Round 1, Day 1 - Morning Explorations Pt. 1

Jacqueline had to close her eyes when the teleport platform the hallway map had directed her to lit up with the same brilliant light that C2 used to teleport them. The controls had been surprisingly easy to use, giving her a map of the station and allowing her to simply indicate a general area she wanted to reach.

When she opened her eyes, 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. She’d decided to start in a commercial district of one of the rings. The interior of the ring was lit by a circle of massive overhead lights that ran through the center of the skylight above, giving the area the glow of late morning while not obstructing the view of the station’s gigantic 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. Still, 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 food was composed of meats and vegetables she had never seen before, tinging the air with exotic scents and 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 antennae, 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, some defied explanation. One appeared to be a woman made of animated steam, with glowing green eyes floating in what looked like a walking cloud that constantly reformed 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 apparently 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. Creatures with aquatic traits walked around with bulky breathing apparatuses or, in one case, within a floating bubble of water that she appeared to be controlling with her mind. Several tiny humanoids were 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.

As Jacqueline observed the crowd, she 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 some species might have been 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. She didn’t want to jump to assumptions, but she was beginning to suspect the reason why C2 had insisted that Aaron stay sequestered aboard the ship.

Jacqueline decided that the first thing she needed to find was someone she could talk to. Preferably someone who wouldn’t be too busy or trying to sell her something. She remembered a tip Aaron had passed along from his travels about the best place to get directions or recommendations in a new city: find the nearest quiet bar. The fact that she had needed a drink since the moment she’d been abducted was just a happy coincidence.

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 still 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 her questions.

Zyra was a mostly human-looking woman, except that she had dusky gray skin, eyes even larger than Jacqueline’s 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 from 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, maybe more. 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 fewer than a couple thousand in the whole place. 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, there are as many as 5% males. Can you imagine? I think we’re sitting at about half a percent station-wide. The harems around here are super paranoid about Male-nappers, even though that rarely 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 a Septimal citizen already owns you. There definitely aren’t any males here who would be stupid enough to try and poach a Septimal’s slave, 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 are you talking about? 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. But 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. My mates and I are all too busy to keep dating, though.” 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.

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 inquiry. 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 crazy 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. One of my mates is a huge ship nerd, and she is absolutely obsessed with your ship, but I thought I heard you all hadn’t arrived yet. Oh, Stars! Am I like one of the very first people you’ve talked to? Is that what all the questions are about? 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 excitable 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 no one can cover for me today. Are you all leaving soon?”

“That’s a bummer. It really would be helpful to get a tour from a local. We’re supposed to be looking for something, so a local’s thoughts on where to look would be really useful. Our host said that we’ll be here for a while. I think he said six days.”

The bartender seemed to almost bounce with joy at the news. “Alright, tell you what. Let me give you my contact info. My mates and I have a sort of special event that we all took the day off for the day after tomorrow. If you’re free to meet up with us afterward, one of my mates is a station engineer, so she’d know all the best places where something might be hidden. 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 colliding for hundreds of millions of years. The Centroid was the area at the center of the X. They were in the middle of the Draethis arm of the galaxy, which was named for the neighboring galaxy it pointed towards. She reiterated what C2 had said about the galaxy having no central government, just 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.

Septimal was, apparently, not the highest rank of the caste system, but it was the highest that you could achieve on your own as a private citizen, with the Octal rank being exclusively reserved for those who ruled multiple important systems or controlled the largest of the galaxy-wide corporations. It was somehow reassuring to hear that, for all his power, C2 had decided not to install Aaron as some sort of grand emperor or galactic CEO. At least, not yet. Zyra also explained that, as slaves, they were considered Unal, or the lowest rank, but that most people from the lower ranks would treat them as an extension of Aaron if they were clearly acting in his interest. She explained that she and her mates were Tertial, except for one who was Quartal. Jacqueline quickly steered the conversation away from the caste system when it became clear that discussing it was making Zyra uncomfortable.

Zyra wasn’t very well informed about the show's past seasons set in Valkyra, saying that only the most dedicated fans ever went that far back. However, she suggested that many people who would remember it firsthand were likely still alive. 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 differently, forcing them to learn to communicate with each other all over again. She also described a woman’s elimination after she refused to participate in the show, to which the host, a robot similar to C2, responded by turning her into a crystalline creature that could only echo others' thoughts and feelings. Jacqueline was horrified. C2 had repeatedly referenced elimination, even suggesting that being turned into a robot was a possible outcome. Still, the idea of being turned into a being locked in their own mind, unable to express their inner self, was a step beyond what she had imagined. She’d believed the risk of slavery was the worst part of being eliminated, but clearly she was underestimating the show’s potential for sadism. She decided not to share that particular tidbit in the chat, deciding that that was the sort of information best passed along in person and at a moment when it wouldn’t ruin everyone else’s day.

Every new bit of information only raised more questions in Jacqueline’s mind. As she passed the information along to the others, they would occasionally reply with questions of their own. When she received a message that the others were leaving the ship on their own exploration, she realized she’d been chatting with the excitable bartender for most of two hours and decided to continue exploring. She thanked Zyra and exchanged contact info. She was just about to leave when she had a sudden thought.

“Does the station have anything like a farmer’s market?”