Atalan Adventure Pack: Books 4-6 Read online

  There’d been over four million backers, but most had only qualified for the lowest tier, which did not have any guaranteed say in the planetary decisions, but you did get an “I bought a planet” bumper sticker. Those in the tiers allowable for board meeting attendance reached into the hundreds. Their highest donor had been anonymous and had not selected any benefit-tiers, as if it was only there to introduce a storyline to be explored later in a series.

  Bird’s eye showed that the promised light refreshments had been accomplished in the form of a couple vegetable and cookie trays. The crowd had opted for standard conference room fare instead of pulling from the natural resources of the planet they collectively owned. The idea of serving sushi and fancy seaweed salads just seemed too extravagant, even though it was technically free. Best not to set precedents, they claimed as they set a precedent that would carry on until the planet’s demise.

  Eventually Matt pulled away from a conversation he’d been ignoring on energy conversions and brought the meeting to order with an, “Uh, OK, I guess we can get started here.”

  People found their seats around a large diameter table that had been especially ordered as one of the tiered rewards they received for going over their initial crowd-funding goal. 110% reached: a large diameter table for high-tier owners to gather around during meetings. If they had reached 190%, they would have gotten one made with solid gold. Truly, they should have chosen a different shape, as the table was so large that 90% of it was out of reach and thus basically useless. Audio enhancements had to be used to hear from one side to the other. If Matt used his unusually long torso by leaning over the table, he could reach the most out of all the crowd-funders, at a whopping 12%. However, if only accounting for arm length, he’d be just as average as anyone else and likewise, also have difficulty passing a cookie tray to that being that kept saying cookies were just ‘so good’ it couldn’t stop eating them. Matt and several others did not believe the cookies to be exceptional, and wondered if the being had a sordid history of below-average cookies, had never had a homemade from scratch cookie–- as these were not, or was raised to justify any action that wasn’t for someone else. Two of three of these conjectures were correct.

  “First on the docket,” said the cube that housed the third-party crowd-funding planet aid to Matt’s right, “is planetary ratings.”

  “Oh, ok,” said Matt, who had purchased the service for an inordinate amount of money. It was a wise financial decision, as Matt didn’t know what a docket was, much less what was on it. “Parental Guidance Recommended?”

  “Here, here,” said a Khoofian, one of the few who claimed the sandy moon to be their place of origin. “Parents required! We don’t want a bunch of orphans running around, sleeping outside, and always crying about being hungry but never eating.”

  Once upon a time, Frankie would’ve stepped onto her soapbox and explained to the Khoofian that’s not how any of that worked, but now she understood the futility of it all. In the history of politics, no one had ever actually followed through in thinking of the children for any bureaucratic decision. Future global implications were bridges to be crossed later by the next generation’s committee after all the bridges had been destroyed by previous generations. Policies that didn’t think of the children had pulled Frankie off her home world and had sold her to a strange family on a planet to which Frankie had absolutely no connection. But as was stated by her childhood planet, “that was neither here nor there,” as the planetary rating system was not actually based on children at all.

  No, according to Frankie’s research, planetary ratings (which were more bureaucratic than planetary rankings) had to do with tourism. It was well-known that a government could solve all of a planet’s monetary woes by building things to entice others to visit and “inject” money into the system. That’s the word they used: inject. These visitors would use the planet’s resources and pay minimal taxes. If executed perfectly, the economy balanced on the edge of collapse. The addition of more tourists required more resources—requiring, of course, more tourists. An advanced technique in tourism included selling portions of the industry to third parties, establishing a solid tourism bubble in an otherwise failing town that scraped by to give tax incentives to the weird bubble that didn’t pay resource taxes in the first place, and also disappeared for half the year.

  Given that Hephaestus was a beautiful planet of blue-green waters, teeming with sea creatures both friendly and yummy, and hosted a well-reputed water park, high marks in tourism would be easily achieved.

  “With no further ado,” said Matt. “...does anyone know what rating we got?” as if anyone besides the cube would know.

  “A check mark,” replied the cube.

  “Oh, well, that seems... not very distinctive,” he scolded as if the cube were more than a messenger in such affairs.

  “The rating is based purely on the calculated chance of surviving a visit to the planet in question. Hephaestus, check. Hephaestus in a black hole? Not check.”

  “Hm, well, I guess it still supports my next topic, which is...” ventured Matt, gaining confidence in his third-party app.

  “POA,” said the cube. The AI continued not so much to clarify but to educate the members of the meeting, “which is the Planetary Owners Association.”

  Matt nodded gravely before motioning the cube to continue.

  The cube booted a PowerPoint presentation on the defunct scoreboard. Impressed, Matt sat down ready to learn about the POA, which sounded like something he was in, or could be in, and probably should know. He scribbled on a notepad, although Frankie’s view allowed her to clearly see that he was only drawing noodles.

  “This sector of the Psi Imagen System has one private corporation for management of the public skyways and the appearance of all its members. Prior to its foreclosure, Hephaestus was a member of that association. When the bank took possession, they promptly fell behind in their dues, and the planet is no longer in good standing. In fact, it’s been regulated to un-member status.”

  To drive home its point, the next slide consisted only of an anthropomorphized green-blue planet with a giant frowning face, that looked a lot more like Earth than it did Hephaestus. The presentation software had suffered a quick financial downfall after its controversial stance to remain Earth-centric, snubbing countless potential demographics that desired clipart representing their planets and cultures. Recently, there’d been a resurgence as the software had been relegated as ‘dated’ for so long that it was nostalgically artistic. The Paperclip and crap-for-crap Cortana had yet to resurge.

  “As a non-member, Hephaestus would be susceptible to several foul planetary demises, most of which could be legally performed by POA members against a non-POA planet. Nuclear and plastic dumping, UV redirection, and the use of the planet as a neutral territory to fight upon were all acceptable for member-planets to do, if in doing so, they improved their planet—and thus, the association as a whole. Additionally, you have lost clubhouse, business center, and water slide at the pool privileges.”

  “THE HORROR! Your list is just getting worse and worse!” cried Matt, as if he were unaware that Hephaestus had its own water park and didn’t necessarily need access to one water slide that had been modeled in smaller scale from one of the slides offered at the park. “Let’s just pay the dues.”

  “We have to reapply, and I took it upon myself to do that,” said the cube. “We were rejected due to our lack of radioactive materials. Each planet has to be composed of a certain amount in case another POA system tries to attack. They want to be able to collect the radioactive material to hurl at another neighborhood if required.”

  Unable to resist the urge to unmute and make a point, Frankie spoke through the audio channels in the room. “But the planet hasn’t changed.”

  No one seemed even mildly surprised by the voice from the sky.

  “Yeah, it hasn’t changed!” someone yelled at the cube.

  “No, but it’s been a member of the P
OA since its inception and they had been grandfathered in for several of the more recent clauses. Our loss of membership nullifies those exceptions, and now we must enter with all the same prerequisites as others, including the initiation and razing fee.”

  Everyone nodded with half-knowing acceptance. It did make sense. It sounded perfectly logical to them. They would just have to do the things necessary for membership... else lose that water slide, which they hadn’t known existed. And, a business center was really convenient when faced with a printer that refused manufacturer-genuine cartridges or a forgotten data bill. Really, they didn’t know how they’d gone without it for so long. It was decided. They needed to rejoin the POA. The sooner, the better.

  “So how do we collect radioactive materials?” asked Matt.

  Many planets had radioactive materials in excess, and it was slowly killing their planets, but they worried about giving them to other planets as the materials could be used to create some sort of weapon which would mean a very quick death. Preferring to measure life expectancy by radioactivity half-life than the sudden death of being blown up by their own shit, many planets held on tightly to their waste. On pre-energy-crisis Earth, the same had happened. Advanced countries had refused to share clean energy technology in fear that less-advanced countries would use the technology to attack the bully-countries that withheld energy advancements from them.

  “Where’s the Nurflan?” asked someone, far across the table from the camera, thus Frankie could not make them out. But, someone—somewhere over there—was talking about her. Everyone looked around, expectantly.

  “It’s a mandatory meeting, so she’s obviously here,” said Matt, as if mandatory were a rule of the universe, set in stone. That was an incorrect interpretation of the 1398 law that had been set in stone which declared an exclusionary relationship between quality of food and the option to attend. Since this particular group had chosen vegetable and cookie trays, they’d been forced to describe the meeting as mandatory. The law in no way addressed actual attendance requirements, and many scholars argued the stone scribers intended the word mandatory to become a warning to all those with any remaining bits of soul to avoid the thing at all cost.

  Frankie gave a little cough into her microphone. “Uh, that’s me,” she reported overhead, dashing everyone’s hopes that the voice above them had been their collective consciousness as required for any successful meeting. This meeting—would be unsuccessful.

  “Yes, Nurflans have X-ray vision! She can radiate some stuff and then we’ll be all set,” said the still-faraway and not discernible person.

  “No, she just sees X-rays,” someone else argued.

  “No,” said Frankie to… well, all of it. There were a lot of misconceptions surrounding X-ray vision. It would be impossible to correct galaxies of planets and millennia of comic book interpretations in a five-minute physics tutorial, so she didn’t try. One of those ‘neither here nor there’ things.

  “Do you want our planet to be ruined?” someone else asked, drawing out the last word into more than its typical number of syllables.

  Radiating stuff on her newly owned planet without any environmental studies just so they had access to a swimming pool slide seemed a sure way to ruin a planet, so she responded, “No.”

  “Well then, I guess you’ll have to do this. Come back right now and fix this. Otherwise, we’ll come off of our probation period and will be subject to stuff like radiation trash dumping.”

  Why was this all on her? Didn’t anyone else have abilities? Perhaps the ability to cold-call and persuade people to part with radioactive material? Scientific prowess to create some sort of toxic sludge that would decay into radioactivity? X-ray vision was a detriment to her health.

  Sure, she had some natural protection against it, else her species would’ve long died off from exposure. That was something Superman comics never addressed: exposure. Superman never implemented informed consent. He never took basic precautions to reduce radiation exposure to spectators, victims, or even water sources. Indeed, that was the real reason he had to keep his persona at the Daily Planet—he was court-ordered to pay for the city’s thyroid replacement therapies after two-thirds of Metropolis lost their ability to regulate the hormone.

  The comics also never addressed Lois Lane’s short- and long-term exposure. There was risk to being friends and crew members with a Nurflan. Frankie planned to never “use” her X-ray vision again. It was too dangerous to planets, beings, and close friends.

  “I will come help where I can, but I’m not going to use my X-ray vision,” she said flatly.

  “Is there a way we can make her do it?” asked a now-frustratingly indiscernible person. “Like, something in the contract about caring for the planet that she owns?”

  “Possibly,” said Matt, looking at the cube as if it had visual input sensors.

  The cube presented a ‘shrug’ emoji.

  “Yeah, quite possibly. We’ll get it done,” said Matt, nodding, and mentally assigning it to the cube.

  The voice above them gave a disgruntled sigh.

  “We’ll get it figured out. Besides losing access to the water slide, what are the chances of any of that other bad stuff happening?” piped up someone who should not have spoken at all. He received glares from everyone in his vicinity. As if voicing such a possibility, no matter how likely, instantly made the opposite occur.

  And oppositely occur, it did.

  THREE

  Some people justify using photographs from image search engines by questioning the odds that the copyright owner will find the derivative work and have the means and desire to bring about a lawsuit, rather than just type a meanly worded Cease and Desist. Those stealing images do not understand there are copyright owners who make their living by positioning their images as top results of said search engines for the express purposes of suing whoever uses them. For if human greed is involved, surely there is a commercial enterprise that can be formed around it.

  And that was just the case with the POA. The POA provided a certain level of protection. Like in any random colony of organic or inorganic things, there was safety in numbers. By being a part of a group, you were less likely to be attacked in the first place, leaving you to think that attacks were rare—and perhaps the POA was just a POS. The POA was not a POS. But only because there were people out there who made their living watching the POA lists for a planet to carelessly drop from the list. Then, they invaded, setting up trussing, expansive stages, pyrotechnics, and a poppin’ audio system—all without a permit.

  Soon your planet was hosting a brilliantly nomadic and intensely smelly gathering tangentially related to musical acts as put on by the Independent[sic] Festival Company.

  What first heralded the coming of the invasive festival company was the haphazard landing of a prodigious number of portable potties, slightly charred by their atmospheric entries. There had been no reported deaths, but then again, the dead could not report. While the Hephaesians were initially annoyed by the ‘exorbitant’ number of potties, they’d eventually come to describe the number as ‘ineffective’ with the early-bird attendees, then ‘completely and utterly inadequate’ as the festival continued. Later it was revealed that the number had been carefully calculated to find the threshold in which attorneys could argue that the Independent[sic] Festival Company had put safeguards in place to stave off dysentery, whether or not it had.

  The second event which pointed to the potential invasion, at least in retrospect, was the video that was spammed on all broadcast channels in the Psi Imagen System and its neighboring systems. The video featured a Hunz’ta of no particular gender or creed. Like typical Hunz’ta, it had three long limbs that formed the majority of its body and splayed into feet like a particularly red coat rack. Particularly red, because Hunz’ta had a lot of red pigment in their skin. Hunz’ta did not wear clothing, but they did wear a sheen. This one was sheened in grease, making it look like a slicked out, red, coat rack.

  �
�Peace, my brothers,” it said. Two limbs rose in an Earth symbol for peace, if they’d been hands, and if they’d been on Earth. Maybe it wasn’t a peace symbol at all, just a different greeting. Whatever it was, the Hunz’ta did it. “Hashtag here #DBA the Independent Festival Company, #CEObro!”

  “Is he saying that he’s wherever he is by announcing hashtag here or, is that his name?” asked Gail, who typically asked really stupid questions, but this one might be quite fair game.

  “They can’t have a festival here without a permit, can they?” asked Lorav, who was thinking the same thing everyone else was thinking.

  “Apparently they can. It’s like an invasion. We don’t have any alliances to help us. They’re invading, just, I guess they plan to bring music and some, uh, hashtags,” said Tarke.

  Earth had played host to the roving, diabolical company twice. One was a culturally nostalgic success. The other was a failure to launch, in which the American government stormed its beaches just moments before its attendees arrived, leaving them to subsist among the PVC scraps for a night before leaving quite disappointed. It was the latter that the music festival that landed on Hephaestus had decided to make tribute to with its theme: Pyre Festival.

  “Hashtag here to announce the location of the next fan-tab-u-lous music fest. Get your autopilot navigation systems ready! Pyre Festival will be on Hephaestus in the Psi Imagen System. Be there or be... somewhere else. #PyreFestival #Pyre #PyrePyrePyre #PyreinthePsi-a”

  The crew didn’t have the benefit of having the words typed out for them, so that one could differentiate between hashtags and Hashtag at least for times it wasn’t the first word in the sentence, but it was clear these were freakin’ young’uns that needed to get off their damn lawn.