The anthropomorphic paperclip was peering at me from the other side of his orb, as if nervous. When I blinked and nodded at him, he vaulted over the orb and approached me rapidly.

“Oh hello again! I hope you have a task for me to assist you with,” he exclaimed. His voice was as eager as ever, and the sheer weight of the construct’s consciousness was just as disturbing.

I sighed and nodded, putting on my most patient smile for Clippy. Whatever he was, it wasn’t a cartoon paperclip. The thing behind the curtain, so to speak, felt significantly larger and more frightening.

But, for the moment, it was on my side and wanted to help me. So I dug right in.

“Clippy, I need help with a complex task.” I said.

The paperclip spun in the air and clasped his hands in front of himself, eager. “Oh those are my very favorite! What complex task can I help you with today?”

I winced at his proximity and the sharpness of his voice as he whirled in a tight circle in the air above my head, sending screens of ads flitting and bouncing around the chamber. This time I remembered to make my goal broad, but specific in nature.

“Right, Clippy. Here it is. I need to secure a water supply for the people at my campground. The aquifer underneath us would be ideal, but I’m open to suggestions.” I finished and shrugged.

Clippy watched intently as I spoke, and the instant I finished he swept back across the void to his orb. Earth appeared in it, then Arizona, then the campground, the underground base filled with Sleem, and finally the lake, deep beneath us. Clippy stared into his orb as the image dissolved. Ads began to stream past him, and he flicked some of them away.

“No, no, no, NO!” He spoke as he parsed through the contents of his orb, nearly becoming upset with excitement. “No products at all, we need services. Yes, that’s how to help with this task, by finding a direct helper for multiple tasks! WHEEEE!”

He suddenly abandoned the orb and swung in an erratic circle near the ceiling before returning to the orb and flicking an ad at me.

In the instant before it began playing, I got a good look at the frozen image on screen. A humanoid canid creature was staring at the camera with an eyebrow raised. He had dusky orange and black striped fur, a long neck, and a raised ridge of striped fur running down his spine. Then it started playing.

“Go? Okay, cool. Check it out everyone!” The creature swept a burly arm over a nearby railing. “This entire complex has been built from the ground up using the expertise and management skills of the Knowles. Don’t believe Dearth when they claim they did it all without Knowle help, it's Sleem-shit! This Nu-Earth Arizona desert is tricky to work. Dearth would be lost and starving without us Knowles.”

As he spoke, the camera jostled and moved up to the railing. It swept slowly over an impressive field of crops underneath greenhouse domes. There was a central water pump system, with pipes leading to each of the greenhouses. Several mud-crete buildings dotted the area, populated with workers and guards.

A female version of the growly voice sounded from behind the camera. “Yeah, you tell ‘em baby.”

The camera focused on the male again. “If you need help managing your plot of land, and building it into what it could be, you need a Knowle.” The male Knowle nodded and bared his teeth in a grin. “For planning and management, don’t accept Knowle replacement.”

The female behind the camera giggled again, a throaty growl of a sound, and then the ad switched to a black screen filled with scrolling text.

— URBAN MANAGEMENT

— URBAN ENFORCEMENT

— TACTICAL DEFENSE

— WATER ACQUISITION

— WATER MANAGEMENT

— WASTE MANAGEMENT

— CROP MANAGEMENT

— MORALE SERVICES

— CENTRAL BANKING/AFFILIATE SCRIP

— AND MANY MORE

The services of this creature were quite broad. And, if i was being honest with myself, necessary. I was running this thing pretty much on my own, with the occasional bit of advice from Molls or Rayna, but there was so much that I didn’t know.

And there was water. So many water services. Water was key, and the ad suggested they were ready and willing to start that very day.

It felt a little bit like they may have made enemies with the Dearth Conglomerate, based on the way they were talking in the video.

As the ad ended, I saw Clippy hovering directly over me and flinched away. He zoomed back. “Oooo! Did I help you with your task?!”

I blinked and nodded. “Actually, yeah Clippy, you really did. I’m going to use this one. You got it right on the first try, good work!”

His cartoon eyes shot wide and the paperclip zoomed in a quick circle around his orb in excitement. He was building a high pitched sound when I left, it felt better not to be there for what it was going to grow into.

The VR space collapsed around me and I was back in Arizona, with the Knowles contact info up on my BuyMort app. It was different this time too. The contract was monthly, instead of a simple purchase. I needed to enter into a monthly contract with the Knowles, and in order to do that, I had to make an offer for their salary.

They came as a duo, it appeared. Axle was the male’s name, Jada was the female’s, and it was part of the contract that they worked together or not at all. The standard food, housing, power, and water requirements were all there as well, and I was hoping they would be a little flexible on that front, at least until we could get everything we needed up and running.

Glancing at my affiliate sheet, I decided I could afford a high offer and put in fifty thousand each for the first month’s pay, with a notation that it would be a high demand month. Within seconds of submitting the offer, I got a reply saying it had been accepted, and my MortMobile phone began buzzing and vibrating in my pocket.

When I glanced at the screen, it was a picture of Axle, grinning and pointing at the camera. His head was turned so that I could see a stud earring on one of his large, pointy ears.

I swiped to answer and the head of my enslaved psychic deity turned into the fog and connected us. Axle appeared to be walking someplace, surrounded by plenty of greenery. He was on a hillside, with scrub and trees all around him.

“Hey new bossman!” He said in nearly perfect English. “I’m stoked to meet you! I’m Axle.” He turned the phone to show Jada at his furry side, tucked in with her arms around him. “This is Jada. You’re lookin’ for somebody to help you upgrade your encampment?”

I nodded, rapidly getting used to talking to what looked like a human sized hyena. “Yes, starting with a water system. We’re on top of an aquifer, but getting to it will be difficult.”

Axle nodded and scowled. “Right, right. Killer. That should be no problem, so long as your affiliate has the morties. I can work with a limited budget, of course, but we gotta have what we gotta have, you know?” He started chuckling as he finished, and Jada pulled away from the camera.

A loud scuttling sound was heard in the background and Axle looked up, almost disinterestedly as Jada grunted. Something crunched hard, and Axle flinched. “Damn baby, good shot.”

Jada walked back into camera frame behind him, wiping gore from a strange club. It looked like part of a vehicle’s transmission, with heavy gears clumped up at the end all covered in ichor from a BuyMort Bug. She began wiping the club on some nearby grass, before grinning up at him and clipping the mace at her waist.

Axle noticed me on his phone and seemed to remember that we had been talking. “Oh! Sorry about that, she’s just squashin’ a bug.”

In the background, Jada pointed off screen and told BuyMort she would like to sell whatever it was she had just crushed.

“Yeah, buncha yarsps in this area, gotta be a nest nearby for sure.” Axle sniffed the air and frowned. “More comin’, Jada baby.” He looked down at me again. “Thrilled to get a new place so soon, I just posted that ad this morning. Lookin’ forward to meetin’ you boss! Tyson, the name is?” Axle frowned, his canine lips pursing in front of his sharp teeth. “I mean, the helmet makes it a little awkward, but we roll with most anything, aint that right Jada baby?”

“The fuck we do.” I heard her grunt in the background, before laughing.

I shook my head. “Sorry, there’s been some assassination attempts in recent days. Being careful when out and about, I’ll take it off when we meet more officially. Human, by the way. Nu-Earth native.”

Axles' eyes widened a little, and he glanced off camera at Jada. “Wild, man, wild. Really looking forward to meeting you, I’ve been hearing some wild shit about the humans on this earth.” He stopped to sniff the air again before shaking his head.

“Lot of em comin’ baby, we better git.” Axle turned back to me. “Look, we’re heading your way now. Should get there by nightfall, even with all the yarsp detours.”

I frowned. “Was hoping you guys could start sooner than that.”

Axle nodded understandingly, still looking in the distance. “Could do, could do indeed, but we’d need a pickup. No transport, we had to leave our last position a little quickly. You guys got vehicles at Silken Sands?”

A glance around the parking lot didn’t instill much confidence in me, but I nodded. “Some, yeah. I might be able to make the run, where are you?”

Axle started jogging, and I could hear Jada at his side. “Prescott National Forest. We were following that 89 road, but the yarsps drove us into the woods. I got a locator ping from Silken Sands now though, so we’ll be heading toward you guys, more or less. Depends on how hard the yarsps chase us, really. Call me back if you’re gonna come get us, I’ll set up a location ping for you too.”

I nodded, and we hung up. I hoped they were significantly faster runners than humans, cause those yarsps were pretty zippy. At least thirty to forty miles per hour, if my chase earlier had been any indicator. I couldn’t put any distance on them until I was making highway speeds in the truck. The more I thought about it, the faster picking those two up became another thing on my to-do list for the day.

AFFLQWST took that moment to chime a new message. A new quest type unlocked.

Bounty Quest -Yarsps. The Dearth Conglomerate has put a standing bounty on a yarsp hive in their area of operations on Nu-Earth that is disrupting their normal operations, particularly the acquisition of hostile local affiliate MortBlocks. To address this, a bounty token worth fifty million morties has been dispatched to the hive, and awaits capture. As is standard practice, the bounty token has attached itself to the yarsp hive’s primary queen.

REQUIREMENTS:

Locate Yarsp Nest Clear nest. Retrieve bounty token from hive queen for automatic payment. (Optional) Repurpose, salt, and store yarsp meat for future provisions.

Reward: automated payment of fifty million morties directly to the account of your choice.

What the fuck? Well, that made sense. Dearth hadn’t come down on us like a ton of bricks yet because their local goonsquad had trouble taking the direct route to our front door. Each time they’d come had been with the militia for guides, and in armored convoys. I guess fifty million to the random void of BuyMort mercs was easier than sending heavier guns at us.

Which meant that we had a clock ticking for major conflict with Dearth no matter what. I grabbed the quest and accepted it. Right after the Sleem, this was my first priority. If we were going to survive more of the Dearth Conglomerates direct attention, we would need morties. And the fact that this bounty existed at all meant someone was going to come claim it. I decided it was better to control the coming conflict. We still had Molls, and our on-paper relationship to protect us from direct violence, but something told me that two major league affiliates who sat on the top ten list would have no trouble crushing a bug like me between them and barely even notice.

They’d kill Molls and cover it up easily enough. From the sounds of it, Dearth owned most of Arizona already. We would have to do something dramatic in order to survive them. From the sounds of them, perhaps Mr. Sada had the right idea in running for the stars. Getting off the planet while we could sounded attractive at that point.

I shared the quest with the affiliate, except Mr. Sada and the ravens. I didn’t think they would go underground, and I assumed without basis that the wasps nest would be underground. Another dungeon. Within seconds, Doofus volunteered. I hadn’t even noticed, but he’d been signed up as a security agent, operating independently, but working with Rayna as a low level scout. I scanned through the list to see Phyllis as well. She was another independent contractor working with security. Her listing just said “biggest gun.” I nodded and blinked when she signed up too.

Her sign up came with a note. “Stop dragging Doofus into your bullshit, Tyson.” She signed it with a kissy lips and heart emoji. I’d never once texted with Phyllis before all this, and the realization that she enjoyed the use of emojis was a distracting blow that knocked me out of my train of thought and back to the uncomfortable asphalt I was sitting on in the parking lot.

Rayna stared at me with an eyebrow raised. I shook my head and stood up, accepting her hand to help. She was deceptively strong and hauled me to my feet. “Well, we have some Knowles coming to help us get set up. I just have to go pick them up first.”

She jumped, surprised. “Knowles? Here?” I saw her shoulders relax as she took a deep breath. “That is very good news. Hobbs talking already. No water, no power, some wanted to leave again. Storage is not nice but has water and power.”

“Yeah. I thought that might be the case. Say, Lee gave me a talking to about some things that have been happening in the camp here. I don’t suppose you have any information on how he might have gotten it?” I asked the question off-handedly, but paid close-attention to her eyes and face, looking for a tell. But she didn’t so much as flinch. Instead she barked a laugh and reached forward, past my ear, as if she were about to pluck a quarter from it.

Ads popped up in a circle around my head, circling about like vultures. I grabbed one at random, just to see what it was all about. A guy with slicked back hair in a highschool letterman jacket sneered at me. Looked like someone straight out of the fifties. Probably an alternate Earth.

Some nerd macking on your girl? Catch him in the act with Horn Bash Unlimited. After all, that square ain’t talking up unstocked dollies on the fly. That’s your lady he’s gabbing, and you ain’t gotta take it. 10,000 morties / 24 hours 4.5 stars.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was it a spy program? A satellite? I grabbed another one. This time I was treated to a man in a trench coat eyeing me from the brick wall of an alley.

Your Associates acting funny? Affiliates acting strange? VP slinking about, having secret meetings? Get the truth and keep yourself safe with The Watcher!

Lightning flashed in the alleyway.

The Watcher give you it all. Pick a place, pick a time, I can give you full audio, visual, even 3D images of the 100m cube of your choice. Need more room? Additional cubes of coverage are available at a 10% discount after you first two purchases. Be smart. Be safe. Spy on your allies. 25,000 morties / 24 hours / 1 cube ea, 4.9 stars.

“Damnit!” I bellowed, waving them all away.

Rayna watched impassively. “Is shock first time maybe. Lee smart. He want smart ally. He watch.” She emphasized the last word by pointing to her eye and then pointing at me.

“Smart! Friends don’t spy on friends, Rayna. I trust him and I want him to trust me back.”

Rayna shrugged. “Maybe he no do. Don’t know. Maybe hobb talk to hobb. Many gossip, some hobb.” She made a pointed glare to her side and I followed it to a rather chatty hobb standing at a distance chatting and chatting with two of her fellows.

I nodded. There really wasn’t anything else I could do. If it wasn’t BuyMort it was gossip. And maybe Rayna was right. In this world it was hard to trust anyone. Spying felt dirty, but it didn’t feel wrong somehow.

“Maybe you spy Sada?” Rayna asked. But the tone of her voice suggested a hint of hope lying in the innard of the question.

“Yeah. Maybe. Hold on a second. BuyMort, give me some anti-espionage options.”

A new spiral rotated about my head. A carousel of privacy. I selected one with a very familiar name at its head and no introductory video.

HordVPN – Secret plans? Secret mate? Secret eating? Hord got you covered. Hord Vital Protection Node give strong protect to lying liars. 5,000 morties, 1 day. 3.9 stars.

Under four. Hmm. I checked the first two-star review I could find.

HordVPN works against cheap spying algos, but middle and expensive packages cut through the static and catch everything. If you need to be secret, go expensive.

I growled mentally. Spending money, always, for everything. I didn’t want people listening in to my camp and watching our personal times. And I’d have to pay through the nose for it. Goddamn it.

“BuyMort, what is the cheapest 5-star package you have available that could cover our camp?”

The system searched and cycled for almost a minute.

STRAWBERRY JAM – YOU’VE GOT SECRETS, WE’VE GOT ANSWERS. Battling a tyrannical global affiliate? Check us out for our Guerilla Package. Blocks all competitors. 500,000 morties / 1 kilometer cube / 1 day. 5 stars.

It bothered me, but not enough to put down serious money. I’d save up until it made sense to go silent. Images of Dearth Conglomerate flitted through my head as I thought it. Yeah, that’d be the time for it. Let aliens watch them shower. It’d make them that much more surprising when shit hit the fan.

I refocused on Rayna.

“I gotta run and pick the Knowles up, right after I go yell at Mr. Sada and get us some proper funding to build up the place a bit. We should have water and dormitories soon.” I brushed off my hands from the pavement and turned to look at Rayna. “I’d like it if you could work with me and the Knowles when they arrive. You know what we need better than I do, your advice would be appreciated.”

“My advice?” Rayna asked. She blinked a few times and shook her head. “I forget sometimes why I agreed to this, and then you remind me. You are strange human, Tyson.”

“Sure.” I said, waving a hand. “If strange keeps us alive, I’m happy to be that.” Then I stopped and looked back at her. “Hey, how well can you defend us from Dearth with fifty million morties?”

Rayna frowned and shrugged. “Pretty well. To start. Dearth will be a threat unless they are removed from the planet, not easy to do. With fifty million morties, we can hold out. If we embarrass them, get in the media machine, they leave us alone to avoid bad PR.”

I glanced behind us at the open common area that buttressed the parking lot. Hobbs were already setting up a food distribution tent, and an old charcoal standing grill had been commandeered for an impromptu barbeque. I had no idea what they were burning in it, but the smoke was puffing and a hobb I had never seen before was putting on an apron. Both humans and hobbs were already starting to gather around.

“I got you. First the Sleem, then the yarsps. Then Dearth, hopefully. Well. Time to go strangle Mr. Sada,” I said to Rayna. When her eyes widened and she stared at me, I shrugged. “Not really. Not that I’m actually thinking about it, but would you care if I did?”

She grunted and shrugged back. “Mm. Not really.” The hobb shoved her hands in her pockets and started walking toward the barbeque. “Just be surprised.”

The hobbs at the bbq station had begun searing great chunks of the white yarsp meat, and my helmet picked up the smell. I had just had breakfast, but my stomach was rumbling to the smell of sizzling alien wasp meat that reminded me far too much of bacon. It tripped me up to think of the things that had ripped into me and chased me across the desert being delicious, but that’s exactly the way they smelled.

A terrible temptation came over me to go try a bite.

I left instead, marching toward Mr. Sada’s compound. As I walked by the raven’s stronghold, Darclau greeted me with a bob of his head and a ‘g’wah’ sound. I nodded at him and raised a hand in greeting. Then I fished out the pumpkin seeds and showed him the bag’s contents. The raven cocked his head sideways to get a good look and then pecked at the seeds, stealing one to gulp down.

“Hey, knock that off, I’m gonna make suet cake for you guys,” I admonished.

Darclau spread his wings and chortled, thrusting his head at me twice in quick succession.

“I’ll take that as you being pleased,” I said, as I pulled up the affiliate screen. His team had had a good night, our measly five percent was a decent haul that would pay for the new Knowles first month. I raised a fist to try and bump with him. “Hey, good work last night. You guys really scavenge up some good stuff, huh?”

Darclau tilted his head first one way, and then the other at my raised fist. Then he pecked me, once, on the knuckles and flew away into his little trailer, cackling that laugh of his. I shrugged and continued my way to Mr. Sada’s.

It felt weird, waiting for a hobb to open the gate for me, and weirder still when I walked up the walled-in road to his mansion. Another hobb opened his gate for me too, and I walked into my bosses mansion to yell at him.

Then I saw the still broken windows of his Tesla and stopped. Mr. Sada wasn’t acting out of malice. He was just a scared idiot who didn’t have control over his world anymore and was lashing out to regain some semblance of the feeling of security he used to have.

Selling our spider trees and ruining the market hadn’t been intentional, and that mattered to how I treated him in the coming conflict.

I took a deep breath, ordered some gobbs from my own morties to repair the windows, and went inside to talk to him.

I entered the house with a knock on the doorframe. “Mr. Sada! Gotta talk!” As I entered, I took off my helmet and tucked it under my arm.

There was no response, aside from the sound of heavy footfalls coming down the hallway. I walked into the kitchen to wait, but it had been Hord I heard, and he walked down the stairs waving his hands.

“No boss today, Tyson. Boss say he want you go. Tyson go.”

He did that thing where he flapped his hand at me again and my jaw clenched. I held my position for a long moment, while I stared at him, and then I turned to the fridge and opened it. The mineral water I was hoping for was in there, and it appeared as though Mr. Sada had recently stocked up. I grabbed a bottle and twisted the cap off, turning back to Hord as I took a long drink. Hord looked at me, then glanced back upstairs. His hands were shaking.

“Hord, you and I should talk.” I reached back in the fridge and pulled another of Mr. Sada’s waters out, offering it to him. The hobb licked his lips and blinked.

“Not supposed to. Tyson supposed to go,” the tall alien hesitantly said.

I smiled and shook my head. The smile did not reach my eyes. “Well. I’m not going.”

His weapon hand twitched, and I straightened up. The smile vanished from my face immediately.

“If you reach for that gun, we’re in a fight. If we get in a fight, I’m probably going to kill you. You know that rusty piece won’t do a damn thing to stop me, if I come for you, so please.” I locked eyes with him.

“Don’t reach for it again.”