“Miss Katarenin Auchinfon Peezes Tomat. Please, be advised that is would be wise to take a more pro-active approach. Your current vacation has been going on for three weeks. Taking everything into account, halting your sabbatical would be advised.”

Kat opens her eyes, only to see green. She plucks the two slices of qCumb-rr skin-soothing compound from her eyelids and tosses them to the side. In the corner of her vision, she sees a small cleaning drone scuttle out of the wall. Ignoring the little thing as it goes about its cleaning duties, she drags open her eyelids and takes a deep breath.

“Nel, you stupid cow. Call me Kat already. And stop bothering me. You’re not my mom.”

“Technically, I am,” comes the perfectly fake voice, sounding from everywhere at once.

“I said, shut your mouth! You are not my mom just because you watched over my gestation and raised me a bit. SI’s can’t have kids anyway.”

“I resent that accusation. I would never even think about that topic. It’s not in my regulations.”

Katare finishes sighing and rolls out of the massage chair she was lying in. Stretching while rubbing her eyes fiercely, she wonders why that stupid blue artifact in her vision won’t go away. “Hey, is there really nothing wrong with my neural link? It shouldn’t even affect my vision, but there is this annoying thing I keep seeing.”

“Neural SuperVisor is working at a hundred and sixty-two percent.”

“Nevermind. Forget I asked.”

“Forgetting.”

“Right,” Katare replies. She really should rethink whether or not to give Nel a body one of these days. The Synthetic Intelligence is the only thing that she can classify as a true friend. The Intelligence is the being that knows her the best, after all. Having watched her be born and grow up, she and Solan could technically be labeled as Katare’s parents.

The woman herself will never admit that, though. The common trend in the galaxy upper crust at the time of her formative years was big on denying you even need parents for anything. Admitting to a carefully shackled computer program that you really see it as a guardian would be a massive faux pas.

“News,” Katare mumbles while yawning. She walks over to one of the many fridges, somehow remembering that this particular appliance is the one she stored her jess-mango aqua-legume smoothie in. Picking the cryogenic cup from the sub-zero microgravity field, she starts sipping the beverage while walking over to the lounge area.

Katarenin is currently enjoying a long and well-deserved vacation. What she is taking a vacation from, well, she can’t quite recall, but that is not important at all. All she knows is that she worked really hard, a lot of bad stuff happened, and she doesn’t need to think about it anymore. She recognizes the signs of a neural trauma blocker for what it is. She also knows that picking at the blank spot in her memory is not a good idea.

A widely used therapy method in the psycho-surgery community, a neural trauma blocker gently discourages a brain from accessing certain parts of itself. This will allow the memories, habits, and other neural baggage to settle into their rightfull place in peace. Then, when the blockage fails a few years down the line, the once traumatic experiences are tempered and dulled through time.

So from he moment she woke up in her home, safe and secure in the bowels of Tomat's most secure vault planet, she swore to herself to enjoy her much deserved rest. And resting is the only thing that she has been putting any effort in lately.

Sauntering over to her holo entertainment center, about to watch some show-news and other trash, she looks at her current residence. Any random galactic citizen would be flabbergasted by the sheer fortune that must have gone into the construction of her apartments. Kat herself is long since numb to the incredible amount of money that every single part of her habitat has cost, no longer seeing the sheer opulence on display.

The walls are clad with spider silk that is so rare; it’s sold by the microgram. The floors are made from a unique wood grown on a moon specially designed to be the ideal growing condition for the luxurious timber. Every single strip of the parquet flooring is made from the core of a single tree, each one produced after thousands of years of careful cultivation. The glass ceiling is spectacular, showing the upper apartments in an ethereal glow. The atom-level fabricated single-molecule crystal woven throughout the building took hundreds of years to grow, and its one-way refractory properties is a relatively new development.

Kat ignores all of the needlessly expensive displays of riches, and flips through the holo-player's channels. She goes through documentaries, live-broadcast battle royale games, and centrifugal fashion shows until she finds her favorite celebrity news channel. She then relaxes further, completely vegging out while sipping her drink.

She does wonder why the smoothie that she had a million times tastes so different than usual though. The recognizable dullness of thought that signals she is straying into a dangerous mind-space makes her stop mulling over the question quickly.

Instead, she focuses on the latest development in the DeepSpace Fine drama. The judge that had ruled the custody settlement is being sued again. The five singers should never have gotten equal representation over their carrier baby with Arnite Golash, she agrees. Kat nods along with the commentary coming from the two tentacled news readers as they rattle off the latest sum of legal fees that the entire fiasco has cost the entertainment industry. Two entire planets filled with legal workers have been working on the case for decades at this point, while the baby in question has managed to escape the spotlight of the paparazzi for months. There are a lot of rumors that he is actually dead due to genetic defects, but the Splice spokespeople keep insisting that the boy is biologically immortal.

Chuckling at the fact that the entire clusterfuck is so very, very Central, she switches to one of her secret channels. She browses through the wide array of risque material, feeling like relaxing herself in a different way than just spa’s, massages, and good food. Somehow, her body doesn’t seem to agree. No matter what video she puts on the screen, no matter the depravity that she projects in larger-than-life resolution, nothing pushes her buttons.

Then a rather famous segment of Flartanxian flap porn comes on, and the fuzziness in her mind comes back with a vengeance. She immediately knows that the barriers in her mind will start to break if she continues watching this. She rolls off the couch, hitting the off button on the remote as she gives out a scream of frustration.

“Everything alright, miss?” comes the perfect voice of Nel.

“Yes. I am just fine!” she retorts, throwing her hands up in the air. “Prep the volumetric shower. I need more food.”

Stalking to the fridge, once again not thinking about how she can tell the inventory of the appliances without even looking, she is interrupted by a rather severe sounding Nel. “Power reserves are critical, miss. Keeping the life supp-”

“Did I stutter? Go prep the shower.”

“Yes, miss.”

Katare rubs her eyes as she rummages through the fridge. Finding the one flavor of ice cream she was craving missing, her frustration finally reaches a boiling point. Looking around for something to kick, she sees nothing but indestructible high-class furniture. Looking back at the open fridge, she starts hurling insults at the universe while flinging tubs of icecream through her apartment.

All she wants to do is to relax, but every time manages to get into a nice vegetative mindset, something throws her out of that blissful state. Every time she gets into watching a good holo flick, she sees something that brings back the fuzziness of neural therapy. Every time she thinks up a new idea or activity, Nel nags her about the power being low.

How can power even be low? Grabbing a new armful of ice cream containers, she throws them at the hidden speaker the Synthetic Intelligence speaks through. “HOW CAN THE POWER BE LOW AGAIN? This place should have enough energy capacity to run a small sun! How can a simple krek-warped shower be too much!”

“Apologies, miss,” replies Nel. A container of yellow, frozen goo explodes against the speaker projecting the voice. “This facility has suffered rather catastrophic damage. Main power is out, and this facility has had to make do-”

“I DON’T CARE!” screams Katare while emptying the fridge with a single arm movement. She wonders for a single second how she did that, as she doesn’t remember herself being that powerful. Then the fuzz comes back again, and she stalks off towards the shower, her previous hunger completely forgotten.

The volumetric shower is a hollow, spherical negative gravity field generator. Opening the door to the large room, she sees a large mass of floating water in the middle of the room. She undresses quickly, tearing the comfortable sweatpants and sweater from her body without a second thought. She then takes a step back and jumps into the artificial gravity field, falling towards the large sphere of water. She splashes down hard, sending a large spray of water going everywhere.

Idly tumbling around in the aquatic gravity anomaly, she watches many of the droplets orbit around her. They are all slowed down by air resistance, of course, but a few of the larger splashes manage to make a few complete circles. All their orbits decay, the last droplets are falling back into the spherical surface. She watches the large ripples as they race around the sphere of water around her for a while. Floating in the warm water, she feels herself truly relaxing for the first time in weeks.

She then realizes that she has been holding her breath for at least ten minutes. Her mind goes fuzzy the instance she tries to remember whether or not she had any breathing or oxygenating implants installed. Tearing her mind away from that subject, she decides to distract herself in another way.

Swimming out of the sphere of water is an endeavor that she usually enjoys very much. Now, it barely takes her any effort to reach the handholds at the bottom of the chamber. Wading out of the room, sopping wet and more pissed off than she went in, she heads over to her communication panel. Plopping down into the chair, she bats away the makeup robot that emerges from the console. She ignores the hot wind being blown into her face, drying her hair, with stoic silence. She just bears it as she goes through her contact list, tapping on the beautiful face of one of her best friends.

The rotating circle indicating that a connection is being formed takes an entire five seconds, which is unusual in and of itself. The nondescript corporate goon that answers the phone is even more of a surprise. “Hello?”

“What?” Katare replies, confused. “Where is-”

“Miss Goddi is not available at this moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

Baffled at the cool response of the neatly dressed nobody, Katare is briefly at a loss of what to say. She then remembers that Goddi likes to play pranks now and then. It’s a pretty funny one, she admits, but Katare isn’t in the mood at the moment. “Stop this. This isn’t funny. Put her on the phone. I want to talk to her right now!”

“She is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

“Yes. Tell her to get her ass on the phone and stop joking around!” Katare rolls her eyes hard. Something about the deadpan face of the man is honestly pretty funny.

“I will make sure that miss Goddi will receive that message. Please have a nice day.”

The holo goes black. Katare is grinning at this point. As far as pranks go, this is one of the better ones. She almost believes that Goddi, one of her best friends in the Central cesspit of snakes and fake people, actually has had some no-name asshat hang up on her.

Then the dark end-of-call screen vanishes, and she is looking at her list of contacts again. The icy cold fist that should have grabbed her guts right about then is extremely noticeable in its absence. Goddi actually had some no-name of a corporate goon hang up on her. “Did that nobody slime-wad of a hark-ball just hang up on me?”

“Your call was terminated from their end,” chimes in Nel.

Katare lets out another unholy shriek of anger and frustration. She stands up, sending her chair spinning against a wall. Her fingers in her hair, she rushes towards the closest piece of destructible furniture. The cabinet closest to her is not easily toppled, so instead of pulling at the thing fruitlessly, she just starts throwing the valuable things at high speed.

Katare manages to destroy a small solar system worth of valuables in a couple of minutes, shrieking with rage the entire time. Only when the entire cabinet is empty of items, everything it held shattered around her or dust under her feet, does she calm down.

Turning around, she suppresses her annoyance at the fact that the icecream is cleaned up and her chair is back at her communication console. She sits back down, lets the cosmetic drone do its thing for a minute, and taps on the second contact in her favorites. “Hey Bideranda, long time no see, whatevs. Would you believe that Goddi just had my call taken by some wage slave?”

“Miss Bideranda is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message.”

Katare stops examining her newly spray-lackered nails and slowly looks at the holo-projector. A distinctly reptilian face in a neat bespoke sixteen-piece suit looks at her with a level expression. Katare was never the best at reading the facial expressions of that particular race, but she is pretty sure the scaled warp-head is sneering at her.

“Excuse you?” she manages to croak out.

“Miss Bideranda is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message.”

“Do you know a boring looking guy that works for Goddi? You sound the same. Did you go to the same school?”

“Ma’am, would you like to leave a message.”

“Fuck you,” slips out of her mouth.

“Thank you for calling, miss. Have a good day,” is the lizard’s reply before the screen goes black again.

Not even bothering with getting angry, as she is honestly too surprised to bother at the moment, she jabs a finger at her third favorite contact. This time, instead of showing a well-groomed office pawn, the small circling animation indicating an outgoing connection just keeps going and going.

Five minutes later, she cancels the call and calls favorite number four.

A rosy-cheeked, white-haired creature with five eyes, and missing eyebrows smiles at her. “Thank you for calling S’Leemy corporate headquarters. How can I help you today.”

“Connect me to Ja’Jeress.”

“One moment please,” smiles the sapient.

Then something strange happens. The infuriatingly smiling face is replaced by a tropical scene. Gentle waves splash into white sand while a binary sun slowly paints the sky in blazing colors. Katare just stares at the scene for a bit, her brain unable to handle the sudden soothing lounge music that starts playing from all around her.

Half a minute later, she shakes herself from her stupor and angrily waves at the maddingly peaceful scene. The entire view shrinks down into a corner, a small line of sound moving at the same rhythm of the music indicating that the soundtrack is still playing.

Muting that call, she calls the fifth contact in her address book.

The next hour is filled with the same pattern, over and over again. Katare trawls through her entire contact list. What used to be a collection of direct lines to the rich of the rich, the creme de la creme of Central high society, is now worthless. Instead of heirs and heiresses to fortunes picking up the phone with happy smiles, Katare is now greeted by indifferent faces and endless waiting music.

Best friends, old teachers, pupils that had hung on her lips, people whose fate she could control with but a word. She can’t reach a single one, as if the list of numbers she had acquired is now nothing more but a useless bunch of numbers and outdated identity information.

Having gone through the entire list except for one, she has nothing to show for it. Except for a couple of dozen lovely scenes, all of them playing soothing elevator music. Katare feels a small trickle of petty revenge induced happiness while looking at the row of calls that are on hold. The actual method through which she is communicating costs a lot of energy and materials to maintain a collection. Katare knows that she can afford it, but a few of the lesser companies that have put her on hold won’t be able to foot the holo-call bill for much longer. An act of small revenge to the ones too cowardly to just hang up on her.

She then realizes that she is just teaching everyone to hang up on her instead of giving her the courtesy of keeping her on hold for ages. Katare ignores the thought and resumes basking in her petty revenge for a little longer. Looking at the last name, she takes a deep breath.

A whole slew of unpleasant memories comes bubbling up as she reads over his name again. Daa-KeeTaa had been a major source of trauma, the teacher that Solan had hired for her doing a massive hit on her self confidence while she was growing up. She normally never would have called the fellow, the mere thought of it sending shivers down her spine.

Something about the man just rubbed her in all the wrong ways, and the man was dumb enough to say he didn’t even like her. But somehow, those reasons that seemed such valid arguments against the man now seem empty and petty. Rubbing her eyes again - seriously, what is going on with her mental state - she takes on the last look at the mass of calls that are on hold.

Taking a deep breath, she pushes the button and waits with bated breath.

A dwarf appears on the screen, a rugged and mean-looking troll of a thing. Wild hair, burn marks all over its face, and clothes that are ground for immediate execution by the fashion police. Bright green eyes, a few missing teeth, and deep lines in a sun-worn face complete the horrid picture. “What?”

Once again, Katare is at a loss for words.

“What?” the creature repeats.

“D-Daa?” Katare manages to blurt out.

“I ain’t you daddy, ya bimbo. Whadda ya want.”

“Daa-KeeTaa,” Katare blurts out.

“You want to talk to that useless git? Be my guest.”

The being turns away from the screen, allowing Katare to break free from the horrified fascination with which she was watching the creature. The scene that follows is just as horrid, but then on another level.

Katare has long since known that there are two sides to her own personality. She is wallowing in what is her most prominent one at the moment, the spoiled little shit of a rich kid. The other facet of her being is one she only pulls out occasionally. That is the business focussed person that makes good use of all she has ever learned.

The engineer hiding behind her spoiled facade, the competent high-achieving designer and manager recoils at the mess she sees. The holo console is filled with a projection containing parts of all kinds of price ranges and in all kinds of conditions. She sees heat exchangers that were ancient a millennia ago and coils of wire that seem even older lying next to brand new panels of ablative meteoroid shielding. Bolts, nuts, and all kinds of other esoteric small parts are scattered in between the mess, and she is sure she sees a couple of illegal parts here and there. She taps a few buttons, ordering all data of this call immediately scrubbed from her computer systems. Otherwise, standard scanning protocols might pick up on the fact that illegal disassemblies have been performed on patent covered items. That would bring down a level of scrutiny on this conversation that she is not looking forward to.

And then the stupid, idiotic, unlovable, and super ugly face of Dee-KeeTaa comes into view. Katare narrows her eyes at the waste of oxygen while sitting upright. She unconsciously starts staring down her nose at the cretin of a teacher.

“Katarenin. What do you want?” is his tired and dead-eyed greeting.

Katare decides that like ripping off an InstaHeal bandaid, this is better done vigorously and as quickly as possible. She takes a deep breath and starts speaking with confidence. “Of all people that I called, you are the only one that picked up. Why?”

Dee-KeeTaa looks at her with his bright yellow eyes for a few seconds. His serrated vertical pupils widen and narrow a few times, and Katare remembers that this indicates heavy thought on his part. His thin, slightly scaled lips then split into a wide grin, showing many of his needle-like teeth.

“What?” is his first incredulous comment. “You have been calling your entire contact list? Are you for real right now?”

Katare tells herself to stay imperious in the face of this uncultured lout. “Yes.”

“Oof,” he staggers back as if hit by her brusque admittance. He runs a gloved hand through his short black hair before narrowing his eyes towards Katare again. “So you didn’t even look at the GalaxNet news?”

“Uhm,” replies Katare, slowly losing her arrogant demeanor.

“You did not even bother checking any boards or news channels? The fact that one of the mighty Peezes overlords has fallen is not even important enough for you to bother learning about it? I should have expected. The moment you aren’t interested in something, you refuse to learn. I really thought that the death of you FUCKING FATHER-” shouts the hissing man, who visibly has to regain control of his faculties after that emotional outburst.

“Your father’s death isn’t important enough for you to check the news?” Now the well-muscled man focusses his full attention upon Katare again, his large yellow eyes boring into hers, even though they are half a galaxy apart. “And you dare be surprised that when the credit chip of your father suddenly stops working, that you have no friends left? What do you think they were your friend for? Your charming personality?”

“Wha?” murmurs Katare.

“You must have called all those good friends of yours, right? And they probably didn’t even bother telling you why they suddenly didn’t want to be friends no more?”

“No, that's not...” replies Katare weakly.

“Welcome to the real world, bitch. You don’t even seem to care, but I’ll be enjoying how you like having your entire FUCKING LIFE RUINED!” And with that last near incoherent scream of rage, Daa-KeeTaa presses something off-screen, and Katare’s holo console goes black once again.

The small icons of the calls that are still on hold emerge from where they were minimized, bathing her vision in miniature scenes of vacation resorts. Katare reaches a hand to her face, and the fact that her fingers don’t become wet from tears breaks her mind a little. She really should be crying right about now. She really should be shaking and trembling and weeping right about now. Her body just won’t do it, for some reason.

The fuzziness in her head is now indistinguishable from the sheer confusion and roiling emotions that are churning through her mind. Slowly and mechanically, she curls up into a ball. Rocking back and forth on the large and comfortable chair, she tries to determine whether or not she wants to start remembering things yet.