It was small and mostly clear, like the glass the doctor from the night before had used. Hers was bigger though and had a solid backing. It was alight with a slowly moving image of the night sky. A privacy mode, I think. She had been reading something on it when I entered, using the rattle on the end of her tail to swipe languidly at it.

“Hey Molls.” I spoke from the attic stairway and waved. “It was just some slimes in the basement, trying to eat all the goblin’s d’jhz.” My face crinkled slightly when I realized what I had said. It was getting disturbingly easy to use that word in relation to the goblin drink, but it still sounded wrong saying it to Molls.

She blinked and scowled. “Did you say slimes? That’s what you said caused the BuyMort bug from earlier too?”

An ad popped up, Slime’B’Gone, and for half a second I thought we had our answer. But then I saw the poor rating. 1.2 stars. A sham product.

I nodded and she took a deep breath and waved me over. She lifted her screen and started swiping at it with her hands. As I approached, she held it out to me to read. The screen was in English, though the various articles and apps around it were not. In the lower corner, I noticed an icon that looked an awful lot like those porny romance novels Phyllis liked to leave on the porch sometimes. It featured a topless human man with bulging chest muscles. The article Molls had pulled up for me immediately grabbed my attention though.

“Slimes in your area? It could be an infestation.”

I scowled. Yeah, that sounded right. I swiped down past the headline to read more. “The Sleem - a race of primordial beings whose introduction to BuyMort came from a world without society or civilization.

‘Since the arrival of BuyMort, Sleem have existed in levels sub organized into pods, a hierarchical pyramid through which one bottom scavenger may win promotion and consume his fellow scavengers.

This is not murder to them because, paradoxically, Sleem is both one single organism and many simultaneously.

Slowly and only subconsciously have Sleem come to understand the BuyMort system. It took centuries before they were able to set up their own affiliate, and centuries more before they learned to specialize.

Sleem are scavengers who seize and sell everything they can get away with selling. They keep themselves constantly on the edge of the BuyMort Wave, following its clouds of Van Neumann probes across the multiverse, seizing all they can before first day citizens learn to set up MortBlocks and legitimize their possessions.

Even then they aren't finished, moving into a simplistic game of cunning that can only work on the naive new member of the BuyMort family, stealing as much as possible whenever possible while breeding and spreading. Extremely dangerous in large numbers, they are opportunists and though they aren't exactly evil, you don't want to invite them to your wedding either.”

I frowned and handed Molls’ device back to her. She took it and blinked at me. I sighed. “Mr. Sada thinks they’re going to take him off-planet once they fix up their spaceship. He’s renting them the abandoned army base beneath the campground.”

Molls recoiled, her eyes wide.

“I have no doubt they have a ship, but that will never happen. The little ones land, steal as much as possible while reproducing as much as possible before spreading. The original slimes that seeded this infestation will start eating each other as they can afford to, buying out one another’s shares in their affiliation. Then they fly on, keeping up with BuyMort and spreading like a plague across each world. If they bring him with, it will be as food.”

Molls grimaced and shook her head, a sad gesture that on anyone else would have felt exaggerated. But I could see it in her face — she really did care.

“The Sleem are enemy to all but blessed by BuyMort with success. Many think that is a lesson to us all. A way for BuyMort to teach us further.” She swiped the article away from her device, and I noticed she hid the romance book with a quick swipe too. “The church does not condone the way they use BuyMort. It is unethical in the extreme to consume one’s business partners.”

I squinted. “I don’t think that’s the problem I take with them, but sure. So this is an infestation. And if we don’t take care of it soon, it’ll become a serious problem. If it hasn’t already.”

She nodded. “If it hasn’t already. You’ll see more and more of them as they breed. The little ones reproduce like rabbiths.”

My smile came automatically, and I chuckled. “What’s a rabbith?”

Molls looked at me and smiled. She raised her hands to her head and pretended to have long ears. Then she peeled back her lips and put two fingers where her nose would be if she had one, to simulate buck teeth.

I smiled broadly and nodded. “Close, that’s a rabbit.” She raised her head in understanding and nodded, looking back to her screen. On impulse, I decided to ask her a personal question. “Hey, how do you speak such good English? How does everyone speak English?”

Molls pulled up an app on her device and showed me a free game hosted by BuyMort that taught literally any Earth language. English and Chinese were the most popular versions accessed, according to the main screen.

“BuyMort is eternal. All encompassing. Yours is not the first Earth to become part of BuyMort’s family, and we have known for centuries that another was on the horizon.” She lowered the device again and stared at the still-open app. “I have been planning to come to Arizona since I was a small child.”

Her eyes lidded, but she smiled softly. “I had a board on my wall in my room as a young Nah’gh, filled with pictures and drawings. It was so exciting to imagine the red desert, the jutting cliffs, your Grand Canyon. All of it so beautiful. When my rites of passage to the priesthood were confirmed, and my ascension as an affiliate of the church put through to great BuyMort, I could think of no better place for my first mission.”

My lips twitched up again and I met her eyes. “You’d love the Grand Canyon. It’s so much more impressive than it sounds, and pictures cannot do it justice.”

The serpentine woman across from me nodded. “It is the kind of thing that must be seen in person to truly experience. Your world is full of wonders, but it is so cold. Difficult for a Nah’gh like me to be comfortable here.”

I shifted and grimaced. “Well. You came in like . . . the start of winter. I hate to tell you this, but it’s gonna get a lot worse for a few months. You’ll love summer, but you just missed it.”

Molls nodded. “BuyMort moves as it wills and does as it does. Ours is to fold into its majesty. I will find my path here on Earth. I have faith.”

My nod was automatic. “I’m sure you will, and I hope to be of some help.” I stood with a slight groan. My new back felt weird. “I’m going back to sleep for a while.”

She nodded and smiled softly at me. “Thank you for telling me what happened. I trust you will deal with the Sleem.”

I wearily nodded. “Yes, I will deal with the Sleem. As I reached the stairs, I glanced back and smiled at her. “Tomorrow.”

She smiled back, and I went back to bed next to Doofus. Thus ended my second day of life within BuyMort.

When I awoke, I did not have to deal with another dream purchase, which was a relief. Therizze was going to start getting ideas, and the close call with Molls and her was terrifying. I did not want to face Molls if that realization set in.

Honestly, I was struggling to deal with the fact that I kept having sex dreams about a snake woman. I just couldn’t understand or accept it right then, so I happily ignored it and abused Mr. Sada’s trust by having a long, luxurious hot shower in his guest bathroom and dirtying the place up. His towels were all giant fluffy white bath sheets, I loved them. My old towel that the Sleem had stolen felt like sandpaper and was about as thin.

Once I felt clean again, I got dressed in my hand-me-downs from Phyllis’ dead husband and walked downstairs with my helmet in hand. Rayna and Hord were both waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, and Mr. Sada was in a bathrobe at the counter, nursing a steaming cup of coffee. I could smell it in the air and saw his French press on the counter beside him. It was steaming and still had plenty of coffee in it, so I moved in a beeline for the cabinet where I knew Mr. Sada kept his mugs.

Once I was holding the French press in one hand and the cup in the other, I turned to look at Mr. Sada, a question in my eyes. He waved a hand at me and I happily poured. The coffee was rich and dark, and I nearly scalded my tongue before adding a splash of cream just to cool it down.

It occurred to me that cream would be running out pretty soon, without much of a way to replace it. I wondered what BuyMort had for coffee additions, and immediately a cascade of pop-up advertising filled my vision. Imagine my surprise when I saw that they were almost all the same strange substance. Moth wing dust. My curiosity got the better of me and I zoomed in on one ad that looked glitzier than the others.

COFFEE? CHECK. OMELETS. CHECK. HINDIRAMOON NAVAN STEAK? CHECK. DRUMU-DUST MOTH WINGS - NEVER HAS ANYTHING TASTED BETTER. 100 MORTIES. 5 STARS.

Fucking moth wing dust. Fascination outweighed my revulsion, and I kept on watching. Encouraged, BuyMort shifted my view to a beautiful alien moth floating around a kitchen filled with happy green-faced orcs drinking coffee as it flew over their cups. The dust of its wings scattered down through the air, glinting like diamonds in the overhead light of the dining room.

A voiceover boomed. “CANDIED, THEY MAKE A GREAT SNACK! SNAP UP SOME DRUMU TODAY!” My vision telescoped out a window and into the yard where a gaggle of children were tearing into candied moth wings. One looked up at me and grinned, dust all over his face and hands.

Huh. I dismissed the ad. Moth wing dust was not going to help me, it was just another reminder of what was being lost. Not just creamer, but my old life. Cream in my coffee was out, but moth dust was a fuckin possibility.

Still, a cup of coffee felt amazing after the night I’d had. It was seven-thirty in the morning, when we convened for our morning meeting of the Happy Trails campground management, on day three of BuyMort’s arrival on Earth. The day food became a serious problem.

Mr. Sada leaned heavily on the counter, resting his head in one hand while sipping coffee with the other. A bottle of ibuprofen was on the counter beside him, and the empty wine bottle from the night before was in the trash by the sliding glass door. The story of his hangover was clear.

“Okay, now that everyone is here, we can start.”

I frowned at that but said nothing, and Mr. Sada continued. “We have problems. Rayna? Tell Tyson about our problems, please.” He finished and slumped back against the other counter, clutching his coffee.

Rayna stepped forward and waved away BuyMort, focusing on me. “Today day three. Food shortage day.” She paused, making sure I was listening. “By day three of BuyMort on any new planet with a civilization, day three usually when food become too expensive for most and bad things happen.”

I nodded. “Right. So what do we do about that?”

Rayna shrugged. “No offense boss, that your problem. BlueCleave off shift in half hour. Company provide rations before next deployment.”

My head started shaking before she was even finished. “And if we want to renew your contract? I was hoping to talk to you about keeping BlueCleave on, permanently. We need protection.”

Rayna’s eyes widened and she puffed out her cheeks. “Oof, boss. That not a small ask.” I frowned and she blinked before continuing. “Look. Can renew contract. Because food more expensive, new contract will be too. Plus, our merc company know you like us now, they charge more.”

Mr. Sada shook his head. “Do we really need protection now that we have the wall? Surely Hord will be enough?”

Hord sniffed and nodded.

I shook my head. “Mr. Sada, you’re not out there. Ever. Trust me, we need BlueCleave, specifically.” I took a sip from my coffee cup and turned back to Rayna. Probably my last cup of coffee ever and I was drinking it absentmindedly, while working. Of course. “Is there no way we could go around your mercenary company? Go around BuyMort?”

Rayna’s slab of a forehead furrowed. She looked me in the eye for a moment and then nodded. “Yes. BlueCleave could quit company. Work for you direct, live here.” There she stopped and crossed her arms. “But we wouldn’t. Can’t feed us. Can’t pay. Can’t provide good shelter.”

An array of expenses opened in my mind, a kind of 3D notebook full of figures and numbers. 50,000 morties a merc in annual pay alone. 200,000 for projected housing. An astronomical 500,000 morties to pay for a year of eating. It was insane. But, ultimately, worth it. These mercs weren’t just good at what they did. I trusted them as well.

I shook my head. “What if we did all that? What if we could do all of that?”

She scowled and frowned. “But can’t. Off shift in half hour and going back. If you want new contract, contact BuyMortMercMart.”

My coffee was too hot, but I gulped it anyway, breathing out the scald. “Rayna, will you come for a ride with me? I wanted to give you a bonus for your shift, and it sounds like we don’t have much time.”

Her gray features seemed to flare slightly, and she nodded. “BlueCleave accept tips.”

I nodded. “I remember, and last night was rough. You all deserve a tip, but it’s one big thing, and it would be best if you claimed it to split up among the rest of your tribe.” My coffee cup clinked when I set it down on the counter, and I noticed Mr. Sada again. He flinched at the sound and glared at me. Then he glanced between me and Rayna and narrowed his eyes.

I winked at him in response, a small smile on my lips. Hopefully he would think I was up to something clever and go back to being hung over. Mr. Sada too close to my business was bad news, especially since he technically owned Spider City. He hovered and screwed stuff up, terrible micromanager.

As I left I turned to Hord. “Got the gobbs back on task?” I pointed at him as I asked, and he hurriedly nodded.

Rayna followed me into the garage and watched with interest as I unplugged the golf cart. When I sat in it, she narrowed her eyes but entered the vehicle. I noticed she had left her new rifle with her tribe but had a pistol and knife both within easy reach, one on either side of her body. She also leaned slightly away from me and kept her eyes on me. I swerved to drive over near Phyllis, who was still laying flat on her back in the morning sun. Her helmet was closed, but I saw smoke exuding from it in small wafts.

“Hey Phil! How you doin?” I shouted to the helmet.

Phyllis snapped it open and glared at me from within a small cloud of marijuana smoke. “Just enjoying a nice peaceful morning Tyson, how are you?” Her voice was stiff and unhappy, and I smiled.

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better Phil! Gotta run! Catch you later!” I gunned the gas again and got away from her before her mech arm could swat me and the golf cart. She went back to her TV immediately, I have no doubt.

Tollya opened the big metal gate at the end of Mr. Sada’s driveway for us and gave Rayna a sharp salute. I noticed Rayna waved a hand gently at her, but also saw Tollya follow us into the desert. She ducked and ran across the dirt road in my rearview mirror, vanishing behind a portion of newly-built wall. Goblin work crews were already out in the sun, happily operating that crane and making more segments of wall. As we drove by, a pod warped in a fresh supply of mud-crete, and a small swarm of the goblins began working to prepare it for movement.

“Busy.” Rayna grunted.

“Yeah. I intend to build up a wall around the entire compound. It’s a little bigger than an acre, so lots of room to grow food and build homes. Which is next on my list. I’m just struggling to keep ahead of everything by myself. If I had a solid security team with me behind this wall . . .” I took a deep breath as we drove in the campground proper. “Well, that would let me work on some stuff.” We drove past Phyllis’ blown out trailer, and I saw Rayna notice it. “Right now I can barely keep ahead of the constant crisis trainwreck my life has become.”

Rayna sniffed and nodded.

We drove past the remains of the office and that caught her attention as well. I nodded and chuckled. “Yeah, that was yesterday’s big fun event. Angry beetle. You guys would have work if you stayed, don’t worry about that.”

Rayna glared at me in confusion from the passenger seat, but I ignored her. We were approaching Spider City, and I wanted to park carefully. Always important to park carefully, the spiders loved the golf cart, and I didn’t want to give them the opportunity. Not again. I parked a safe distance from the grove of Joshua trees and got out. Rayna followed me, and I pointed to where we were going.

“Your tip,” I said, looking over to make sure she was paying attention. “Is to sell the contents of one of those trees. Your pick.” We approached my string and sign barricade, and Rayna stopped in her tracks. She looked at me, and then at the sign I stood beside and shook her head.

“What danger?” She was scowling, staring at the cartoon spider on the sign. “Spider?”

I laughed. “No danger. Well. Not really. The black widows are kinda dangerous, but not to big things like us. It’s very gross here, and most people from my world are scared of spiders. Or at least, in this quantity.”

I stepped over the string and walked in an arc around the first large tree in the area. Part of me hoped she would pick that one just to avoid having to pay her too much, but that wasn’t the goal of this hasty plan. I had thrown together a Hail Mary to get them to stay, and that meant going all in and offering her a fresh tree with two days worth of growth and building.

Scanning the trees, I could see which of the closest ones had the freshest webbing by the shine. There were still spiders crawling around, finishing up their night’s business, so I was careful to watch where I stepped and kept an eye on anything nearby that moved.

Rayna rested her hand on her holster but didn’t pop the snap just yet. She carefully followed me over the string and walked almost exactly in my footsteps to stand five feet behind me. I could feel the lack of trust and tension. Good. It would make my tip to her that much more impressive. I turned and faced her and looked the tall gray alien woman in the eyes.

“Thank you, Rayna. Thank you for last night. You saved my life, and the lives of everyone I care about. You helped me beyond what I think your contract with Mr. Sada called for, and I recognize what a quality service your tribe offers. In thanks for that, please, take one of these trees.” I swept my arm at the line of Joshua trees before us but pointed at one in particular. It had the largest amount of fresh webbing, and I was certain I had seen a new-looking egg sack. “I recommend that one.”

Rayna blinked at me. She looked around sharply, as if expecting attack. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked at me closer. Her hand came away from her sidearm, and she looked hard at the tree I pointed out. She muttered a few words to BuyMort and then went back to watching me. I merely smiled at her and continued watching out for rogue spiders. It was really uncomfortable being this close to Spider City.

“It is my intention to cultivate this area, once more immediate concerns are addressed. Food, water, security, shelter.” I chuckled. “My expectations are that the Gobbs will be here for a while. I have a lot of things I need built.”

Rayna listened, but turned to watch as her pod arrived and began warping away select areas of the tree. She waved away the same error message I had received and then began scrolling through something, using lazy swipes of her finger in the air. My smile grew as she scowled at what she saw, and then her jaw dropped, and she looked at me again. She said nothing and went back to her sell page. The hobb began shaking her head, and blinking. At the end her hand went to her mouth and she stared at the invisible page before her. Then she turned and stared at me.

I nodded my head toward the golf cart and began moving. We left the area and stood on the other side of Spider City’s border before saying anything. By then, Rayna had composed herself. I moved to the golf cart and began a hurried inspection to make sure no fresh webbing indicated a stowaway.

Rayna leaned against the roof of the golf cart and met my eyes. “Good tip. BlueCleave thanks you.” Then she turned and shouted to the hillside nearby, “Tollya! Come get ride back!”

The other hobb appeared on the top of the hillside, shotgun in hand. She had been there, ready to back up Rayna in case of an ambush. I spared a thought for the kind of life they must lead but focused back on Rayna when she turned to speak to me again.

“You have good natural spider ranch.” Rayna glanced back at the Joshua tree forest. “Great natural spider ranch. That honest work. BlueCleave work with you to build it.” She nodded as she finished, as if deciding on something only as it was said out loud.

“I’m not offering half or anything, but I am offering a share. And I can’t promise anything up front about lodging or farming, or how fast it will all get built. We need a lot of work around here, and I would expect your people to pitch in.” I sat down in the cart and looked at the wheel with a deep breath. “They would become our people.”

Rayna nodded slowly. Tollya approached then, her slapping footsteps distracting us both from the moment. “Good tip Tollya!” Rayna clapped her battle sister on the shoulder. “Very good tip.”

Tollya smiled as she climbed in the back of the golf cart, but clearly didn’t understand. Rayna climbed in beside me and leaned over the seat. “We work for Mr. Sada now, full time. This place is it. What we always talk about.”

I shook my head and started the golf cart, steering it in a tight circle. Tollya fell sideways, but grabbed the middle rail, and Rayna clutched at her own frame points on the cart. “No, Mr. Sada is leaving soon. This will be between us. Me, as manager and the next owner of this MortBlock, and the BlueCleave tribe as residents and members.” I pointed at Rayna. “I want you to be my chief of security, and for a while everyone will help out with everything, but as soon as possible I want you to specialize in only security. You and your tribe will be our primary guardians.”

Rayna nodded back at Tollya. “We work for him.”

I had to shake my head again. “No Rayna. You work for yourself. We’re all just working on a project together, that I’m in charge of.”

Tollya grinned and Rayna looked between her and me, before reaching her arm across the cabin. I happily lowered our driving safety by shaking her hand and looking her in the eye as we sped down the campground’s main road. On an impulse, I decided to swing by Molls' area and sell those bodies, hoping that she wasn’t awake yet.

We rumbled off-road to the backside of the privacy wall, where BlueCleave had ambushed the Dearth Conglomerate forces the night before. Scorch marks and gashes in the dirt where plasma fire or explosions had occurred was all that was left. No blood stains even. I crept the golf cart up the privacy wall and then steered it carefully down the other side. The Orc and Nah’gh woman were already gone, no traces of blood or shell casings. The ruined buggy was also gone, though the scars in the ground nearby told of it and Phyllis’ battle.

Rayna suddenly realized what I was doing and shook her head. “Yeah boss, that other problem needed to tell you about.” She waved an arm at the empty area. “Bodies all gone. We did patrol for them after the doc left, and they were all gone. Even clay soldiers.”

Tollya sat back and pursed her lips. “Scavenger birds.”