Jacqueline gets the lay of the land

Jacqueline reflexively shut her eyes at the brilliance of the light and was unsurprised when she opened them to find herself, once again, someplace else. She was slightly more surprised to find that Jenna, Andrew, and the other contestants were nowhere in her vicinity. That didn’t mean she was alone, far from it. She found herself in what appeared to be a pedestrian shopping district, with multi-story buildings filled with various businesses and a collection of small stalls lining the center of the street. The whole area was lit by a large collection of overhead lights that ran through the center of the skylight above, giving the area the glow of late afternoon while not obstructing the few of the station’s massive central column, the other side of the ring, or the large purple planet beyond. At first glance, the street was stunningly familiar to Jacqueline, resembling any number of malls or shopping centers on Earth, but the variety of both the businesses and people was immediately overwhelming. The familiar image of vendors selling street food and patrons shopping at all sorts of stores was strangely distorted by the fact that the street foods were composed of meats and vegetables she had never seen before, tinging the air with exotic scents with just a whiff of ozone. The patrons, however, were especially baffling, not because of how strange they were, but because they were almost not strange enough. The vast majority of the beings that moved through the market were humanoid, with the same general organization of limbs that any earthling would be used to. Sure, some had tails, or an extra set of arms, or colorations and skin textures that were clearly not human, but for most of the crowd, they could have simply passed as attendees of an alien cosplay competition.

Still, there were some that defied explanation. One being appeared to be a woman made of animated steam, with glowing green eyes, in what looked like a walking cloud that was constantly reforming as other patrons walked too close, causing parts of her body to dissipate. Another was a woman with lizard-like features and a long tail, who stood twelve feet tall and stepped carefully around the stalls, attempting to browse without crushing anyone underfoot. Several types of synthetic beings moved through the crowd, some purely metallic, some with features designed to look more organic, made of rubber and plastics, and some that appeared to be composed entirely of various crystal components. There were people with traits of lizards and insects, and even more who had traits resembling mammalian earth creatures. There were several tiny humanoids zipping through the crowd on melon-sized floating platforms. In a way, it was a relief to the newly-made woman. If she had been anywhere on Earth, her strange skin and ears would have doubtlessly drawn a crowd, but here, she fit right into the throng. Even the fact that she had seemingly appeared out of nowhere didn’t seem to faze the various shoppers who bustled past her.

There was a small pinging sound and a vibration from her wrist, and she raised the small terminal and tapped it, opening the device’s holographic screen, which displayed what appeared to be a group messaging channel. Looking around, she saw that most people wore similar bands on their wrists, or on another limb in the rare case where a person didn’t have a wrist. She saw that several other people were stopped or walking and similarly looking at the space above their raised wrists, but she couldn’t see any display. Must only be visible to the wearer, she thought as she looked at the message.

Jenna: So, um, it’s a little tough to tell with some of these species, but is anyone else seeing WAY more women than men? Or, did I just get dropped in a women-only district?

Jacqueline looked around and began to realize that, even with all the variety, she could still pick out definitively feminine traits in almost all the beings around her. In some, it was minor, a slight pair of mounds at their chest, or a thickness of the hips, or the thinness of the limbs. She supposed it was possible that some species were just androgynous, but most of the shoppers appeared at least slightly more female than male to her human perspective. As she looked around, she spotted a few individuals she suspected might be male, but they were by far the minority. Not only that, but the few apparent males she saw were all accompanied by at least a small group of armed women. One, a portly man with a furry body and a face that fell somewhere between a hyena and a lion without a mane, was surrounded by no fewer than six women of various species, each heavily armed and armored, watching the crowd warily. Looking at the message on the holographic screen, she wondered how to type a response. It took a moment to discover that the device apparently had some sort of telepathic interface that let her control it just by thinking about what she wanted to select or type, but by the time she did, the group chat had filled with more messages.

Delia: Definitely seeing the same here. Got one lizard guy, but he’s got a personal entourage. They’re carrying him in a freaking palanquin. I think it’s got heat lamps built in.

Serena: Same here. There doesn’t seem to be any men working at any of the shops either. Well, unless you count the bots. I see some ads with men in them, though

Daisy: Same

Delia: Maybe this is what C2 meant about understanding why Andrew needed to be sequestered. The women I’m seeing who are with men don't seem to be messing around.

Jenna: The Kirk Index seems to be surprisingly high here.

Sarah: The what?

Jenna: Kirk Index, just invented it. It’s a measure of how apparently sexually compatible alien species are.

Sarah: Just, why?

Jacqueline: Jenna, please focus.

Jenna: Just saying…

Serena: Um, anybody have any ideas where I should start? I don’t know Andrew quite as well as the rest of you.

Daisy: Nope

Jenna: Sorry. I’ll be happy to help if you’re still struggling later, but I wanna at least try and win.

Jacqueline: For Happy, think geeky. For Serenity, find somewhere quiet, preferably with something alive. Sad and Rage are harder. He’s always generally melancholy, but I’m trying to remember places that make it worse. Rage is going to be the tough one; he doesn’t get angry much.

Jenna: Dad! Seriously!?

Jacqueline: Jenna, please stop playing into the hands of the psychotic robot who **** us.

Delia: Agreed, let’s work together, everyone. Call out what you find and look out for the Surprise cards.

Serena: Anywhere in particular we should worry about running into those?

Delia: C2 pulled a dirty trick on us with that one. Andrew feels stressed and uncomfortable just about everywhere.

Jacqueline: Yeah, anywhere with people is a definite risk, but places that are loud are likely especially bad.

Sarah: I’m feeling pretty stressed myself.

Delia: We can do this team! We’re not going to let the robot win.

No one responded, so Jacqueline checked whether the terminal had a map tool. It appeared to, but as soon as she opened it, there was just an image of C2 shaking his finger in a repeated pattern, with the message “Sorry, search and mapping features have been disabled for this challenge.”

She closed the terminal’s window and tried to find a public map but, not finding one immediately, she decided to go with an old standby and headed to the nearest bar. The fact that she also needed a drink at that moment was just a happy coincidence.

While she had chastised Jenna for not helping, the truth was that she was just as aware as anyone else that, at the end of the day, this was a competition. She had no intention of sabotaging anyone. But, if it came down to it, her priority was protecting Jenna, then herself, then Andrew, and then everybody else. She did, in fact, know exactly the sort of places that might make Andrew angry. The trick was finding them.

Luckily, the street was full of bars and restaurants. Jacqueline ducked into one with the distinctive atmosphere of a dive bar and was pleased to discover she had chosen correctly. It was cleaner than most dive bars on Earth, but, despite the more futuristic materials and the strange patrons, the bar she walked into was the picture of a quiet place to drown your sorrows, down to the faint trace of smoke, the worn barstools, and the very slight stickiness of the floor. There were a pair of flickering holographic displays in two of the corners that appeared to show some sort of racing event, with humanoids standing sideways on the backs of animals with the size and leathery skin of pachyderms but the long-necked build of a giraffe. She hopped onto a seat next to the bar, briefly wondering why they’d built the bar so large, only to remember that it was likely a fairly typical size, and that it was she who was now significantly smaller. Seeing her hands, mint green and dainty, resting on the bar was equally unnerving. She was mentally cataloging the subtle differences between her old hands and new when there was a cough, and she looked up to see the bartender, who had been staring at her own terminal when Jacqueline walked in, but had apparently closed whatever she was doing to see to her new customer.

“Hi there, I’m Zyra. What can I get you?” The bartender asked in a cheerful customer service voice that didn’t quite hide how bored she was.

That was good, Jacqueline thought, walking into a restaurant or a busy bar meant that all the staff would be occupied seeing to other customers, but a quiet dive bar, where all anyone wanted was to get something to drink and be left alone? Anybody working there would likely be much more willing to answer some questions she had.

Zyra was a mostly human-looking woman, except that she had dusky gray skin, eyes even larger than Jacqueline’s newly transformed pair, and no hair or ears. She had a look that said that, while she wanted to get back to whatever she was doing, the brief distraction of a customer was likely a welcome break to her monotony.

“Um, what have you got? I’m kind of new in town.”

“You must be really new if you expect me to be able to tell you off the top of my head. You from a mono-species world?” She asked.

“Um, well, we’ve got plants and animals and stuff.”

“No, I mean, a planet with only one sentient species. I didn’t think there were that many anymore, at least not this close to the Centroid. Anyways, do me a favor and tap your terminal on the bar.”

Jacqueline did as instructed, and a holographic menu popped up.

“Oh, that’s convenient, I guess.”

“Not a lot of choice. At any given time, there are probably a few hundred different species on the station. What feeds or intoxicates half is deadly poisonous to the other half, and I can probably only name a tenth of the different kinds of people I see in a day. Being a bar, we sort of deal in poisons, but like to keep them of the non-lethal variety. I’m jealous of your terminal, though. That’s the new version, right? If it is, it should give you an idea of what everything tastes like, and even what it feels like if it’s an intoxicant. Hopefully yours isn’t as buggy as mine. Mine keeps forgetting that my kind can’t eat meat from copper-blooded creatures, and that’s not a fun reaction if we eat it accidentally.”

Jacqueline managed to find something that seemed to be at least vaguely related to a whiskey and soda, though with a more syrupy texture and a distinctive pink color. She would have preferred an Old Fashioned, but she didn’t see anything that seemed to match the flavor profile she wanted without a concerning note under intoxication. As Zyra made the drink, Jacqueline took the opportunity to mine for as much information as she could.

“So, not a lot of men out there,” Jacqueline stated.

Zyra looked up at her, confused. “Uh, no, were you expecting there to be?”

“I mean, I definitely expected more.”

“We’ve got more than a lot of stations. I think there are less than a thousand or so in the whole station. Not nearly as many as are in some of the planetary colonies or the Centroid planets. One of my mates claims that, in some of the really rich places, they have as many as 5% males. Can you imagine? I think we’re sitting at about 0.5-0.7% station-wide. The harems around here are super paranoid about Male-nappers, even though that almost never happens on the station, so they usually keep them either sequestered or heavily guarded.” Jacqueline’s large eyes bugged at the ramifications.

“Why are you looking anyway? Says on your identification that you’re already owned by a Septimal citizen. There definitely aren’t any males here who would be stupid enough to try and poach a Septimal’s ****, so if you’re looking to find a man, I think your best bet is to ask your mistress to sell you to one of the harems. She’s not, like, cruel to you, is she? I know they have rules about the treatment of enslaved people, but I don’t know how much they can do if it’s a Septimal.”

“No, no, nothing like that. I was just curious. My ID really tells you all that?”

“Just tells me what caste your owner is in. No names or any further details. It also tells me if you’re approved for certain purchases. But it looks like you’ve got a pretty long leash. Says here you’re approved for as much as you can drink, as long as it’s not enough to damage you.”

“You were talking about harems?” Jacqueline asked.

“Yeah, what about them?”

“Are those common here?”

“What do you mean, common?”

“I mean, are there a lot of men around here with harems?”

“What do you mean? I’ve never heard of a man without a harem. That’s like, the whole point of men is to be the center of a harem.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Where are you from? Is there some place out there with enough men that they don’t all need to have a harem?”

“I’m from very far away. Where I come from, it’s pretty much an even split. So, most men are only in a relationship with a single woman.”

“Wow, that sounds nice. Though I have no idea how you would manage to maintain a household with just two people. I have three life mates, and it always feels like we could use more hands.” Zyra said, passing the finished drink across the bar and excusing herself to do a round of the other patrons to see if they needed something.

As she sipped on her drink, Jacqueline reported what she’d just learned to the group chat.

Delia: I honestly don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that we’re apparently in a place where monogamy is a myth.

Sarah: How could that possibly be a good thing?

Delia: If we really have to be part of a harem, it’s probably better to be somewhere where polygamy and polyamory are the cultural norm and not seen as an abomination.

Sarah: I have no intention of actually being part of a harem, and definitely not Andrew’s.

Delia: Well, when you find a way to defy the sadistic, seemingly omnipotent robot, you let me know.

Jenna: I have so many questions. Will need to find someone to ask after the challenge. You said she said that Andrew is a Septimal citizen?

Jacqueline: That’s what she said.

Jenna: Interesting. C2 said he was given the highest rank, so I guess if those pills are translating the word right, then there are probably seven castes. Probably good to keep in mind.

Serena: What in the hell is a Centroid?

Jacqueline looked up to find that Zyra had returned to the bar and was putting glasses she had collected from other patrons through a laser-like barrier that seemed to be cleaning them. She waved over the bartender and echoed Serena’s question. The look she got in return was one of utter bafflement.

“Seriously? How do you not know about…” she asked incredulously, before a sudden look of realization came over her.

“Oh, Stars! You’re one of them! That explains so much. This is so exciting! Does this mean I’m going to be on the show? I can’t believe it. Of course, I knew you all were coming here, but I never could have dreamed that one of you would actually come into my bar. I have to tell my mates about this.” The bartender started yelling in joy, drawing the annoyed attention of the other patrons, before she raised her terminal and seemed to be sending a message to someone.

“Wait. Wait. You know about the show?”

“Of course! Harem Hotel is super popular here. Everyone has been super excited since your host announced that the new season was coming. He did one big announcement for the whole galaxy, but then sent some messages to some of the places you guys might visit to let them know. Our galaxy hasn’t hosted a season in, I think, like a few hundred, maybe a thousand years, but it’s not the first. I think this will be the fourth, maybe fifth. It’s such a bummer that we don’t get to see the show live, but we get the whole thing once it’s over. Oh, Stars! Am I like the very first person you talked to? I’m going to ask my manager if I can take the day. I’m totally going to be your tour guide. Give me just a second.” The woman said, before scurrying off.

Once again, Jacqueline relayed the new information to the other contestants before taking another swig of her drink, finding she was feeling the effects of the beverage more than she expected and realizing that her new, smaller body likely didn’t have the same tolerance as the one she was used to.

Before anyone responded, the bartender returned looking dejected.

“Sorry. The manager says there’s no one who can cover for me today. Are you all leaving soon?”

“That’s a bummer. I think our host said that we’ll be here for a while. We’re in the middle of a challenge right now, so I don’t really have time for a tour at the moment anyhow.”

The bartender seemed to almost bounce with joy at the news. “Alright, tell you what. Let me give you my contact info. Once you’re done with your challenge, let me know, and my mates and I will show you all the highlights. But, for now, you have questions, hit me with them.”

From there, Zyra explained that the galaxy they were currently in was known locally as the Valkyra Galaxy. She pulled up an image of the galaxy, which was distinctly X-shaped. She explained that it was actually two galaxies that had been in the process of colliding for hundreds of millions of years. The Centroid she had referred to was the area at the center of the X, which was the galaxy’s major economic and political center. They were in the middle of the Draethis arm of the galaxy. She explained that the galaxy had no central government, but there was a UN-like body that met on various Centroid planets, which served as the primary sites of diplomacy and which standardized the caste and slavery systems. She wasn’t very well informed about the past seasons of the show that had taken place in Valkyra, commenting that only the most dedicated fans ever went that far back, though she suggested that there were very likely plenty of people still alive who would remember it personally. She did spend quite a bit of time regaling Jacqueline with stories from the immediately previous season, which had apparently taken place in a galaxy known for having a million different types of communication and had started with all the contestants having a Tower of Babel transformation that meant each of them was changed to communicate in a different way, forcing them to learn to communicate all over again.

Every new bit of information only raised more questions in Jacqueline’s mind, and as she passed the information along to the others, they would occasionally reply with questions of their own. It was only when she received a notification that Daisy, of all people, had managed to find a pair of cards that she remembered they were in the middle of a challenge and decided to end the conversation. Though she realized that the notification didn’t say what kind of cards they were or where they had been found. The fact that she had found two practically at once probably meant that one was probably a Surprise card.

She thanked Zyra and exchanged contact info, then was about to head out the door when she spotted the familiar pattern of a card over the door. She groaned, realizing that this spot probably wasn’t the sort of place that would elicit any of the emotions they were hoping for, and was proven correct when the card flipped around to reveal a green star. She let out a sigh of relief that it wasn’t a Penalty or Hindrance card. The card vanished from its place above the door and reappeared in front of her, this time with holographic text floating in front of it that read “+1000 BP.”

Jacqueline located a Surprise Card (Dive Bar)

Jacqueline: 1200 BP > 2200 BP

She figured that was a decent reward, though it might have been nice to have gotten some VP. She was just about to leave when she remembered why she’d come into the bar in the first place and turned to ask Zyra one last question.

“Is there anywhere around here to play golf?”