By the time we made it back to my new place, the sun had gone down more fully, and everything nearby was cast in the purple pall of pre-dark. I was happy to run in my new place, but once I arrived inside, it was depressingly empty.

I had a main door, a side door that opened facing the road, and another on the second floor that opened onto the roof of the first. I also had some windows, with glass already installed.

But aside from that, the entire place was nothing but an empty bungalow. The stairs to what I had already begun thinking of as my bedroom were spiral, which saved a tremendous amount of space in the downstairs area. Downstairs was cut into two large, open rooms, with another wooden door to separate them.

Upstairs was similar, but my second room was much smaller, and housed my new toilet and mud-crete shower bath. It didn’t have water connected yet, but looking at the area made me realize something important. I would need to buy and install a water heater. Probably for every residence in the camp.

Nobody liked cold showers.

Once I had finished my tour, I worked with Axle to determine a good place for Cube. We decided to install him near the road-side doorway, as the primary bulk of the electrical cabling for my place was there.

After a few more minutes and more morties spent from my personal account, a BuyMort pod delivered my first piece of furniture. Cube’s throne.

The device was an oversized, circular metal plate, on top of three tripod legs with a thick cable extending from the bottom. Axle got it hooked up to my place easily, with just the tools he kept in his bag. Then he tested it by setting Cube down on the metal plate. There was nothing to turn on in order to test it, but Axle used a device that looked a lot like a voltameter to declare that it was functioning.

After, we lifted Cube off the plate and confirmed that power was no longer functional. Once power was hooked up to the entire compound, I would have the responsibility of keeping Cube happy and secure.

The work of the day complete, the sky orange and purple in the coming of night, Axle and Jada came with me to Phylis’s porch. It’d been too long since I’d been, and she never minded extra company.

So long as they weren’t dicks.

I introduced everyone, and Phyllis immediately offered the giant alien hyena people a lit joint. I waved her off, knowing I had a load more work to do before I could even think about relaxing. The Knowles were no stranger to such substances and each took a turn on the lit joint. Axle nodded his appreciation while Jada merely sighed in satisfaction and gazed out at the stars.

After a few moments of smoke filled silence, Axle turned to me and spoke up. “So, Tyson, I feel like this is a good time to get into credit levels. I’m surprised your priest hasn’t counseled you on it yet.”

I thought about all of my interactions with Molls. How complicated they were despite the placid surface everyone around me almost certainly saw. Yeah, I’m glad I hadn’t. There would have been more holy talk and sexual tension. My favorite mix.

“I guess it never came up,” I answered. A plume of smoke spluttered from Phylis’s helm, but whatever she was thinking, she held her tongue.

Axle and Jada shared a look and I felt my face get hot. “No. Nope. Ignore her, she just likes making trouble. We are talking about credit levels. I’m a level 30. What’s that mean and what can I do about it?”

Phylis started cackling in her mech and Jada tried to cover her lupine face with a hand to hide the giant hyena’s smirk. But Axle cough in a closed fist and gave me a straight face.

“Yeah. Right. Credit Levels. You bottom at 0 and you max at 100. They have little titles attached to them by BuyMort, but that doesn’t mean too much. What matters is what those numbers mean. They are a level of trust, an aspect of the BuyMort algorithm that determines how much debt you are able to take on while still remaining profitable.”

Fuck. I’d been afraid of this. In old Pre-BuyMort times I’d failed so many credit checks when I was trying to find somewhere to live. Same shit, different package. But . . .

“I’m a goddamn millionaire. In a really short time too, man. Why the hell am I a level 30 poor shopper?”

Axle turned to Jada and Jada shrugged. He looked back over at me. “How many times have you applied to have your credit rating raised?”

I felt my face fall. There was always something. Paperwork, fees . . . bullshit.

“How much will that cost?” I asked.

Axle nodded, his eyes shining. “There you go. You get it. Yep, there’s a fee. Your level times a thousand morties, usually. The algorithm will adjust fees if a lot of people are checking their credit at once, also. But that’s usually first month stuff. I’d guess Nu-Earth here is running at level times two-and-a-half or three right now, right hun?”

Jada’s face went lax for a moment. “Dead on, honey bear.”

“Right. So 75,000 morties. Nothing big for you. The failure to apply is more likely the reason for the poor shopper label, as opposed to the actual expense and financial impact on the affiliate.”

I leaned forward, waving smoke out of my face. “So, what’s that do? Like, what’s the point? I can take bigger loans?”

“Sorry about him, dearies. He gets a little dense about this sort of stuff,” Phylis said. I frowned and she cough-laughed, her own smoke powdering out in front of her in a cloud. “Dear, he’s saying it’s just like the old days. Big credit means more buying options. Not just bigger loans, but better interest rates. More people willing to lend.”

I thought back to the stories. The big black bank card. The one with unlimited purchasing power, low interest, accepted everywhere. It always sounded cool but at the same time it felt like a trap. I’d spend up my morties then make so much debt that I’d lose everything.

“Sounds horrible. Is there anything that it gives me that doesn’t deal with morties —”

“Prestige,” Axle interrupted “Diplomatic power. You might not have noticed, Tyson, but you are building up not just a business, but also a nation, of sorts. People you face up with in the field won’t just run services to estimate your net worth. They’ll check your credit level as well. It is the composite of your ability to make morties and gain assets. A rating that tells people how savvy and powerful you are as an individual.”

I didn’t like that. I thought of the various after-armageddon movies and stories where society inevitably trekked backward to a feudal society. Lords and ladies. Fiefdoms. Dances, banquets, balls. Everyone sizing up each other’s dowries and estates. I didn’t give one fuck about what someone else’s rating might be and they shouldn’t have cared about mine.

A person’s worth was not supposed to be tied so intrinsically to their spending power. If that was the primary thing about them that mattered, something was deeply wrong with the assessment process.

I was just about to say so when Axle said something that shut me up hard.

“Dearth Conglomerate won’t deal with anyone fairly unless their CEO demonstrates a level 50 or higher. As an example. They’ll treat anyone lower as prey.”

Phylis cackled. “He got you there, Tyson. And no, don’t you glare at me. We all know what you were thinking. A poker pro you are not.”

I took a pull and sighed. “Right. Yeah. Okay. What’ll happen if I run the check right now?”

Jada cut in this time, her eyes shining. “Your short-term successes would qualify you for a ten-level rise, the maximum on a single check, if it weren’t for the logged stupidity of your Associate’s Spider City tree sales. But the Sleem Farm was considered a hard Smart-Shopper move by the algorithm. I’m seeing ticks here for affiliations and associations, a couple of minor demerits. Once the farm is up and running in a few hours, this will start trending us upward. Also the algorithm seems to having a rising black mark against you for quote, ‘not removing incompetent CEO’.”

I sighed. Everything and everyone kept telling me to kill him, as if it wasn’t already forefront in my mind at all times. Something I had to actively resist considering in a serious way. Fuck BuyMort for applying a score to it, and for scoring mercy and patience as a negative.

“There’s also a current disadvantage because of time. Your affiliate is simply new, and therefore not as trusted as those who are older. The algorithm likes to have more time to categorize you and determine your buying and spending habits. But, the more you bump up the more power you have in negotiations at the least. So, what do you say? Give it a run?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Let’s do it.”

Axle’s eyes flared wide and I felt myself fall into them, diving headfirst into his mind through his irises. It was a new sensation — I’d half-expected the normal barrage of ads. But this? This was different.

“Welcome to my interface,” Axle said. He was standing on a polished ebony stage, the whole world around us a black-silken backdrop like some statuesque and posh theater in the richest and most celebrated of Terran cultural districts. His clothes were quite dapper yet fundamentally alien, a sleek purple velvet suit with large orbs of color dotting it here and there, always changing position and orbiting in strange patterns over him.

“You like it?” he asked.

I nodded. It certainly was a lot.

“I modeled this all after my home world. A holovid of the days before BuyMort. We were quite the stylish people, or so it seems. I like to think that one day, with enough morties, we can be again.”

I furrowed my brow, but nodded. I didn’t like to think about how long that world might have been waiting. His words made me think that his world had probably rotted away into some horrible shadow of the place he was showing me now. I shook the thoughts from my head. None of it mattered if I couldn’t even get a few villages running right and my affiliate on task.

“Yeah, I know that look. Let’s get to business,” he said, after a long and theatrical sigh. “The process of application is rather simple. We’re going to enter into the system, request an application, pay the fee and undergo a proper series of personality questions.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. An unintended growl of anger colored my voice — enough so that Axel noticeably flinched.

“Hey, don’t kill the messenger! I can coach you through it, alright?”

I sighed. “Yeah, fuck it. Let’s do this,” I muttered. Then I was hammered with questions, one after another, until the process was finally complete. It felt like an eternity, a shitty mess of things that seemed to measure my ethics and morality much more than my actual ability to have a work ethic or lead a company. My head swirled, giant heads appeared over the stage, bellowed their questions, then disappeared when I answered.

Then they came no more.

I collapsed to the stage, startled at how exhausted my mental image was.

Axle extended his hand down to me, helping me stand on shaky legs. “You did good, Tyson. Plus 5 levels. Not as much as I was hoping, but that fucking Sada, man. You’ve got to do something about him.”

I stared at him. Long enough that he turned his head. Then we dropped out of his thought-space and spiraled back into reality.

“Five levels,” Axle said. Jada beamed. Phyllis let out a snort and I realized she’d passed out.

“A fine day. Thanks Axle,” I said.

The work of the day complete, Axle and Jada bid me their farewells and went to get their own living space set up. They intended to take one of the residential units, on the hobb side. They wanted the one closest to the back, as their own project in the unutilized portion of the campground would be directly next door when it was eventually established.

After they left, I clunked around my new place for a little while. Mostly, I fantasized about what kind of stuff I would eventually install in it, and what kind of additions I might want to make to it later on.

I also stared out the window at Molls’ Lincoln for far too long, and thought about the eventual hot-house I wanted to build, and what kind of plants I might put into it. Just as I was thinking about birds of paradise flowers, I turned to see a most unwelcome sight.

Garthrust walked up the entrance of my site, with two of my hobbs on either side escorting him.