When I made it to the Rambler I had already prepared myself for the stench in the place. Although this time I made it there it wasn’t too bad. And there were a lot less people in the bar. Maybe today was what passed for a Sunday or Monday here. Either people were back to work or still hungover from yesterday. Anyway, a positive surprise.

Ralgau was on duty. I had a brief conversation with him sharing my todo list and getting a drink that actually came from a bottle this time. I had also mentioned that I needed to pick his brain about stuff to which he replied with the universal and timeless gesture of rubbing his thumb and index finger together and raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I am going to pay for info,” I sighed.

“In that case, take a seat at the table over there,” he pointed at a wall booth, “enjoy your drink, maybe order some food and I will be right with you.”

“Uhm, I wanted to check the bulletins.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll tell you why later.”

So I grabbed my drink, headed over to the indicated table after grabbing a menu. After plopping down I triple-tasked and engaged in people watching, waiting for Ralgau and studying the menu. I waited for about half an hour until Ralgau finally joined me with his own drink in his hand. I had also ordered a dish called Feijokeh which looked like some kind of stew or curry or something.

“Okay, you told me about your list. Is there something special you want to pick my brain about or should I just give you my thoughts on each point?” Ralgau opened the conversation after sitting down. Yeah, not one for much small talk. Which suited me just fine.

“I guess let’s go through the list and expand as much as you can on each item and then I have a few specific questions later that I hope you can give me some advice on.”

“Sounds good to me. Let’s get the negotiation out of the way first. 500 ICU for half an hour of my time or 100 per point of your list and question or I’ll just quote you a price later. Your choice.”

I was tempted to just let him quote me a price like before. He seemed to be an honest sort of guy but at the same time I’d rather stay in control. And my list had 7 points plus some questions, so that one was out too. 500 ICU for half an hour seemed really steep but you know how it is, to make money you need to spend money. Or something like that. I knew I’d rather have solid information up front than stumble around trying to figure out how stuff worked. Especially as there was no wiki and nobody else I could ask.

“500 for half an hour it is,” I held my arm out to him palm up, mentally pulled up my interface and assigned 500 of my hard earned ICUs into the quick transfer slot. Yeah, I figured that one out by fiddling with it before crashing out. Ralgau swiped his arm over mine and I saw his eyes unfocus briefly and then he had his attention back on me.

“Works for me. What was the first point?”

“Figure out how death and respawn work here.”

He shook his big head. “It is so weird that you don’t know the basics but whatever. Death works pretty well. And easy. Piss off the wrong people, stick the barrel of your gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, cut your veins, go for a space walk without vac suit. All pretty sure fire ways to explore the dying,” he gave me a sardonic grin.

“Great. Did you plan about a career in comedy by chance and then got stuck here serving drinks while waiting for your breakthrough?” Yeah, I know, not my finest moment. I know being stuck here was his trigger and I had hit the button. But I did not take to kindly to people patronizing me. Sure, tell me I am dumb and why, I am good with. Talking down, not so much. And his act wasn’t funny either.

Ralgau’s eyes blazed for a second, then he let out a breath and a chuckle. “Fine, I had that coming I suppose. You just ask the strangest questions. Okay, every child knows that when you die, your consciousness evaporates and then there is nothing left of you. So you can take out a contract with a CLON facility. Stands for Consciousness Loss Negation something. Don’t remember the O.”

“Okay, so there is a way of not dying even though your body does?”

“Yeah, sure. Costs a pretty penny and usually only people in highly dangerous occupations do it but yeah, there is a way. The thing is that you need to have a free Link slot. They give you a piece of tech you slot and when your mind is constantly backed up. Again, no clue as to how it works, I just know it does.”

“Ever used it yourself?”

He nodded. “Yeah, had a contract twice, needed it once. The thing is that the contract is only good for six months and then need to be redone. Or when you actually need to be restored from the backup. Also there are different levels of backups and the more skill levels you have, the more expensive these things get.”

I nodded thoughtfully. Okay, respawn system in place but needed to be upgraded in order to provide good benefits. I definitely needed to get this set up. “Is there a facility here on station?”

“Yep, upper 3, 427. But it really isn’t cheap. I didn’t renew the contract because I could not afford it at the time. Also, when you get a restore you obviously lose everything that is on or in your old body and you walk out of the place that you had your backup contracted with.”

“Okay, I guess I will head over there after our chat and have a chat with them. Next point: Where do I get a repair quote for the ship and how much do I need to calculate roughly? Also what status levels would be still acceptable?”

He grimaced at my question. I had probably reminded him of his time in a ship. I sighed. “Nevermind, I can probably figure it out from the bulletins.”

“Nah, it’s… fine. Just… being stuck here sucks while you have a ship and no clue about it. Fucking unfair. But I guess that’s the way the wheel works. So you can probably really figure it out from the bulletins but there is a lot of spam and advertisement and you don’t know who is actually treating you right. Better would be the dock master because he knows the approved companies. But you can’t know for sure if he isn’t in with the reppers and gets kickbacks. So honestly, I don’t know what to tell you. Find someone you trust and ask them. Here on the station you don’t have much choice, there is only on repper company,” He flicked something from his wrist in my general direction.

“As for acceptable stats? It depends what you are going to do, how long your are going to be out and how much of a decline in stats you can expect. I would say anything around 80% is probably going to be okay here for the work you can get. But I would not want to get into any kind of scrapes with less than 100%.”

“Easy enough I guess,” I replied while checking my interface. Turns out the flick was information on the repper company and how to contact them.

“Okay, next point: What to do now that I have a ship and my freedom. To be honest, I have some ideas but I am not too sure.”

This was the big one where I outed myself as a noob. I mean not knowing the basic stuff was one thing, not knowing what to do with yourself was messed up on a whole different level. And yes, I skipped points three and four because I thought that I can as well look into it myself. I needed to look at the bulletins anyway, so I would do the two birds one stone thing.

Ralgau looked like he was about to pop his top after this question. “What do you mean? You can be out there. You do whatever you want. You don’t have to stay in one spot and serve shitty drinks. The universe is yours to explore.” By the end of these few sentences I wasn’t sure if he would break out in tears or punch me the next second.

I held up my hands in a placatory manner. “Hey, no offense meant. Try to see it from my perspective. I know nothing about how shit here works. I remember myself but not in any interactions with anything. Anything before waking up on a ship in the belt here is done. I obviously can breath, eat and talk. But I have no clue about the rest. So now I have a ship, a shity one at that, I am a freelancer, I need to make a living and I have no clue how. So let me rephrase: Given all of that, what would your next steps be and how would you go about making money?”

He shook his head in resignation. “I understand man. I am just so frustrated here. I want my ship back and get back out there.” He took a deep drag on his drink.

“You didn’t really say before but what happened? And what were you doing before you got stuck here?”

He gave me a long, pondering look. “I am not going to tell you what exactly happened to get me stranded here. You haven’t earned my trust to that degree but if it helps you make up your mind of what to dow with your life… When I was 14 stans old, I hired on a freighter leaving from my world, leaving my family and friends because I always dreamed to be among the stars. I was a cargo hauler for two stans. The captain decided to take some more risks than he should have and pirates took our ship. Since their policy was join or die, I joined and over the next years I made my way through the ranks. Mind you, I never wanted to be a pirate and did what I could to not be needlessly cruel. But you do what you have to to survive and at some point this becomes your life.

“After five year of piracy the systems we were tormenting in threw together and sent a fleet after us. My captain at the time was a seriously bad piece of work with no regards for his own people. He ordered us to fight to the last. I was his first mate and disagreed. When a chance arose, we muntineed and then surrendered the ship to the systems fleet. We were pardoned, I had some money from my pirate days stashed away and with that and a big loan, I bought my first ship. Just a small transported and I started flying deliveries and passengers.

“I got more and more automation set up in the ship so I could fly it by myself and didn’t have to deal with people. And then a friend convinced me to go into business together. So I sold my ship, we threw assets together and bought a freight tug. And we started making good money. Me flying, he sorting all the cargos and business side of things. Well, as you might have figured, it didn’t work out. So now my ship is impounded here and I can’t leave because everything I own went into buying that tug.”

I looked at him caught up in his story. “That’s rough man.”

He nodded. Interestingly enough, sharing his story seem to have done him good because he seemed much more calm than any other time I had seen him before, not that I had much experience with Sorren emotional expressions or him in particular. But I know how it can feel good to talk about your past.

“Anyway, what I am trying to say is that no matter what, you really can do whatever you like. You could stay in the belt, make some money, take out a loan, get a ship, get out of this system, do stuff, fly cargo, hunt pirates, become a pirate, explore, join a system protection fleet or an alliance fleet, whatever.”

“Yeah, that is what I was thinking,” I nodded. “But right now there are too many choices. I need to narrow it down.”

“Okay, flick me your ship info and tell me how much cash you have at hand.”

So I focused on pulling up my ship record and enabled quick transfer similar to what I had done with the credits. Then I made double sure that the record I was going to fling him was read only and not some kind of transfer of ownership. Then I flicked it his way.

He in turn spent less than 30 seconds looking over the ship info. “And cash?”

“Just shy of 3.2k,” I replied.

“Yeah, that won’t get you anywhere. Okay, your ship is crap but I guess you knew that already. Now, mind you, I have seen much worse but this ship will not get you anywhere outside of this system. For one you have neither a warp nor a jump drive and while you could slot one of the two you need both.”

“So that means I have a ship but I am stuck here!? Great! The overlords sure know how to mess with a guy!” Yeah, I was a bit frustrated and annoyed.

“The overlords?”

“Ohhh,” I shrugged at him. “When I came to in th belt with no memories and somebody yelling at me over coms telling me to get mining I started mentally calling them ‘The Overlords’.”

He chuckled. “Makes as much sense as anything. Down the line you will find out that the interstellar corporations are the real powers in the universe. Forget the Circle and the Federation. They just do as the money people tell them,” he sighed. “But then again that is the way of the universe and complaining about it won’t change anything. So, what I was trying to say before, it isn’t as bad as it seems. Your ship has a decent mining setup. Not that I know shit about mining but the components and all are decent, the status is okay, you are still good on consumables. So if I would find myself in your position I would either start freelance mining or grab a few mining mission from the bulletins and then get back out there and start making some money. Then get a loan, get a ship that is at least frigate size with a decent setup and then go from there.”

“Thanks man, I was thinking along the same lines but I wasn’t sure. Thanks for your input.”

“No worries man. And if I hear something about jobs that need people I’ll give you a buzz.”

“Cool, thanks. That will for sure help. And if I can do something for you, let me know.”

I raised my glass to him and he mirrored the gesture and we drank. He got up, grabbed another round for us and we continued our conversation. The two other things he pointed out were that I needed to get insurance for my ship since if anything happened to it, even if I crashed it into an Asteroid myself they would pay and while it was never enough to replace the ship, it would at least give me something. The other thing was the he advised me to get a basic security contract with the station when I told him that they told me that I was on my own in that regard.

“By the way, you should look into implants,” he said after we had shake hands and I was about to leave. “I know you need to look at the bulletins and stuff. So I would look into getting a connector as soon as possible. It is both a huge quality of life improvement and will become a pure necessity down the line.”

“What’s a connector and what does it do?”

“Basically you plug it into your neural-link and it will let you access the bulletins directly from your interface as long as you are close enough to a box. But it will also allow remote connection to your ship’s computer and other station services and will become a necessity when you start making your way out of the system or if you want to like into automated ships systems.”

That actually sounded rather interesting. “What’s that catch?” I asked, finishing the last drop my drink.

“Connectors get calibrated to your Link. So there is no sharing or reselling. Which means you need to buy one and they aren’t exactly cheap. The better the connector, the more pricey. The upside is that the better ones allow you to connect to many more things.”

“So how much is a decent connector?”

“A decent one will run you about 15k,” he held up his hand to forestall my protest. I had just a little over 3k. How long did he think I wanted to sit in the belt and mine my ass off just for a piece of tech that allowed me to check the bulletins?

“I know, that seems expensive and the truth is you can get much cheaper ones. Security on these things is supposed to be airtight. Wouldn’t want anybody to hack into your communication or, much worse, into your brain.” I sensed a ‘but’ coming and Ralgau didn’t disappoint: “But most of the cheaper ones that are available are either pre-hacked and transmit any information you are looking for to interested parties. Or their security updates are behind because they did not get the firmware updates this far out. So, I believe in buying stuff that actually serves you. Or as my old captain always said: make sure that you can afford the cheap stuff.”

“Yeah, I guess. Still, a load of money. Well, nothing to it. No work, no money. Might as well get started.”

He slapped me on the shoulder and I nearly buckled. “That’s the mindset!”

With that I turned and headed to the bulletin box, took a seat, swiped my right wrist for payment and identification and a holo screen opened in front of me.