Ms. Kinlock blinked. ‘Oh, I, uh…’ She blinked again, laughed a bit. ‘Well, however much you’re willing to give.’

‘Ten bricks.’

Ms. Kinlock’s next blink was long and slow. ‘I’m assuming you’re not talking about clay here, Mr. Daviau.’

Without a word Géra pushed himself out of his chair. He went first to his replicator to fabricate a case, then to his safe, around which he activated the holographic security veil. When the veil lifted he stood with an open case holding ten bricks of gold-pressed latinum. Pale and forlorn he displayed the sum ot Ms. Kinlock, shut the case, and set it in her lap.

She thanked him rapid-fire as he signed her PADD, said, ‘Your name will be at the top of our commemorated donor plaque, I assure you, Mr. Daviau.’

‘No, please.’ Géra coughed. ‘If you would, as a condition of this donation, remove my name from any public record.’

‘You’d like the donation to be anonymous?’

‘Yes. Absolutely. Now, is it possible for me to choose exactly where my donation will go?’

Ms. Kinlock jutted her bottom lip. ‘I’m actually not sure if the Foundation has such a protocol, but I could ask. Where would you like it to go?’

‘Look for a boy named Tybbin Vei. He’d be… Oh, I guess he’d almost be a man now. Place my donation wherever he is. Not to him solely, mind; I don’t want to short the people around him. If Tybbin did not survive, look for his mother is: Meril Vei. If neither survived, do your best to see that my donation goes to helping those who knew them. Failing that, place the funds where you will.’

‘I’ve made a note, Mr. Daviau. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t want the Veis to know what you’ve done for them?’

‘I’m sure. In their eyes, I’ve done quite enough.’

With a compassionate half-smile Ms. Kinlock said, ‘Say no more, Mr. Daviau. Thank you again. Have a nice afternoon.’

‘You too, Ms. Kinlock.’

Jeska Kinlock quit his office with all speed, no doubt to find more funds in the business district.

After a moment Géra too quit his office and joined the rest of the people in the summery sunlight. His belly full of rice and egg and tea, he did not step into one of the many long queues in the shuttlecart lots, or vie for outdoor seating at a corner café. Instead he strolled south along the avenue until he came to the promenade, where he could sit on a stone bench beside a flowerbed and, at last, get some sun.

=Λ=

CV Skylark (CV-119013)
Gardenia Spaceport

The case of latinum clunked onto the copilot seat atop the week-old pile of cast-off clothes, a travel mug, a plate smeared with some congealed condiment that, by the smear patterns, must have gone really well with whatever it was dipped in, a small metal box with a latching lid—and an auburn wig.

‘This is CV Skylark requesting takeoff from Bay 220.’

Skylark, this is control, you are cleared for takeoff. Transmitting flight pattern.

‘Control, you’re a doll. Skylark out.’

The Skylark lifted from the bay tarmac and glided out into the air above Gardenia, the bright sun of this world flaring across its windshield. Up and up it soured until all that was blue turned black and speckled with stars. It was a beaut of one-person civvy ship, decked out with all the prize improvements on some now-obsolete model of Federation scout ship. Sleeping compartment with just enough room to stretch out, engine compartment you didn’t have to be hobbit-sized to access, a sonic shower closet (thank Whomever Almighty), beefy shield array, top speed of Warp 7, and a sleek physique, if its pilot could say so.

The pilot, who was in fact not actually named Jeska Kinlock, stood up from the her seat, looked down at the case on the other chair, and felt a shiver of satisfaction zip all the way down to her toes.

‘Ten whole friggin bricks,’ she said. ‘Never let it be said that ex-stepfathers don’t have a heart, I guess.’ 

Not-Jeska, just short of licking her chops and rubbing her mitts together, knelt down and unclasped the case. She stared at its contents as if transfixed by a mysterious golden MacGuffin, an intricate fantasy of spending it all playing at super speed in her head. 

She had a full docket of celebration for the next 72 hours, and the first item was to find the nearest and biggest fucking party. Maxia sector was home to the Forda System, and the non-rotational moon of Forda’s third planet was a never-ending bacchanal and sleazefest called Grapefruit Moon. And who better to call on ol G-Moon than Mr. Sleazy Bacchanal himself, Jym Statton. 

Encrypted subspace channel secured, she put in the call, and Jym’s winsome mug faded onto the screen. 

Whoa! he said. Look who decided to wander back along. What’s the occasion?

‘Got a big score, Jymmy, and I’m lookin to blow a good chunk of it on getting as shit-hammered as possible. What’s goin on tonight?’

I dunno, lotta real boring stuff around here.

With a tired grin Not-Jeska said, ‘Cut the shit, Jym.’

I’m just sayin, a lot of this shit ain’t special to anyone but the tourists.

‘You callin me a tourist?’

You know what I mean.

‘Lemme guess, Jymbo. You have no less than four places where you’re making an appearance tonight, and, if I know you and G-Moon as well as I think I do, I’d say at least one of those is a house party in the hills, and one of them is Temptation.’

You know me so well. Yeah, big house party. Maybe the biggest I’ve seen all year. 

Our girl clapped her hands. ‘There we go! Anybody with a hole in their pocket?’

Oh no. Don’t you try anything there. The dad of the guy is…you know. Connected.

‘I was mostly joking, but thanks for the tip. No marks at the party.’

Promise? 

‘Promise.’

You wanna come by my place when you get here? Pre-game a little, catch up?

‘Sure. See you in about…I dunno, an hour?’

I can’t wait. Man, last thing I expected tonight was to go partying with Hannah Ziredac, of all people.

And Hannah Ziredac smirked, held up her hands, and said, ‘The bitch is back.’

Channel closed. Before she could fully unwind she tied up her loose ends. By now Géra Daviau must have searched for news on Bortha II and come across the phony news articles and reports she’d hacked into his work and personal computer system, but that was a length of bright yellow yarn that needed snipping. She disconnected double-checked that her transmission signals were properly blocked, then cut the remote connection. Sometime in the next 24 hours, the miserly old Mr. Daviau would discover that Bortha II was perfectly five-by-five and that his ex-wife and ex-stepson were just fine.

As with most Federation border-worlds, the municipal surveillance system ran on an older OS vulnerable to some of the newer black-market tech. Hannah owned a self-contained program that could run an actual image-based search through almost three entire days’ worth of footage and use a contextual algorithm to erase a person from footage without deleting a single frame. Best 200,000 lek she ever let go of. Took almost fifteen minutes per allotted hour of footage to be altered, but worth it to avoid fifteen years on a penal colony. 

Seventeen minutes later, Jeska Kinlock never existed. And before Mr. Daviau got wise, Hannah lay in her course for Forda III and punched it at Warp 3. 

She stood up from the pilot seat, kicked off her duds, and took a quick sonic shower. Once clean she threw on a robe, shook out her shortish mess of blonde-streaked hair, and skipped to the replicator for something high-carb and fatty.

‘Double cheeseburger, patties done medium, Swiss cheese, crispy bacon, and just an, mmf, just a hair of a whisper of a thought of a dream of mayonnaise mixed with Worcestershire and lemon juice. Onion rings on the mother. Fucking. Side. Computer, throw on a retro banger playlist. Let’s hear some 2370s alt-rock revival shit like Still Smoke. Let’s get fuckin grade school music collection in here.’

Still Smoke’s 2377 breakthrough hit ‘Verona’ played loud throughout the Skylark, and she danced around to it like she was six years old again, cramming sloppy bites of cheeseburger into her face whenever she happened to thrash by the plate.

When the side-aches subsided she got dressed, nothing fancy; G-Moon demanded anything but fancy unless you were going to the casino, and fuck that. Makeup, nails, hair, the whole enchilada, and she still had 25 minutes to kill. So she moved the latinum case aside and picked up the one thing on her ship that was far more valuable: the little metal box with the latching lid. 

She took it with her to her sleeping compartment, kicked her legs up on the wall and lay sideways on her mattress with the little box on her chest. Hannah popped open the lid, tipped the box into her other hand—and out fell a weightless, pearl-sized Light.

Taking a deep breath, Hannah said, ‘Alright, baby, let’s see the next mark. Give Mama a good one.’