Delia has a plan

When Delia arrived at the station, she found herself outside a tower with more than a dozen floors, which, based on the ornate portico in front of the building’s main entrance, appeared to be a hotel. The familiarity of the building’s function was strangely juxtaposed with the strangeness of the various beings she saw moving around her. She decided that the hotel was as good a place as any to accomplish what she needed to do. She made her way towards the front door and was surprised to find a transparent barrier covering the main entrance. It appeared to be composed of solidified golden glass, but she figured it must be some sort of hologram, based on how everyone passed right through it without flinching. She approached slowly, but when she reached it, she found that her hand passed easily through. She headed into the lobby, but mentally noted that, as soon as she passed through the door, a woman in a skintight black suit with what looked like a motorcycle helmet and a holster with several threatening-looking objects attached looked directly at her and began to track her movement, though she made no move to follow. Probably some kind of security, Delia thought to herself.

The hotel’s lobby was busy, but she managed to move through the crowd until she found a small, out-of-the-way area with a few padded chairs arranged around a short table. She took a seat in the chair that would put her back to the crowd, took a deep breath, and began to cry. Momentarily released from the need to appear strong for the others, she let the overwhelming emotions of the past few hours wash over her. The overwhelming change from worrying about how she would keep her precious store afloat to suddenly being **** and learning that, not only was she suddenly told that she would never see her beloved store or even her home planet again, but she had **** but to become part of a harem or face the threat of slavery. It was too much for a single night, and so, she cried. She did so silently, hoping that she wouldn’t draw the attention of any of the hotel’s staff or guests, but she allowed herself the moment to fully feel the challenging emotions that she was dealing with. It wasn’t enough, but it was all she could give herself at the moment.

It was only when she felt a small ping from the device around her wrist that she was able to collect herself and open the device’s interface, as C2 had instructed, to see a message from Jenna asking if anyone had noticed that the aliens were apparently mostly women. For the first time, Delia looked around at the crowd and realized that, indeed, not only were the vast majority of the beings around her women, but they were, once you were able to get your mind around the strangeness of their features, generally attractive women, with some standing out as true beauties. The one she saw that was clearly a man was a slender, lizard-like man with a crocodile-like face, who was being carried in what she initially thought was an extremely elaborate terrarium, but she later realized it was actually some sort of palanquin. He lay, luxuriating on his back as the women carrying his strange transport navigated through the crowd. Around and in front of them, a small group of heavily armed women of various species moved, forcefully parting the crowd and allowing the man and his entourage to pass through.

She reported this to the others, who began to squabble over helping each other and some strange idea that Jenna had come up with. She tried to pull them back together, but she seriously doubted if she had succeeded. She was very concerned by her sister’s terse responses. Given her attitude during the introduction, it would have been far more in character for her to respond with an angry tirade or simply ignore the conversation altogether. This middle ground of being terse but cooperative might look to others like she had accepted the situation, but to the sister who had been on the other end of way too many of Daisy’s plots, the apparent peacefulness of her response was a warning sign a mile high. She reminded herself, for what felt like the millionth time, that she was not responsible for her sister’s actions. She tried to continue the mantra-like affirmation she’d crafted after years of therapy she’d needed after dealing with her virulently toxic sister, but tripped when she realized the next line, of “I can love her without letting her into my life to cause damage,” was no longer strictly accurate. She laughed a little as she considered whether her therapist would charge her extra for a telehealth visit from another galaxy. As she felt the laugh turn into tears again, she decided to focus on her strategy instead.

She looked around and instantly homed in on what appeared to be a concierge desk. While these aliens had apparently moved beyond the need for paper brochures, it appeared they still had plenty of holographic ads for the station’s various attractions. As soon as she stood, she discovered that the security woman had apparently moved to keep watch of her. She wondered what she’d done to draw their attention. When she approached the desk, she was able to hone in on two ads that seemed especially useful and asked the concierge, a woman who could have passed for human if it weren’t for the mottled green patterning around her eyes and the long fern-like fronds that emerged from her head in place of hair, how she could reach them. The smiling concierge asked if she could scan Delia’s terminal, and suddenly her attitude shifted. She looked at Delia, appraising, the smile disappearing from her face. Delia saw the concierge’s eyes flick toward the security woman, then the concierge turned and began interacting with her own terminal. After a few minutes, it seemed she got the answer she was looking for. She turned back to Delia, her smile dimmed but returned, but not before giving the security woman a quick shake of her head, which apparently signaled for her to return to the hotel’s entrance, which Delia watched without disguising that she’d noticed. The concierge didn’t seem at all ashamed that Delia had apparently caught her interactions with the security guard, but maintained the less luminous customer service smile. The concierge reported that she would be happy to provide directions on foot or by the ring’s tram, or to call a car to take her where she needed to go.

“I’m sorry, did I do something to worry your security?” Delia asked.

“I apologize for that. This hotel generally only serves Tetral citizens or above. It surprised our security when they got a flag of a Septimal’s **** entering unaccompanied and unexpectedly. Normally, passing through the entry barrier would have been allowed only with special permission from your owner. Your entry apparently triggered a strange override flag that allowed you in, which our security found perplexing. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has managed to hack the entry barrier system, and it rarely ends well. However, I took the liberty of verifying your override with both station security and received a request from your owner to provide you with any assistance I can.” The woman explained.

Delia wondered whether her ability to move through the barriers would last, or if it was limited to the challenge. She was also curious if they had actually reached Andrew or if the message from her “Owner” would have come from C2. She decided she didn’t need to know and swapped her thoughts back to the matter of transport. Part of her desperately wanted to tell the rude woman she’d just walk, but realized that, while it appeared to be late afternoon at the station, her body still thought it was the middle of the night, and besides, she expected it would likely chafe the concierge to have to call a car for someone she thought was so far beneath her. Delia agreed to have the concierge call a car and settled down to wait. It took longer than she expected for the car to arrive, and while she was waiting, she paid close attention to a conversation Jacqueline was reporting she was having with one of the locals, which proved extremely informative. She had to take a brief break from the ongoing action when the car arrived. It was a vehicle that was surprisingly similar to any number of vehicles she had seen on earth, only with a body that seemed both sleeker and more rounded than the cars she was used to, with spherical wheels that didn’t seem to be attached to the vehicle but were instead wedged into slots that could rotate them in various directions, which apparently allowed it to easily move in any direction or turn without moving. She had a vague notion that she had once seen concept cars like these, but had definitely never seen any successfully make it onto the road. As she got in, she intended to tell the driver where she was headed, only to find that the vehicle was completely driverless. As soon as she got in, the door closed on its own, and the vehicle moved onto a lift that dropped the vehicle into the ground. Apparently, the uppermost/innermost layer of the ring was for pedestrian traffic only, and both the tram system and the vehicle streets were underground, towards the ring’s outer edge. The feeling of being in a driverless car lowered into a tight tunnel full of rapidly moving vehicles was deeply uncomfortable, especially when the car suddenly launched itself at high speed to catch up with the surrounding traffic. The combination of the speed and tight spaces gave her a distinct worry that the car was going to run into one of the other vehicles, which rapidly surrounded it as it entered traffic, the automated vehicles much closer together than even the worst tailgaters. She tried not to focus on the cramped roadway; instead, she continued to pay attention to Jacqueline’s reports as they traveled.

The vehicle arrived at her first destination so quickly that she almost felt guilty about having asked for a car instead of walking. Within a few short minutes, the vehicle pulled off the main road onto another lift that rocketed her back up to the surface, where they emerged next to a massive building garish with elaborate gold decorations and surrounded by towering holographic displays playing ads promising riches within. As she got out of the car, an automated voice informed her that it would wait for her at the entrance until she returned, and then would proceed to their next stop. Delia got out of the car and looked at the giant building: one of the ring’s larger casinos if its ad at the hotel had been true. As she started making her way through the front doors, she saw that the casino also had the entry barriers she’d seen at the hotel, but the security here seemed less concerned about her presence. Just as she was getting out of sight of the front doors, she received a series of pings on her terminal. When she checked them, she found notifications that her sister had found two cards, while Jacqueline had apparently found one. It didn’t tell her anything more, and an unpleasant feeling in her stomach left her hoping that her sister hadn’t done something to dig herself a deeper hole.

She strolled up to the casino and was greeted by the flashing lights and electric sounds typical of an Earth casino. Though the games themselves seemed more varied, they generally held to the same basic principles as the games she was used to. There were plenty of games of both luck and skill, but she knew the one in particular that she was looking for had to be around somewhere. She decided that the best strategy was to follow the noises wherever they were loudest. She passed dozens of tables with poker-like games and even more that involved betting on some type of randomization. It appeared that some games, like roulette, were present in a form that was almost identical to what she was familiar with on Earth.

After briefly stopping to watch a game that seemed like the three-dimensional equivalent of betting on a bouncing DVD player screen saver, she found what she was looking for: the slot machines. Just like any casino on Earth, there was a field of them, like an arcade of different machines that each claimed to be distinct, but boiled down to the same core mechanisms. As she wandered the various machines, she saw the too-familiar sight of those who were rooted to the machines, pressing buttons and pulling the levers, some so invested they didn’t even flinch when the machines occasionally paid out, simply depositing the tokens in their preferred containers and inserting another to begin the process again. “One-armed cyborgs,” Andrew had called them. Apparently, one of his grandmothers had a significant gambling addiction that was focused around the machines, and Delia had once witnessed an impassioned 20-minute rant by the man about how slot machines in particular took everything that humanity knew about games and distilled it down to its most cynical and exploitative before he’d apologized and cut the rant off. She wasn’t completely sure if she was going to find a Sad or Rage card here, but she knew that, for an entertainment district, this was likely to be one of her best bets. It didn’t take long. There, on the largest machine in the casino, was a card. As soon as she laid her eyes on it, it flipped around, revealing a face glaring with anger.

Delia located a Rage Card (Slot Machines)

She smiled, feeling proud of herself for recalling Andrew’s angry rant, one of the few examples of anger she’d ever seen from the man, and started to remember how she had felt while she had listened to him lay out why he hated the machines. She recalled that, at first, she had felt mildly offended, as someone who had enjoyed the occasional penny slots. But, as the rant had gone on, he had made it very clear that he held no ill will or judgment towards the people who played the machines, but that he viewed the machines themselves as a sort of cybernetic parasite, designed to prey on people who were susceptible. She remembered how, even as she had rolled her eyes at the rant, she had been relieved that he didn’t judge people for where they found joy, only judging those who exploited that joy for their own ends. She briefly debated giving one of the machines a single pull before deciding that she was too tired to waste the evening hanging around the casino, deciding instead to return to the car so she could hopefully find one more card before she completely ran out of energy and needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night.

She attempted to retrace her steps to the exit, but rapidly found herself getting lost. When she finally found someone who was able to point her to the exit, she was informed that she was on the exact opposite side of the building from where she’d come in. She followed the directions the staff member provided to cut through the middle of the building. In the center of the casino’s main floor, she found a large circular atrium where the ceiling was open to the various floors above, with a large painted dome at the top. Galleries on each upper floor allowed everyone to look down into the space. Within the circle, there were six crater-like pits in the floor, each with a round table at the bottom and theater-like seats lined up along the sloping sides, creating several arena-like stages. At each of the tables, several people sat, while a third stood midway between them. The seated people were the highest concentration of men that she’d seen since arriving, and everyone seated at the table was dressed in what looked like especially upscale clothing. Delia couldn’t identify the game, but it was clear that it involved poker-like betting and was popular to watch, since both the arena seats and upper-floor galleries were filled with people. Also interesting was a number of women seated in the first several rows of the audience, surrounded by boxes resembling the entry barriers she’d seen at the front doors. It was as though each of the women had been put into a penalty box.

She watched as one man, a squat man with orange skin and an abundance of thick red hair, who appeared to be doing quite well, turned around and pointed at one of the women in the audience. The woman he pointed at seemed only briefly surprised, but didn’t take any action as a penalty box appeared around her. The standing individual, whom Delia had decided must be the dealer, issued the man a small stack of tokens, which he promptly shoved into the middle of the table, and play resumed. Across from him sat a man with tough, leathery skin, a bodybuilder physique, and an extra set of arms who wore nothing but a loincloth. The two men were the last at their table, and nearly a dozen women in the audience were already surrounded by the strange boxes. While the hairy man looked pleased, the four-armed man seemed devastated and started to sweat.

“The hairball’s already bet almost half of his wives. If he loses, he’ll probably get in trouble with the Population Commission.” Said a woman who stood a few feet away from where Delia had stopped to watch the spectacle, leaning against one of the columns that ringed the atrium, running all the way to the domed ceiling. She was tall, easily seven feet, even leaning, but she was slimmer than seemed healthy for a humanoid, with slender, dainty limbs, pale skin, and a long black tendril where her hair would have been. She wore a black unitard that left her arms exposed, thigh-high boots, and a long blue coat made of some sort of leather.

“Are you speaking to me?” Delia asked as the woman approached and stood next to her.

“I am, you seemed confused.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“That tends to happen when you jump a few billion light-years.”

“You seem to know who I am. Am I really that obvious?”

“You know what might be the worst part? It’s that, in the moment, the hairball’s making the right choice.”

It took Delia a moment to realize that the woman wasn’t answering her question but referring back to the game happening in the pit. The woman seemed to take her hesitation as permission to continue.

“You see, the four-armed man across from him has an opportunity to win, but, in order to play, he has to match the bet that his opponent just made. With the number of tokens he’s got left, the only way that he would be able to do that would be to bet the last of his own **** wives, but everyone knows that she’s his favorite, and the one he plans to petition for citizenship next. If he bets her, he at least has a chance to win back the three women he’s already bet, but he’s too much of a coward to do so. He’s famous for falling in love with his slaves and throwing all of his money into getting them citizenship. Meanwhile, the man who’s betting his women like cattle and has never allowed a single one of his women to gain citizenship is probably about to walk away with three more slaves just because his opponent is too sentimental.”

“It occurs to me that they both could have spared themselves the whole situation if they hadn’t chosen to play a game where they bet women’s lives. Now, are you going to keep giving me a lecture on betting strategies, or are you going to tell me how you know who I am?”

“A Septimal male with six slaves who suddenly appear in the system with no declared port of origin aren’t hard to track, especially after the bot told the whole freaking galaxy that you were coming.”

“This seems awfully public for a ****.”

The woman smiled at that.

“I have no intention of **** you or doing you any harm. Just wanted to get a good look at the newest blood in the galaxy. I’m sure it’s very disorienting, suddenly finding yourself in a galaxy with so many new rules and ways of doing things.”

“It all seems surprisingly familiar so far, if a little more ****.”

“Oh? Your planet has people who buy, sell, and” she indicated the game in the arena pits “bet the lives of their fellow intelligent beings.”

“Plenty, but it hasn’t been widely practiced for a long time. There are definitely some people, especially the rich and evil ones, who still do.”

“I guess all living things are ultimately the same kind of terrible, in the end. It seems like it’s just part of being alive, doesn’t it?”

“What do you want?”

“As I said, I just wanted to say hello. And this seemed like the right place and the right time to do so.”

The woman was giving Delia an appraising look that was downright uncomfortable.

“If that’s all you have to say, then I’ll be going. I’m sort of in the middle of something.” Delia said and started to walk away.

“Good luck! Hope you and your sister don’t end up getting gambled away.”

Delia, shocked by the mention of her sister, turned around, but found the woman already moving through the thick press of bodies watching the games. For a moment, she debated catching up with the woman to find out how she knew about Daisy, but figured that it probably wouldn’t have been difficult for someone who had been aware of their arrival to deduce the connections between them. Still, the whole encounter left a foul taste in her mouth. She finally managed to find the casino’s front entrance, and the car pulled up and opened its door. Delia was very tempted to tell the car to skip her second planned destination and take her somewhere she could rest, but she realized that not only did she have no idea where she might find a place to stay, given how she'd been treated in the hotel, but she also had no idea how to tell the car where she wanted to go. She decided that, until she could figure out where she could rest, she might as well go along with her original plan. She briefly considered telling the others about what she'd witnessed in the casino, and wondered if there would have been a rage card in the pits if she hadn't already found one, but decided not to mention it or her encounter with the strange woman. They were already dealing with enough without having to worry about the question of being gambled away.